North Carolina Shuts The School Doors On Undocumented Immigrant Children
North Carolina Shuts The School Doors On Undocumented Immigrant Children
Our guest blogger is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund focusing on state and municipal policy.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s office decided yesterday that undocumented immigrant students cannot attend public colleges in their state. This decision to cut off opportunity for one group of North Carolina residents affects even those children who have gone to North Carolina public schools since kindergarten, and cannot remember ever living anywhere other than North Carolina.
This finding appears to have been unnecessary and could have been decided differently, as a prior Attorney General had found that these same students could attend. It turns out that there are only a handful of undocumented students attending North Carolina community and four year public colleges, and all of these are paying full tuition, effectively subsidizing other North Carolina residents who pay the lower in-state tuition.
The state estimates that of approximately 471,000 students in its public colleges, only 367 (or less than one tenth of one percent) are undocumented immigrants. So it is not clear what problem opponents of these students were trying to solve. However, removing even the hope of attending college for undocumented students currently in elementary or high school in North Carolina seems particularly unfair. Most of these kids arrived in the United States with their parents as young children and had no choice in the matter. Nor would most have any idea how to get around in their parents’ home countries.
Ensuring that undocumented immigrant children cannot get a higher education is a mistake. The United States needs all of the well educated workers we can get. Since these young people have no connection to any country outside the United States, they will remain in North Carolina, without a college education. Thus, they will be less likely to hold a job that lifts them out of poverty and when they start their families, their children will be less likely to escape poverty or to do well in school.
It is precisely because these children have worked hard while playing by the rules, and because education ends the cycle of poverty, that progressives support the Dream Act, which would provide in-state tuition and a path to citizenship for children who have grown up here, played by the rules, and want to go to college. And decisions like today’s by the North Carolina Attorney General are why our country needs to pass a national comprehensive immigration law that creates a path to citizenship for those 12 million undocumented immigrants already here, while ending the state by state approach that continues to fail to solve a problem which should be handled by the Congress and President.
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5 Responses to “North Carolina Shuts The School Doors On Undocumented Immigrant Children”
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Dear Henry Fernandez,
Thank you for speaking for those that often are not paid attention to because they are unable to make their voices heard at the ballot box. The way the U.S. treats undocumented migrants, specifically undocumented youth, is horrendous, and unbefitting of a nation that pretends to hold itself up as a beacon of freedom.
Please continue to bring this subject up for progressives. We know that most people agree that migrants need to be treated with compassion but too few progressives are doing something about it, and as such we always get outshouted on this issue by the other side. Keep up the good work.
http://www.citizenorange.com
May 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pmNorth Carolina’s decision puts the American dream further out of reach of some of our brightest students. This is completely inconsistent with the American ideal of the hard-working immigrant succeeding here. These kids know no other country. Why not nurture their love for this country, rather than treating them unfairly and taking away opportunities generations of past immigrants have had?
May 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pmThis is a ghastly return to a Jim Crow segregationist mentality. There is no logic to justify the AG’s decision, just the politics of fear and hatred The immigrant kids aren’t the only victims. We as a nation, and as a society are also responsible in allowing elected officials to get with being nothing but brazen bullies, and we all suffer the consequences.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:45 pmI agree with Janna, it’s simply common sense that we reward kids who stay in school and go to college- it is not their fault that they grew up in the United States without papers, so how can we say that they should not be allowed to dream and achieve at this point in their lives? As someone who has met a few DREAM Act- eligle students in Illinois, it makes me frustrated to think that this bill is being twisted by those who wish to promote a draconian deportation-only “solution” for this nation- at all costs (how much will it cost to “round up and deport” the 12+ million undocumented immigrants living and working beside us?)
Do we really want these kids to drop out, after educating them from kindergarten through high school? Not only is it demoralizing and dehumanizing, it just doesn’t make economic sense. These kids would earn more and contribute more to the economy, to the society, and to the world we want to live in, if given the same opportunity as their peers. To do otherwise is to essentially make these youth “kids without a country.” America is their home, and we shouldn’t force them to remain in the shadows here.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:37 pmYour long-term interest depends on (a) an educated, competitive, and loyal next generation, and (b) winning the hearts and minds of the world for democracy.
So, given the choice between (1) educating children of undocumented workers in this country, treating them with kindness, and giving them the best possible start in life, or (2) pitching them out of school on their backsides, their American Dream in ruins, themselves humiliated, broken-hearted, and enraged, what do you do?
Well, if you’re a “compassionate conservative Christian,” the answer’s obviously (1), right? Who among these compassionate conservative Christians would fail to remember Jesus’s teaching: “If you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto me”?
I don’t recall seeing the footnote, “except undocumented Mexicans.” I mean this was a guy who hung out with robbers, whores, Republicans . . . .
May 9th, 2008 at 7:55 pm