NOTE: VIDEO from WSB TV on Perdue’s anti-enforcement position HERE. He signed the law into effect!

Perdue and Colotl: Your tax dollars at work
May 27, 2010

We’ve all seen the signs erected by highway construction sites that say, “Your tax dollars at work.” Well, Gov. Sonny Perdue might as well start putting up similar signs at the entrances to Georgia’s colleges and universities that say, “Your tax dollars at work: Educating illegals.”

Do those in this country illegally deserve admission to Georgia’s public colleges and universities? Yes, according to Gov. Sonny Perdue, at least in the highly publicized case of Jessica Colotl, the Kennesaw State University student revealed to be an illegal alien after she was stopped by campus police for a minor driving infraction. After her arrest Colotl gave false and/or misleading statements to police and the Cobb sheriff and wound up in an immigration detention facility in Alabama before the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency gave her a one-year waiver during which she can stay in the country legally to finish her schooling.

Perdue said Tuesday she should be allowed to stay and finish her final year at KSU, as long as she pays the out-of-state tuition rate.

“The balance of a humane society has some compassion element to that. So that’s not my decision to make but I would not voice disagreement if that decision were made,” said Perdue.

We applaud the governor’s sense of compassion and we admire Ms. Colotl’s desire to get the best education she possibly can. We also salute her successful assimilation into American culture, which should be the goal of every immigrant, legal or otherwise. But the fact remains that after her one-year grace period expires, she won’t be able to legally hold a job in this country, whether she obtains her degree or not. So while many conservatives think it is mistake to let her go back to school, an argument could be made from other side that she will now be paying much higher tuition to earn a degree that, in her case, will be next to worthless.

Colotl, who had been paying the much lower in-state tuition rate, now will be paying the out-of-state rate.

“We’ve warned our presidents in the past over using their waiver to give in-state tuition for those who are here illegally and I think they have to be very careful in that regard,” said Perdue.

Regents spokesman John Millsaps noted this week that current federal and state laws do not preclude illegals from applying to college. True enough. But public, tax-supported colleges should not be accepting such students.

Perdue said the state’s colleges should focus on educating students, not worrying about their legality.

“To expect them to be the immigration agents or the determinants of whether someone is here legally or illegally is really beyond their scope of work,” said Perdue.

Really? Colleges and universities routinely investigate an applicants’ other data, such as their high school transcripts.

The cost of verifying applicants’ citizenship status via the SAVE system would be but 50 cents per person and would only apply to those who list themselves as legal non-citizens on the application form. If that’s too much for the colleges to swallow, they could make it a tack-on to the application fee. Legal non-citizens could be asked to complete an affidavit swearing to their lawful status and eligibility for the public benefit in question (the college education), just as they are supposed to do now in order to obtain a business license, for example. False swearing on such affidavits is a felony punishable by deportation in the case of non-citizens.

Forced by events to pick a side, Perdue chose the side of those in this country illegally. And in so doing, he sided against those Georgians who have loyally paid taxes to support those colleges and universities in the hopes that their children might someday obtain one of those highly prized admission slots. In other words, Perdue got it exactly backward.

HERE