Finally, it is pointed out that college is NOT like volunteering for the military

James Taranto in Best of the Web:
'...What's really objectionable about Klein's Saturday evening post, however, is the implication that higher education and military service are morally equivalent. We did spend several years in college, and we did it for the same reasons that most people do--to improve our employment prospects and to kill time while we figured out a direction in life. As a former college student, we can attest that going to college is not a patriotic act but a self-serving one.

Nothing wrong with that, but society has no moral obligation to reward self-serving actions. If the Dream Act made it possible for illegal aliens to earn citizenship by serving honorably in the military, and no more than that, we would support it unreservedly. Perhaps the act's higher-education provisions would have economic benefits. But if so, why does Klein need to rest his argument on a false equivalence between soldiers and students?..."

***Conflating the promise to attend college with actual service in the defense of the nation is absurd.It's not even clear why the "reward" for being illegal is citizenship. If something extraordinary is done, like serving in the military ( not merely promising to do so ), it's more the case that this is the appropriate reward. If the justification is merely to allow illegals to come out of the shadows, it should be sufficient to provide permanent residency without the ability to use citizenship as a justification (under the misguided Family Unification policy )for bringing in countless relatives. ***