The Maryland Dream Act should not be a partisan issue. It would enable children of illegal immigrants who are eligible for higher education to receive discounted in-state tuition provided that they, or their parents, have paid a considerable amount of taxes for the last three years.

For me, it is a humanitarian issue. I volunteer at an elementary school in the Baltimore area which has an immigrant student population of around 40 percent. That someone would deny the opportunity of higher education to any of these children because their parents' misdeeds years ago (now substantially corrected by their current taxpaying, law-abiding status) seems the height of gratuitous cruelty.

Should the current effort to bring the act to a voter referendum delay or thwart its purpose, someone needs to tell these kids that they should expect to have no chance at thriving in academia because of some misperceived conduct on the part of their parents.

Apparently, no one has any problem with well-off immigrants taking advantage of Maryland's college and graduate institutions while paying no taxes whatsoever.

Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore