Stop the pandering on immigration | Serving Henderson, Transylvania and Polk Counties | North Carolina |

Henderson News-Times
BlueRidgeNow.com


http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/200 ... mmigration

Changed:8:35 AM on Thursday, December 6, 2007

We thought immigration opponents wanted illegal immigrants to assimilate, learn English, work hard in school and become taxpaying citizens. Turns out it's not true. Evidently, they want them to avoid paying taxes and stay ignorant and underground.


Once again moving the goalpost, immigration opponents want to deny illegal immigrants admission to community colleges, at least the blabbermouths do who aspire to political office. This is their position even though illegal immigrant students would pay out-of-state rates and thus would subsidize North Carolinians who pay in-state rates.


We'd take that deal, as N.C. taxpayers and as Americans who cling to our nation's roots as a beacon of freedom and betterment.


The high school graduates came here illegally, yes, many in their mother's arms or on their father's back. Instead of denying them a shot at higher education, it makes sense to let them earn a degree, get a job and pay taxes. How much you want to bet every last one of them speaks English?


The unearthing of an old attorney general's opinion that community colleges must admit illegal immigrants sent political candidates into an apoplectic fury last week. Or so they wanted us to think.
All the phony outrage was really just the latest exhibit of politicians of all stripes exploiting immigration fear for political gain.


Republican and Democratic candidates for governor immediately felt compelled to denounce the opinion, written by Gov. Mike Easley when he was attorney general. Easley, who's not running for anything, defended the longstanding open-door policy.


"When they distinguished themselves all the way through our K-12 education system," Easley said, "we're not going to slam the door in their face and condemn them to the underclass." Oh yes we are, the candidates exclaim.


It's sad to see that North Carolina, a state that has long taken pride in using higher education to lift the poor from poverty, has now cruelly abandoned that promise in the service of election season pandering. The real game was revealed when a Republican consultant, Ballard Everett, offered the view that Republicans could benefit from the issue because they have been the most vocal about it.
"If they play it right," Everett said, "they can have an advantage."


Right. As the conservative columnist David Brooks said recently about the Republican candidates for president, the full-throated outcry is not quite the winner it's cracked up to be.


"In effect," Brooks wrote of the Republican field, "they are competing to drive away Hispanic votes and make the party unelectable in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Florida and the nation at large."


Across North Carolina and across the fruited plain, we have to wonder which voters they're listening to. The presidential candidate who occupies the middle ground position on immigration, Mike Huckabee, is on the rise while the two with the harshest rhetoric, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, are watching their support crater.

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/200 ... mmigration