From the debate on a bill to allow children of immigrants who attend Connecticut high schools for four years and then graduate to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities - transcript of the Connecticut Senate - June 1, 2007:
SEN. CAPPIELLO:
Thank you, Mr. President. That's all, Senator
Harris. I appreciate your answers.
Mr. President, every one of us in this Circle
has received a phone call. We received a phone call from a constituent asking
us can you help get my son or daughter into UConn or a state university.
We know we've all gotten those calls. I've
gotten many. We've heard stories, my son or my daughter has a 3. 5 average,
they're active in school, they don't understand why they can't get in.
They can't get in because there are a limited
number of slots available. They are no endless, particularly at UConn.
When you receive that phone call, if this
bill passes, please understand that that slot might have been given away to
someone who was in this state and in this country illegally.
It's all about perspective. I understand the
perspective of those who want to pass this bill. I understand that these are
students who didn't choose to come here illegally, their parents did.
I also understand that most of the time their
parents will be paying their tuition bill. They are not precluded from going to
a state university today. They're not precluded from going to UConn today.
They just don't have the same rights of
receiving or paying in-state tuition rates. Those rights are given to people
who are legal citizens in a residence of the State of Connecticut.
We're not talking about that group right now.
We are talking about people who are here illegally. And you have to take in the
perspective of parents and students who wish to go to UConn, who wish to go to
Western or Southern or Central or Eastern. You have to think about that.
Now it's true, I will take you on your word
that it's true that the majority of these students right now are going to
community colleges. Why? Probably because of the price.
But if you change this law, you will have a
lot more students who are here illegally applying to UConn and applying to the
state university system. And if there were an endless amount of slots
available, I might actually accept this bill, but there are not.
And whether it's 200 students and, I assume
that means 200 students in any one given year, and if that's the case, it's 800
students.
But I don't know where that number comes
from, I don't know who's keeping track of these statistics of who's here
illegally or not since no one is tracking that right now.
I don't know now many people want to give
that information up front, by the way I'm here illegally, so I don't buy that
it's only 200 students.
It is estimated that in my city alone there
are up to 20,000 illegal immigrants. That's a lot of people.
No one here is saying we should deprive
anyone of health benefits going to the hospital, particularly children. No one
is saying here we should provide, deprive any student from receiving education
if they are a child up to the age of 18.
But now we're talking about legal adults. In
this state you're an adult when you become 18 years of age. And again, they may
not have made that choice, but we have to make a choice.
Do we want to set up a scenario where if
someone from Massachusetts, from New York, which is one minute over the border
from where I live, one minute away, someone from Brewster, New York would have
to go to West Conn, if they went to West Conn, they'd pay full out-of-state
tuition costs, but someone who is here illegally would be paying in-state
tuition costs?
These are U. S. citizens, whether born and
raised here or naturalized, they are U. S. citizens. They'd be paying a higher
amount for our university.
That's simply unfair to our U. S. citizens
who work every single day, pay taxes every single day, work hard for their
children every single day to get a better education.
We're saying we're going to give a benefit to
people who are here illegally over people who are here legally, and that's
simply unfair.
We have a rule of law in Connecticut, in the
United States of America. We can say that this issue is not about immigration,
and maybe you're right, Senator Harris, maybe it's not just about immigration.
And there's nothing we can do about the
federal government's failed immigration policies. We wish they would make some
changes. Maybe they'll make some changes this year. We can't do anything about
that in this Chamber.
But what we can do is send a message to our constituents, to U. S. citizens, that we're not going to give a benefit to someone who is here illegally that we're not going to give to you. It's simply unfair, Mr. President, and I rise to oppose this bill. Thank you.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
From the debate about a bill that would require that some employers give sick days to their workers - transcript of the Connecticut Senate, May 29, 2007:SEN. CAPPIELLO:
Thank you, Mr. President. I also rise to
oppose this bill, and just to reiterate some of the things that Senator
Debicella said, with all respect to my good friend, Senator Gomes, who we agree
on some things, and on some of these issues we disagree.
When he said where are the facts, when he
asked the question where are the facts, where are the numbers, how is this
actually going to affect jobs in the state, but he voted against the amendment
that was proposed by Senator Debicella that would have given us that very
information, the information that we want to get out for ourselves and for the
general public.
We're looking at facts and figures. That's
what we want to look at, facts and figures. Now I've been in the Legislature
for, this is my 13th year. There have been bills every single year
that have been proposed, many in number, and usually a few seem to sneak
through every single year that add to the cost of doing business in
Let's look at the last 15 years. Over the
last 15 years,
We're the only state whose median income is
going down. That's a good fact and a good figure. It's going down. Why is that?
We're one of two states to lose population and jobs to other states. Why is
that?
It's because we keep passing bills like this,
year after year after year, to add to unemployment comp costs, worker's comp
costs, taxes for businesses, and now we're mandating sick leave for companies
with employees of 50 or more.
Now during the debates on Committee, I kept
hearing the Wal-Marts of the world being thrown out there as an example, the
Targets of the world, the McDonald's of the world.
The last time I checked, Wal-Mart had a lot
more than 50 employees. This is targeting the heart of our small business
community. This adds a real-life cost to doing business within our state,
another layer of cost.
Our business community, our small, medium,
and even large employers, but mostly our small and medium employers, cannot
continue to absorb these extra costs to doing business here. What do they do?
They have a few choices. If they're big
enough, they can move. Now it used to be that our businesses only moved down
south, overseas maybe, if they can, if a job can be done overseas.
You know what? Now they're starting to move
to our bordering states, like
Another thing that can happen when companies
are looking to where they're going to move to or where they're going to grow,
they can look at doing it here and growing here, or growing elsewhere.
And guess what? Our facts and our figures are
showing that they're growing and moving elsewhere. Smaller businesses and
companies might just shut down all together.
If they're driving the margins, they're very
close to making a profit, barely making a profit, this could push them over the
top where they say that's it. We have to shut down.
I have an employer in my district who has
been in
His words to me were, if this bill passes, if
the worker's comp bill passes, the discretionary benefits, if any of these
bills pass, it's probably going to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
He's just going to have to move elsewhere. He
doesn't want to, because his roots are in the
When we are making decisions in this
building, we simply think it has no real-world effect on the jobs out there in
our districts, in our economy, but every single one of these bills has a
real-world effect.
We may think it's only affecting the rich
people. Don't worry about it. We're going to take care of the little person and
affect the rich person. Does anyone here believe that we, on our side of the
aisle, wouldn't like to vote for this?
Wouldn't we all like to vote for a bill that
said everyone's going to have to have a base salary of $ 50,000 or more a year?
That would be a great thing to vote for, but it would have negative
ramifications, because it would drive jobs out of our state.
There is not an electric fence around
It's well intentioned, but it has many, many
unintended consequences. For those reasons, Mr. President, I'll be voting
against this bill. Thank you.