Directions: As you read, annotate for the anecdote Santiago utilizes for evidence. Comment on why it is effective in supporting her argument. How does the anecdote serve to typify a common problem? In College, These American Citizens Are Not Created Equal Fabiola Santiago “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Lady Liberty On Saturday, the day after its 125th anniversary celebration, the Statue of Liberty will close its doors for a year-long, $27 million renovation of the monument's interior. One could only hope that the nation's soul will undergo some transformation as well. Emma Lazarus, the descendant of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain who wrote in 1883 "The New Colossus," the moving sonnet at the base of the statue in New York harbor, would shed mournful tears at the lack of compassion for immigrants these days. She would weep at the ease with which words of disdain are spoken by some who lead and aspire to lead, and at the underhanded way in which ill-willed actions are taken against immigrants and their children. Lady Liberty's "golden door” is not only jammed, slammed shut, or slightly ajar depending on where you come from, but we've fallen so low on the scale of our founding values that in the United States of America today not all U. S. citizens are created equal. There are state like Florida, Alabama, and Arizona where politicians and bureaucrats use the system to discriminate, to create classes of Americans, to disenfranchise some of the most deserving among us. The latest low blow was unveiled by a class-action lawsuit and bill filed in the Florida legislature last week. Under rules established by the state's Department of Education and the university system's Board of Governors, students like Wendy Ruiz- born and raised in Miami – have to pay out-of-state tuition at rates that are more than three times what other Florida residents pay for their education. Ruiz has lived in the state all her life. She has a Florida birth certificate, a Florida driver's license, and is registered to vote in Florida. But while other Miami Dade College students pay about $1,266 per term in tuition, she must pay $4,524 because the state considers her a dependent of nonresidents. Here's an institution that is supposed to defend education punishing a young American for the sins of her parents, who are undocumented immigrants. Be we should all aspire to have neighbors like the Ruizes, who raised a daughter like Wendy, willing to wo three part-time jobs to pay her tuition while maintaining a 3.7 grade-point average. “I know that I successful because I have never wanted something so bad in my life like I want this,” Ruiz said of education. Who knows what more Wendy Ruiz might accomplish, what more she could become rere able to pay all of her attention to her education without an unfair financial burden of payin. travagantly unfair fees.