Thread: NC: Educating Illegals

Educating Illegals

JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF

Published: May 22, 2009

For several years, the state has wrestled with the question of whether students who are illegal immigrants should be admitted to the public community-college system. Currently, they're barred. But the state is once again taking up the issue. There are several good reasons why these students should be admitted.

Area residents can give their input to legislators and educators at a forum Wednesday night at the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system's administrative offices. The forum is sponsored by the Forsyth Education Partnership.

In many, if not most, cases the students in question were brought to this country as infants or children by their parents. They had no choice in the matter. Most attend the state's public school systems, which accept them, by law, without question. Their public education should not be forced to end at high-school graduation.

The University of North Carolina system considers illegal immigrants for admission if they have graduated from a U.S. high school, pay out-of-state tuition and do not get government financial aid. There is no reason that the community-college system shouldn't do the same.

The system could gain money in the process, an average of $1,680 a year for each illegal immigrant, The Associated Press reported last month. The state's community colleges collected an estimated average of $5,344 in local and state appropriations for each full-time, year-round student, while out-of-state tuition for those students was $7,024 in 2006-07, according to a report provided to a committee of the State Board of Community Colleges.

To deny illegal immigrants entry to the community-college system will lead to a permanent underclass that we'll all end up having to pay for. Allowing their entry will increase the size of the educated work force that's needed to attract new business. That's what Forsyth Technical Community College realized when it chose to admit illegal immigrants in past years, when the community-college system left that decision to local colleges.

There are big problems with the federal immigration system that demand correction. But that correction has to come at the federal level, and it could be a long way off.

State and local officials must tackle the problem reasonably, at their level.

As it revisits the community-college question, the state is considering three main options: admit illegal immigrants if they meet such requirements as graduation from a state high school, and charge them in-state tuition; admit them and charge them out-of-state admission; or don't admit them.

The last option is unacceptable. State and local officials must confront the problem practically and humanely. Continuing to slam the community-college door on illegal immigrants will cost us all -- in more ways than one.

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2...egals/opinion/

To deny illegal immigrants entry to the community-college system will lead to a permanent underclass that we'll all end up having to pay for.

So the person who wrote this editorial is assuming these illegals will be "permanent".

Just follow the money! The "political contributors" and Special Interest Groups will get their "cheap labor" and not have to furnish any "benefits" because all the "benefits" for the ILLEGALS will be furnished by the taxpayers enforced and implemented

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http://www.alipac.us/article4241.html