Thread: UNC board should boldly address illegal immigrant issue

UNC board should boldly address illegal immigrant issue



CHAPEL HILL - As the leaders of the UNC System gather in Chapel Hill today, they know that hours of complex policy discussions are likely to boil down to a handful of controversial headlines.

Instead of graduation rates and research grants, the focus will inevitably turn to Mary Easley's $79,700 pay raise and disbelief that it took four years for anyone to notice that N.C. Central University was running a branch campus in Atlanta.

For a Board of Governors that likes to operate by quiet consensus, all of the critical attention will no doubt be uncomfortable.

But this week's controversies pale in comparison to a landmine issue buried deep within the system's heavily researched and much-publicized UNC Tomorrow report, which system leaders have called their blueprint for the future.

Long before the state's community colleges ignited a firestorm by closing the door to illegal immigrants, the university system began to consider widening access for those very students.

Tucked into the UNC Tomorrow report -- in its longest, most carefully worded recommendation -- is the suggestion that the state not only allow undocumented immigrants into college classrooms, but also consider subsidizing them.

The university should examine "whether and under what circumstances, if any, undocumented students who graduate from North Carolina high schools and who are academically qualified for admission to a UNC institution should be charged in-state tuition," the report says.

UNFORTUNATELY, THAT CALL FOR A REASONABLE EXAMINATION OF A COMPLEX ISSUE was published in December, just in time to be eclipsed by the political shouting match over community college access for undocumented immigrants.

Any chance a serious public debate about the fate of students brought to this country illegally was obliterated in the overheated rhetoric of politicians competing for the toughest stand against lawbreaking aliens.

The UNC System called for a long-term analysis of the costs and benefits of a more open policy; Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory repeatedly denounced illegal immigrants as an unfair burden on schools.

University officials wanted to study the legal issues surrounding college access; Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bev Perdue called for an immediate ban on undocumented immigrants in public colleges.

The fact that both candidates are united in short-circuiting a real policy discussion about these students is all the more tragic when you consider the context.

A vanishingly small number of high-achieving young people have been turned into political punching bags in the national fight over a broken immigration system.

These students are being made to suffer not only for the sins of their own fathers and mothers, who chose to bring them here illegally, but also for the sins of a political class that refuses to engage this problem on its merits.

North Carolina taxpayers will spend more than $20 million this year to award in-state tuition for any nonresident student who wins a full scholarship. That means that if you're a good enough basketball player, a talented enough writer or a brilliant enough mathematician, the state will chip in tens of thousands of dollars to make you an honorary Tar Heel and reduce the cost of your education.

But for many who grew up in North Carolina, coming of age in difficult neighborhoods and households where English was most often a second language, the struggle to graduate from high school and earn a spot in one of the state's distinguished public universities is not enough to impress our political leaders. Not in an election year.

So this week, as the focus once again turns to fleeting controversies at the expense of far-reaching policies, you can bet that UNC officials are getting the message. It will be a long time before North Carolina students -- documented and not -- get the debate they deserve.

Eric Johnson has been a reporter and editor at The Daily Tar Heel, the UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper, and is now the paper's public editor.
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/col ... 14368.html

Tucked into the UNC Tomorrow report -- in its longest, most carefully worded recommendation -- is the suggestion that the state not only allow undocumented immigrants into college classrooms, but also consider subsidizing them.

The anarchists, illegal alien huggers, libidiots and haters of American citizens are at it again!!!