One has to wonder why so many colleges are subsidizing higher education for illegal immigrants. Students who are citizens or legal immigrants are having a hard enough time paying for college or finding work, aren’t they?

Eric Owens of the Daily Caller has the story.

Mucho dinero: UC Berkeley to give $1 million in scholarships to illegal immigrants

The University of California, Berkeley has received a $1 million gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. The money will provide scholarships for almost 200 students who are illegal immigrants.

The award is the largest individual donation any American university has ever received for scholarships of this kind, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. It will go toward the school’s Dreamers Fund, an initiative designed to help improve access to education among illegal immigrant students.

UC Berkeley students from some 20 different countries who came to the United States as children and are still living in the country illegally while attending the prestigious university will receive the scholarship money.

While federal law does not allow illegal immigrants to receive Pell Grants, subsidized student loans or work-study aid, the 2011 California Dream Act made such students eligible for privately endowed scholarships and state-sponsored financial aid.

“We feel like these dreamers have already beaten the odds,” said Denis Chicola, a spokesperson for the Haas Jr. Fund, according to The Daily Californian. “They have really proven themselves as hardworking students.”

Not everyone is slapping themselves on the back, though.

“Clearly it’s unethical,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-illegal-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, according to NPR. “What it means is that this foundation is valuing illegal immigrant students above American or legal immigrant students who can’t afford the tuition at the UC system.”