Last week’s introduction of legislation in the General Assembly to let illegal immigrants attend University of North Carolina system schools at in-state rates has produced a backlash that is driving us to fits of ranting and raving.
Sadly, most of the negative response has nothing to do with the tuition proposal itself and everything to do with public frustration over illegal immigration. And we can’t help thinking that those feelings are, in fact, largely anti-immigration.
We’re sick of hearing holier-than-thou pronouncements that illegal immigrants should be spurned because they are lawbreakers. That’s a gross oversimplification. They aren’t committing inherent crimes, like killing or assaulting someone or stealing or damaging someone else’s property. They’re doing something most of our ancestors did — coming to this land, against the wishes of many of the people already here, for freedom and economic opportunity. The big difference is that we have set arbitrary limits on immigration and declared it a criminal act to ignore those limits.
To fight one oversimplification with another, we once also set an arbitrary limit on the allowable speed on our interstate highways. Did all of us who ignored the national 55-mph speed limit show an anti-American disrespect for the rule of law? Or did we reflect a wholly American spirit of individualism, self-reliance and liberty in opposition to oppressive government rules?
In the case of speed limits, we came to our senses, and Congress allowed states to set limits appropriate to their highways. We eagerly await the day when Congress similarly lifts the limits that turn good people into criminals because they want the best for themselves and their families.
Regardless of what you think about the nation’s biggest influx of immigrants in more than a century, it’s clear we need our national leaders to debate and adopt an actual immigration policy, based on what is best in the long term for the United States as a whole.
But we digress. This is not the time or the place for the great immigration debate.
Instead, it’s exactly the time and the place to search for practical solutions.
It doesn’t matter whether we should open our country to all comers, seal off the border or do something in between.
It doesn’t matter because illegal immigrants are already here: 11 million to 15 million in the nation; hundreds of thousands in North Carolina; hundreds if not thousands in Vance County. What are we going to do about it?
Do we want to block the American dream from the people who live in those run-down singlewides along Raleigh Road and in the old mill villages near the former Harriet & Henderson Yarns plants? Do we want to repeat a mistake of our history and give permanence to the development of a separate economy and separate society for one underprivileged, if not despised, ethnic group? Or should we strive to create the one North Carolina that politicians love to make speeches about?
That’s where the university legislation comes in. It’s not a method to lure more immigrants here, but a way to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in.
The North Carolina Constitution already requires the public schools to educate all of this state’s children; immigration status is not a factor. The proposed legislation would extend that situation to the universities and treat all of the people who live here equally. What’s more American than equality of opportunity?
Under the current system, two children could go to the same schools for years, form a friendship and finish 1-2 in their high school graduating class. One of them, the descendant of a family that has grown tobacco in Vance County for hundreds of years, is accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill and attends at the discounted tuition rate offered to state residents. The other, whose parents came here a decade ago to work the tobacco fields owned by others, has little choice but to follow his parents into farm labor.
That’s a waste of talent. And it’s just plain wrong.
The legislation would limit the in-state discount to illegal immigrants who attend all of high school in North Carolina, so we’re talking about families who have paid taxes to the state for at least four years and have settled here. They have more of a right to a discounted college education than families who move here for the final year of high school. And illegal immigrants wouldn’t have priority for highly sought university slots; they would have to earn admission on their merits, just like their high school classmates.
To get the proposed benefit, students would have to apply for citizenship. If this legislation works, we could see 1,000 to 2,000 fresh college graduates who also are new citizens each year, and they would have every reason to stay in North Carolina and pay us back many times over for our investment in their education. That gives us an edge we lack among the other in-state students we subsidize at our universities; they can and often do take their degrees to jobs far from their home state.
Finally (for now — we don’t expect the tuition issue to be settled this year, and we know the immigration battle isn’t going away), we wonder at all the fretting about how this tuition benefit would draw even more illegal immigrants to North Carolina. Given the rate at which that population already is growing, we’re not sure an acceleration is possible, but what if it is? We welcome any family with the foresight and the wisdom to move somewhere at least four years in advance to earn children the chance at a cheap, top-rate college education. We wish more of the folks who were born here shared that vision of the future.loan 100 paydayloan million 100 commercialmonths check 12 loans no creditloan 4 buy payday 6 onlineadvanced 6 payday loan 4advance cash loan payday 6payday loan fax advanceloans 10 property investment down Map