Thread: Important Question for NC Media

Members of the NC Media:

Recently, it has been widely reported that there are very few illegal aliens in both the NC UNC system and our community colleges.

The Raleigh News and Observer reports...

"Community College System officials say a recent survey showed that only 112 of 297,000 degree-seeking students were illegal immigrants. The University of North Carolina system says 27 of its 200,000 students are here illegally.“

The public is being told that this issue is not very important because so few illegal aliens are in our community colleges.

I find this very interesting because to my knowledge, our colleges are not designed to determine legal status of applicants and that provision has never been placed into law or procedure.

In short, the system does not know how many illegal aliens are in the system yet they have issued these numbers without challenge or question from the media.

A survey? All illegal aliens please raise your hands? Such polling would be as inaccurate as surveying students asking how many currently have drugs or stolen property in their dorm rooms.

I would like to officially challenge these numbers released so confidently in press releases by our taxpayer supported state agencies.

The NC Community College has now announced they will follow Attorney General Roy Cooper’s recommendation and not accept illegal aliens for admission.

That's great, we need to know how they plan to screen applicants for legal status from this point forward.

If the system that released these estimates, have received wide press coverage, without the numbers being sound then the public needs to know that they did.

The public should also know if the system is not currently designed to detect illegal aliens.

If the University system does not acquire the proper training and enroll in systems like SAVE or E-Verify then this entire discussion is moot and illegal aliens will continue to enroll.

We likely have many more illegal aliens in the college system than the few hundred described here.

In closing, I would like the NC Media to determine and report...

1. If these numbers were derived through any valid process and to report if the numbers are suspect.

2. If our universities even have the ability at this time to determine legal status.

3. If we can get some coverage of a retraction of these numbers if they are inaccurate or derived by speculative methods.

4. How will our Universities now determine legal status to adhere to Roy Cooper's recommendation as promised?

I look forward to a healthy and energetic response in the NC media to my challenge of this information.

William Gheen
www.alipac.us
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC
Post Office Box 30966, Raleigh, NC 27622-0966
Tel: (919) 787-6009 Toll Free: (866) 703-0864
FEC ID: C00405878

1. If these numbers were derived through any valid process.

After reading this I have an image stuck in my head of a journalist and editor discussing the number of IA's enrolled in NC colleges. The reporter says I bet there are only about 100 in the system and the editor says that they should make the number 112 so the story looks legitimate.

cvangel
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PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:58 am Post subject: Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster Report post
I received an email response from Erskine Bowles:

I can understand why you feel so strongly about this issue. When the
Attorney General does deliver a formal legal opinion on this, I assure
you we will obey the law. Please see my attached memo to our Board of
Governors. As the office of the Attorney General has stated, there is
real confusion on what the law is today, and we are very glad the
Attorney General will seek further clarification. Just so you know,
we enroll 210,000 students, of whom 27 are undocumented. We only
accept undocumented students who have graduated from a U.S. high
school and are academically qualified for admission. They must pay
out-of-state tuition, which exceeds our cost, and they can only be
admitted if they are counted in our 18% cap on out-of-state freshmen,
so they will not take a seat that would otherwise go to a North
Carolina citizen. They receive no state or federal aid whatsoever, and
their tuition is a significant multiple of what North Carolina
citizens pay.

Thank you for writing me.

Erskine Bowles

Attached:

The University of North Carolina
POST OFFICE BOX 2688, CHAPEL HILL, NC 27515-2688
ERSKINE B. BOWLES, President
Telephone: (919) 962-1000 Fax (919) 843-9695
E-mail: ebowles@northcarolina.edu


TO: Members of the UNC Board of Governors
The Chancellors
FROM: Erskine Bowles
RE: Admission of Undocumented Students

Last November, the North Carolina Community College System issued a directive that all 58 community colleges admit undocumented immigrants under the System’s “open doorâ€

I just now got to the alert, and can add a couple comments on the 'bean counting' side of this...

1. 'Undocumented' from the university or comm college side of things may very well be interpreted to be something very different from what the OBL crowd or even our side understands to be undocumented. They may be hiding behind the case of:
"The student has no SSN, the parents are from <Country Du Jour - Not US>, and has graduated high school, yadda, yadda, yadda. eg. there is no explicit check against Fed databases.

Such a situation would NOT identify those having either a bogus SSN or someone using a stolen one - most likely. Unless the university applies a [more] rigorous set of standards to actually verify the identity of said student, they really don't know who is illegal - they can only truly identify when someone is "undocumented". This basically amounts to 'playing dumb' - in a self-serving kind of way. Not to mention, the politics in most higher education combined with the need to collect as much tuition as possible would provide a strong DISincentive for the system to WANT to do rigorous checks that might exclude certain people.

There probably is not real solid answer to all this. But, the place to start, is to start enforcing the asking of the correct questions. Most higher ed institutions treat education as: 'everybody should be welcome...regardless'. <That, is the real fundamental problem.

I'd like to know how they know the number of illegals. I just looked at the UNC application. There are 3 choices for citizenship: US Citizen, Resident Alien(green card) and Non-Resident Alien(international). I didn't see a choice of illegal alien.