The Dustin Inman Society in the news on that pesky law regarding taxpayer funded college for illegal aliens
University policy could cut short college careers
Undocumented residents to start paying out-of-state tuition July 1
By Victor Alvis
Dalton Daily Citizen
Editor’s note: Some names have been changed to maintain the anonymity of some students in this story.
( D.A.’s note…the names of the American students who did not get in because illegals were admitted are not published at all)
Julia Lopez came to Dalton from Mexico 13 years ago as a 7-year-old second-grader. She quickly learned the language and became a standout student.
She volunteered in local schools, serving as a translator between parents — mostly Dalton mill workers who didn’t speak English — and teachers. At 9, she began tagging along with Latino adults to their job interviews and translating for them there, as well.
At Southeast High School, she became a member of the National Honor Society, Junior Achievement and the DECA club, and was vice president of the French honor society.
By the end of this summer, Lopez, now 21, expects to earn an associate’s degree in business management from Dalton State College. She had planned to begin work on her bachelor’s degree this fall — until a new policy was proposed by the state Board of Regents, and the University System of Georgia advised college presidents to charge out-of-state tuition to all undocumented students (waivers were previously a possibility). The policy change is scheduled to go into effect July 1.
“It’s really affected me. They’ve given us such short notice to come up with an additional $4,000,” Lopez said. “I have the Goizueta scholarship, but to get it, you have to be a full-time student. But I can’t afford the $5,000 for just for one semester.”
According to Dalton State’s Web site, in-state tuition costs $1,349 per semester for a four-year program, while the same program costs $5,190 for an out-of-state student…
But some, like D.A. King, don’t feel the outrage.
Each time the University System of Georgia grants in-state tuition to illegal aliens, it violates federal law, says King, who plans to speak during a public forum on the Regents’ policy on Tuesday at Dalton State College.
King is founder and president of the Dustin Inman Society, a coalition of citizens and legal immigrants with the goal of educating the public on the consequences of illegal immigration.
“The Board of Regents has no power to waive federal law,” he said.
King says that, effective July 1, granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens will also violate the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act of 2006.
“If we are giving in-state tuition to someone from, say, Mexico, and we are not granting that in-state tuition to an American from anyplace else in the country, we are not only in violation of the law, but I believe we are morally wrong,” said King, a Cobb County resident.
“Every time we give a seat to somebody who has no legal right to be in this country, we are taking that seat in that classroom away from an American citizen,” he said.
King says he empathizes with people who were brought to this country as small children illegally.
“It would be nice if we could provide post-secondary education for everyone, but we cannot. There is a finite amount of seats in the classrooms,” he said.
King said that by giving in-state tuition to illegals, the University System of Georgia is giving them a “class seat in front of someone who was here legally, and on top of that we are going to charge them less money.”
“It is illegal to employ an illegal alien, so educating someone on the basis that we need to educate them so we can then employ them is counter to another federal law,” he said.
Read the entire report here…and another ( same paper, same day) on the results of SB 529 on compliance with federal law here