We are grateful to the AJC’s Maureen Downey for the space.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Get Schooled blog – Maureen Downey
Sunday, February 7, 2016
In a response to a column on the blog this week condemning Georgia’s higher education policy toward illegal immigrants, D.A. King of Marietta wrote this rebuttal essay. A vocal advocate for enforcement of U.S. immigration and employment laws, King is president of the Dustin Inman Society.
You can read the original column here. [1]
By D.A. King
The now stereotypical and always offensive path taken by liberals advocating for special treatment for illegal aliens is to associate enforcement of American immigration laws with racial prejudice and to the civil rights struggles of American blacks in the 1960s. And to completely ignore the rights of real, legal immigrants.
The recent joint effort featured here from associate professors Angela Stuesse and Shannon Speed did not disappoint. Because they did not, we note that “illegal” is not a race.
The issue of illegal immigrants and college attendance divides states. (AP Photo/Mike Fuentes)
The writers cite recent protests by victims of borders against Board of Regents admittance policy. But they omitted mentioning arrests of several screaming protesters for shoving American police officers [2]. They did however include references to a 1960 North Carolina lunch counter sit-in during which “four Black students… integrated a whites-only Woolworth’s counter.” The authors race-baiting hope is to compare the Board of Regents current policy on instate tuition and limiting illegal aliens access to taxpayer-funded post secondary schools as ”segregation.”
Nowhere do the educators of our college youth mention that inconvenient concept of an equal application of the law that is supposed to protect all Americans and is the very basis of the civil rights movement. There is a reason for that.
Longstanding federal law defining and regulating state and local public benefits (8USC1621 – 1996) makes it quite clear that illegal aliens are not eligible for post secondary education unless a state enacts a statute explicitly stating otherwise. The Georgia General Assembly has never passed such a law, but it has gone the opposite direction with legislation.
Mainstream Georgians would regard institutional, official violation of federal and state law as putting us on the “wrong side of history.”
The anthropology and gender studies professors’ anti-enforcement guest column probably went over far better in their respective faculty lounges that it does out here in the real world. A 2010 AJC-sponsored poll of Georgians reflected the unsurprising reality. Two-thirds of the very diverse respondents said we should prohibit illegal aliens from attending public universities at any tuition rate – even if they pay out-of state tuition.
We would be quite interested to see the AJC run another poll asking the same question as the 2010 version.
If not some new-found, pro-American respect for the law, we can only hope the professors’ liberal evolution leads to some measure of compassion for the legal immigrant families who stand in sad bewilderment as advocates for illegals push for “the undocumented” receiving the same benefits and rights earned by joining the American family lawfully. We can see that such a worldview is not in vogue on today’s college campuses, but we should all hope for change.
It is amusing to see the leftist advocates invoke the very dubious conclusions of the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute’s latest “report” on immigration and the alleged monetary boost to the Georgia economy. That is if we would only ignore several federal and state laws and put illegal aliens in line with American citizens and legal immigrants in our university admittance offices. And also put them into our workforce to compete with American workers and their already stagnant wages.
After that, in the never-ending game of political incrementalism, the next oft-quoted report would no-doubt carefully explain the mega-benefits to the Georgia economy if only we had officially open borders and a constant, unregulated influx of immigrants to replace the workers already struggling to live the American Dream in their own country.
All concerned should pay attention to the legislative process under the Gold Dome on the pending Senate Bill 6. It addresses existing state law to clear up intentionally created confusion on just who is an illegal alien after President Obama’s dubious executive action on deferred action on deportation.
If passed, signed into law and then actually enforced by the Republican-run state government, SB 6 will end the question of whether the Regents can or should change tuition policy on illegal aliens – of any description. HERE. [3]
