Admitting illegals into Georgia colleges and universities is a lose/lose proposition

October 11, 2015 12:00 AM

DEAR EDITOR:

For the first time in many months, I did not have to wait for Monday morning to get my juices flowing for the challenging week ahead. Usually, it only requires opening my MDJ immediately to the Opinion page, where I stare at the smug grin of one Bill Press for a few seconds before tackling his leftist rantings. Properly enraged, my blood aboil, and my dander raised, I am ready then to deal with the latest unconstitutional shenanigans of the Obama administration, the feckless national Republican leadership and the endless array of unsynchronized traffic signals that clog Johnson Ferry and both Lower and Upper Roswell Roads in East Cobb at all hours of the day.

This week, however, I merely needed to glance at the top headline of the Sunday MDJ’s front page to get fired up one day sooner than usual. It said, “Report: Barriers to university for immigrants cost Georgia $10M on yearly basis.”

At first I thought it was a mistake on the part of the headline writer, that it should have said “saves” Georgia $10 million. After all, giving illegal immigrants access to state universities and in-state tuition rates and/or grants would be a cost to Georgia, and logic would tell you that not doing that would actually be a savings to the state. Besides, from what I have read on these pages, illegals are already attending our state universities (notably Kennesaw State) and some would, I presume, have to be getting tuition assistance.

Several paragraphs into the story by the MDJ’s Jon Gargis, I began to see the light. A self-appointed, ubiquitous group labeled the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute in its massive seven-page report was taking Georgia to task for not following the guidelines of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.

I admit though to having a chuckle at that point when the GB&PI gang called themselves “an independent and nonpartisan organization” — just like the Department of Justice the last six-plus years. It thus came as no surprise when I then read that the head of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials totally supported the report’s essentially unmeasurable findings, nor when state Rep. David Wilkerson (D-Smyrna) gave it his blessing.

To Mr. Gargis’ credit, he then provided countering arguments from state Reps. Earl Ehrhart and Ed Setzler, both of whom represent multi-cultural areas of north Cobb. Best of all, he also sought comment from D.A. King, whose strong and persistent arguments on the subject of illegal immigration have long been appreciated by most of the MDJ’s readers, especially myself.

Having said that, I think there is one key point that was not covered by anyone. For every illegal immigrant given access to the Georgia university system, with or without tuition allowances, there has been one legal resident denied admission, a well-qualified legal resident whose parents pay state taxes that provide the support for that very system.

Those legal-resident students, many of whom fit into the category of “best and brightest” whom Rep. Wilkerson purports to want in the system, are winding up in recent years attending Auburn, Alabama, South Carolina, Clemson, Florida and Florida State. Check with the guidance counselors at the best-achieving area high schools like Walton, Lassiter, Pope, Allatoona and North Cobb, and they will confirm that many of their top-level graduates are now going out-of-state.

Unlike the GB&PI study, I will not try to measure either the short-term or long-term effects of that trend. Suffice to say, at the very least, the state system does not receive tuition payments in those cases, when illegals are getting admission and allowances. Beyond that, it is not far-fetched to think that many of those same graduates will find employment in those other respective states, thus depriving Georgia the benefits of their eventual productive efforts in business, medicine and education.

Having illegals in our state universities becomes the very example of a lose/lose proposition.

William Lewis

Marietta

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