One thing I like about Wired is the style of the articles. Joshua Davis' "La Vida Robot", though horribly titled, reads like the pitch for a hollywood screenplay. It tells the story of four illegal immigrants high-school students from Mexico entered a submarine-robot building contest, and defeated, amongsts other teams, MIT's six ocean-engineering students, four mechanical engineers, and two computer science majors.

It's reminds me of my Selwyn House Robotics days, where we too were the underdogs, in that we were highschool students facing university students. But we weren't underprivileged. And we didn't face MIT.

The sad conclusion to the story is though these kids obviously have the potential, they can't afford to go to university.

Since the teenagers are undocumented, they don't qualify for federal loans. And though they've lived in Arizona for an average of 11 years, they would still have to pay out-of-state tuition, which can be as much as three times the in-state cost [...] The Dream Act, [a] federal legislation that would give in-state tuition and temporary resident status to undocumented students who graduate from a US high school after being enrolled in the States for five years or more[, might chance all that]. The bill, which was introduced in 2003 and is slated to be resubmitted this spring, aims to give undocumented students a reason to stay in school.

The situation isn't all that simple, however.

Ira Mehlman, the Los Angeles-based media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, successfully lobbied against the legislation last year. He says it will put citizens and legal immigrants in direct competition for the limited number of seats at state colleges. "What will you say," he asks, "to an American kid who does not get into a state university and whose family cannot afford a private college because that seat and that subsidy have been given to someone who is in the country illegally?"