Cobb sheriff obtains warrant for illegal KSU student

by Brandon Wilson

May 13, 2010

Cobb authorities are looking to re-arrest Jessica Colotl, the illegal immigrant enrolled at Kennesaw State University who sparked a media storm since the story of her initial arrest and subsequent release broke in the Journal. The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant for the arrest of Colotl, 21, of Duluth, at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. According to the warrant, Colotl is charged with making false statements when she was booked into Cobb Jail on March 30. The offense is a felony. According to the Cobb Sheriff’s Office, authorities..

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Marietta Daily Journal

KSU’s Papp gives his side in case of illegal student
May 12, 2010 12:00 AM | 21 | 3 |
DEAR EDITOR: I write to set the record straight regarding recent Marietta Daily Journal articles about KSU’s role in the Jessica Colotl matter. Although Ms. Colotl was arrested on March 30, KSU… HERE

Marietta Daily Journal

Pete Borden: Will new parking deck mean more jobs for illegals?

by Pete Borden
May 12, 2010

My first thought, upon reading that the Cobb Board of Commissioners is moving ahead with plans to build a parking deck downtown, was “I wonder how many illegal aliens will be doing jobs paid for with taxpayer dollars, jobs that rightfully should go to Cobb County’s unemployed workers?”

I hope nobody in Cobb really thinks the recent revelation that illegal immigrants are working on the courthouse project put a stop to that practice. Nobody in the construction industry believes it. We know that they just switched names and continued as before.

The bricklayer trade may be law abiding now, but there are numerous other trades that nobody is checking on.

Speaking of that flap, what has happened to the coverage? It was front page news, both in the MDJ and the Atlanta newspaper, for a short time and now it is gone.

Could it be that it went the way of the federal investigation that then-Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens said he would ask for? Did he, in fact, ask for it? If so, why was it not done?

The plain fact is that any action, in that respect, is going to be stalled until the courthouse is finished and turned over to the county and it is too late to save any jobs. Then interest in punishing the guilty will wane. The people will look at the new courthouse and say, “Wow, is that beautiful. So what if some of the people who worked there were illegal? They did a nice job, didn’t they?”

Meanwhile, your neighbor, Joe Bricklayer, loses his house and his truck because he can’t work for “$10 an hour, under the table.” That’s the going rate for illegal bricklayers on the courthouse project. Where is the IRS?

Now comes the parking deck, and as sure as the sun rises, the same thing will happen there, just like it happened, and probably continues, at the courthouse project.

The ruse is deceptively simple, but complex looking enough to frustrate anyone attempting to conduct an investigation. This is the way it works: General Contractor receives a contract from Owner to perform the work. He puts the job out for sub trade bids and decides that Mason Subcontractor is the low bidder .Masonry Subcontractor immediately hires Labor Sub, who only furnishes labor and some of the equipment.

Labor Sub then hires Lower Paid Labor Sub, who then hires Cheaper Labor Sub. Cheaper Labor Sub hires Cheaper Yet Labor Sub, who, in turn hires Dirt Cheap Labor Sub whose illegal immigrant workers actually perform the work, for $8 to $10 an hour, cash.

When an investigation is launched, Masonry Subcontractor says, “Labor Sub is the one who should E-Verify them.” Labor Sub says,” Check with Lower Paid Labor Sub. He should be the one to E-Verify.” So it goes down to Dirt Cheap Labor Sub, who shrugs his shoulders, says “No comprende,” walks away and calls one of the illegal alien lobby groups and complains that the racist government is picking on him.

The next day, the same people show up, with a new foreman and a new company name and the work goes on.

This is what happens, with variations in the number of lower-tier subs, countless times all over Cobb County and the state of Georgia. The people in charge are giving lip service to enforcement of the law, in favor of cheap labor, at the expense of Cobb’s workforce.

You may be sure it is happening to some extent on the road and bridge jobs being done with that SPLOST money, the school construction being performed with SPLOST III funds and will happen with the parking deck. It is, of course, even more widespread on jobs not involving public money.

The major problem is that the Owner (State, County, City or private money) does not really care as long as the job gets done cheaply.

The fact that the masonry subcontractor on the courthouse was more than substantially lower than the competition, should have thrown up a red flag. In truth, it did, but nobody saw it, or they didn’t care and just ignored it.

Until some teeth are put into the law and lawbreakers are punished to the full extent of that law, and until officials who let it happen get punished, the workers of Cobb County, along with their families, will continue to suffer.

We, in Cobb County, cannot police the entire state, but we can sure do something about our own county, by demanding strict enforcement and seeing that we get it. We owe it to each other and to ourselves.

Pete Borden is a mason in east Cobb.

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Undocumented Kennesaw State student subject of scrutiny
By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Released last week from an immigration detention center, Jessica Colotl plans to sign up for summer and fall classes at her suburban Atlanta university with an eye toward graduating next spring.

Growing attention about her situation, however, may not make that easy.

On Tuesday, a Republican candidate for governor called for college students to have to document their citizenship to be admitted into Georgia’s public colleges and universities while the system’s chancellor defended how Kennesaw State University handled its admission of Colotl — an illegal immigrant — to its campus.

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c) “State or local public benefit” defined
(1) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3), for purposes of this subchapter the term “State or local public benefit” means—

(A) any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of a State or local government or by appropriated funds of a State or local government; and

(B) any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of a State or local government or by appropriated funds of a State or local government.

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Defeated Sen. Bennett (R-Utah) — On Immigration, Preferred Corporate Greed Over Patriotic Businesses & CitizensBy Roy Beck

Monday, May 10, 2010 posted on NumbersUSA

Sen. Robert Bennett is a prime example of how immigration plays with the Republican Party’s national elite and their preference for the greediest of business lobbyists over regular taxpaying citizens and the majority of business owners who prefer strong immigration enforcement over heavy foreign labor importation. Utah’s grassroots Republican leaders sent quite a message over the weekend that they don’t think much of their Party’s national elite, as they refused to allow incumbent Sen. Robert Bennett a chance to run for a fourth term

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Marietta Daily Journal

KSU’s preferential treatment of illegal immigrant student is disgusting
by Laura Armstrong
MDJ Columnist
May 10, 2010

After learning the other day that KSU went to bat for the student being deported after it was discovered she was not only in this country illegally, but had been a student at KSU for three years, I’m regretting my initial sympathy for the girl. I’m also angry at the university leadership, pandering when they should be leading on an important issue.

Most citizens really don’t care how much “potential” the young lady has; the actions of the university show Dan Papp and crew are giving special treatment to her, based on ethnic heritage, or her race or possibly even her GPA — it doesn’t really matter which. The point is, they’ve bent over back-wards to bring her back when I doubt they’d be doing the same if she didn’t have the backing of various Latino activist groups.

D.A. King, a local expert on immigration policy and the consequences of illegal immi-gration, told me, “According to all the re-ports I’ve read, there are numerous viola-tions of both federal and state laws in this case, both of which are designed to protect our shrinking public benefits in Georgia.”

And it’s true. The student, Jessica Colotl, may have been granted a deferral by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (an act of discretion, it was explained) but she remains an illegal alien and many laws have been broken.

While it was initially reported Colotl claimed to pay out-of-state tuition, it was later reported KSU had granted her in-state status. How many students and their parents, legal citizens of nearby states paying five times the amount in tuition, are feeling the sting of that one?

Certainly Dr. Papp can’t wait for this to blow over, but I hope it doesn’t. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if Jessica, who en-joyed membership in the Latina sorority on campus, also enjoyed the benefit of federal Pell grants, Georgia’s HOPE scholarship or one of the coveted federal work-study jobs on campus? Our tax dollars already paid for university lawyers to intervene on her behalf, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we were paying her tuition too.

Might local law enforcement shed light on how her gold Honda was insured or how it passed emissions and was registered with-out a valid driver’s license or address? Speaking as a mom required to jump through multiple hoops making all that happen for my college daughters’ two out-of-state vehicles, I’m especially interested in how that all worked.

It’s been reported Jessica wants to attend law school. Will her deferral extend for years, and which law school will admit her? Who will pay for that, La Raza? GALEO? Coca-Cola? Me? I cannot wait to find out.

Does anyone out there know Jessica’s real address, anyone? Or how the university doesn’t seem to care that she doesn’t have one, or how she had a Mexican driver’s license if she came to this country at age 7 or age 10 (depending on which version of the truth you’ve read)?

How does all this work, Dr. Papp? And can you really say you are serving the citi-zens of Georgia when it’s a fact that deserving Georgians are being turned away from attending KSU while illegal, undocumented, ineligible-by-law people are being admitted and then given special treat-ment along the way?

I’m sure if we followed the money, we’d have our answers. But right now I’m just too disgusted.

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Read it all, but see Table 4, page 4.

Around Town: ‘No Mas!’: KSU’s Papp clams up on illegals case

by Otis Brumby, Bill Kinney, Joe KirbyAround Town columnists

May 11, 2010
Otis Brumby, Bill Kinney, Joe Kirbyslideshow

NO HABLA INGLES? In further efforts to get to the bottom of the Jessica Colotl story, AT on Monday requested a sit-down interview with Dr. Dan Papp, president of Kennesaw State University, and Colotl herself. Colotl, 21, is an illegal immigrant who has apparently lived in the U.S. since she was a child and was a senior at Kennesaw State, before a traffic stop on campus – and her inability to provide a valid driver’s license – landed her in jail.

AT asked the university to help coordinate the interview with Ms. Colotl, because the address and phone she had given to KSU police and Cobb sheriff’s deputies at the time of her citation and arrest were found – surprise! – to be false.

But after multiple phone and e-mail messages throughout the day with Papp’s staff, we received a copy of the same statement they issued on Friday and this note from Frances Harrison, a university spokeswoman: “Please accept this document as our last and final communications regarding the issue.”

But AT has heard that the Board of Regents, which meets today and tomorrow in Atlanta, may well have something to say about Papp’s efforts to assist Colotl, spring her from an Alabama immigration jail and let her pay in-state tuition. Donald Leeburn, the senior member of the 18-person Regents board, reportedly told an Atlanta pundit on Monday that Papp was “way out of line” and should be reprimanded.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Neal Warren, when asked if Colotl could face new charges for lying about her address and phone number when she was booked into Cobb County Jail on March 30, said in a statement: “I am investigating that possibility, and if she gave false information to one of my deputies, I will take appropriate action.”

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Marietta Daily Journal

Illegal, But Enrolled: Case a wake-up call for taxpayers, lawmakers
May 11, 2010

IS IT OK TO CHEAT at Kennesaw State University? Apparently so. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from the sequence of events that have played out there in recent days.

Senior Jessica Colotl, who is in the country illegally, was stopped for a traffic violation while driving on campus without a valid U.S. driver’s license and then gave false and misleading statements to KSU and Cobb police. We suspect that in most cases, such a string of law-breaking and half-truths would be grounds to be hauled in front of a school’s Honors Court. But not at KSU. Just the opposite, in fact.

“This is great news for Ms. Colotl, her family and friends and for the KSU community,” crowed President Dr. Dan Papp when her release from custody was announced on Wednesday. “We are especially thrilled she will be allowed to continue her studies here at KSU. We would also like to thank everyone who was involved, both on campus and within the larger community, in helping Ms. Colotl.”

We understand that educators go into education because they like helping people and mentoring them, and Papp might well have been torn about what to do in this case. But the law is the law and must be upheld.

We wonder whether KSU would look so favorably on a student who cheated on a test or who forged his transcript? It appears that a precedent has now been set for “looking the other way.”

The special treatment awarded Ms. Colotl is a slap in the face to Georgia taxpayers and their children who hope to someday attend college or get an advanced degree.

***

WHEN STOPPED March 29, Colotl had an expired passport and no valid driver’s license – although she had a Mexican one – despite reportedly having lived in this country since age 7. It is unclear whether she owned the vehicle or was an insured driver.

She was arrested by KSU police a day later and taken to the Cobb jail, where she gave booking officers a Duluth address as her residence. (Yet when an MDJ reporter visited that location, the person who answered the door said she had lived there five months but had yet to meet Ms. Colotl.)

The student was duly handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and initially was given 20 days to leave the country. Then – after a full-court lobbying effort by Papp and the school’s taxpayer-funded legal team – she was abruptly released on Wednesday and granted a one-year deferment by ICE during which to pursue her studies.

It probably comes as a surprise to most readers to learn that Georgia colleges and universities allow those in this country illegally to register as students, but it is the truth. As we are learning, our campuses are “sanctuaries” of a sort, where certain laws that apply elsewhere no longer apply.

Such students are not eligible for in-state tuition, tuition wavers or other state programs to defray their costs – although those on the left are trying to erase even that hindrance. And in some cases – like that of Ms. Colotl – they are, in fact, admitted as in-state students and charged tuition at the much lower in-state rate.

Some of Ms. Colotl’s defenders on the MDJonline.com blog site and elsewhere also have suggested that racism is at work in the coverage of her predicament. As one put it, “If (she were) Polish or Swedish, no one would be flipping out about this.”

Well, if this were the case of a Polish or Swedish student, they would almost certainly have come here legally, not illegally – and they and their supporters wouldn’t have the gall to demand special rights. And you can be sure that if this were the case of an American student illegally in Mexico trying to get a college degree, she wouldn’t be getting the kid gloves treatment.

The episode also is a reminder that people will do nearly anything to break into our country – and that you never hear of anyone desiring to break out of it.

Moreover, if a succession of presidents and Congress had not closed their eyes to the problems of illegal immigration, we wouldn’t have an estimated 12 million to 20 million illegals living in this country with more on the way.

***

WE CANNOT BLAME Ms. Colotl – who having apparently spent most of her life in this country, is probably more American than Mexican at this point, and to her credit, has many KSU friends willing to go to bat for her – for trying to get the best education she can. It is not her fault that she was brought here as a young girl by her parents, or that she was a bright enough student to be attractive to college administrators at KSU.

Colleges, after all, are merely trying to get the best possible students. But Georgia’s institutions of higher learning were built and paid for by the tax dollars of our state’s citizens. And how many bright Georgia young people are being denied enrollment in our colleges and universities because their slots were filled by those who are in our state and country illegally?

If one follows the logic of Ms. Colotl’s supporters at KSU to its logical conclusion, our colleges should have an “open-doors” policy admitting anyone from anywhere in the world, as long as they can sneak past the border guards to get here and pass an entrance exam.

Yes, federal law requires that children who are in this country illegally receive a K-12 education, and though very costly for taxpayers, it is a justifiable approach. It is to no one’s benefit to have a permanent class of completely uneducated people in this country illegally.

But higher education is different. Those in college are not minors dependent on their parents. If it is illegal for an adult to work in this country or reside here without the correct immigration documents, it should be illegal to study here as well. Georgia’s policy that allows them to do so merely rewards illegal behavior and penalizes those who follow the rules in their own attempts to become citizens.

The Colotl case should serve as a wake-up call to lawmakers, college heads and the Board of Regents that entrance to our institutions of higher learning should go first and foremost to Georgians – and not those in our state illegally.

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