Justice & Law Quote by Ernest Istook

Istook’s line isn’t trying to parse policy details; it’s trying to draw a bright moral border. The word “awful” front-loads disgust, not argument, and “illegals” collapses people into a legal status so the listener doesn’t have to picture a classmate, a teenager, or a family. That’s the point: turn an education bill into an identity test.

The specific intent is electoral and disciplinary. By framing in-state tuition as “the same tuition” granted to “illegals” as to “residents,” he converts a complicated question (Who counts as “in-state”? Who has lived, studied, and paid taxes there?) into a zero-sum offense against locals. He’s speaking to perceived fairness, but it’s a narrow, transactional version: benefits are treated as prizes for paperwork, not investments in a state’s workforce or social stability.

Subtext: ordinary Oklahomans are being played for fools by soft elites, and the government is rewarding rule-breaking. “A couple of years ago” gestures at a recent betrayal that still needs correction, inviting listeners to retroactively feel cheated. “I think it’s wrong” lands like a closing gavel, an attempt to end debate by reducing it to a matter of decency.

Context matters. Early-2000s immigration politics were built on symbols of boundary and belonging, and tuition policy became a proxy battle: not just about dollars, but about who gets to imagine a future in the state. Istook’s rhetoric works because it makes belonging feel scarce, then offers indignation as a form of solidarity.