The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
August 16, 2008 Saturday
Final Edition
EDITORIAL/OPINION; Pg. A8

A Profiles in Courage moment it wasn’t. Bowing to widespread sentiment against illegal immigrants, the State Board of Community Colleges has voted to bar such immigrants from a community college education.

In some other states, young people in similar situations, most of whom came to this country as children and have since graduated from high school, are able to attend community colleges — even at low in-state tuition rates.

Not here, at least for now. Not even at out-of-state rates. In North Carolina, some young people’s educational aspirations are now officially frowned upon.

Leading the charge for yesterday’s vote by the community college board was board member Beverly Perdue, the Democratic candidate for governor. Lt. Gov. Perdue successfully proposed banning illegal immigrants from community colleges while a consultant studies the situation.

However, Perdue apparently favors a permanent ban. She reasons that since illegal immigrants can’t work here legally, they shouldn’t be educated here, either. (By that logic, they shouldn’t be allowed to enter first grade — but the U.S. Supreme Court wisely holds that youngsters have the right to an education.)

Since the days of segregation, has a Democratic candidate for governor in North Carolina ever advocated cutting off educational opportunities for an entire group of young people? Or, for that matter, a Republican candidate — since GOP nominee Pat McCrory is fully as anti- illegal immigrant as Perdue.

Both major-party candidates are either pandering to — or scared of — the “What Part of ‘Illegal’ Don’t You Understand?” folks, or else they’re active members of the kick-’em-out brigade. In contrast, Governor Easley and Martin Lancaster, the previous community college leader, have made bold defenses of educational opportunity and its advantages for the state.

This week’s move to close the doors to illegal immigrants may or may not be final, pending the consultant’s study, but for now a ban is what it is. It’s a disconcerting stance for a board that oversees a 300,000-student system dedicated to offering opportunity. The board could and should have reversed a shortsighted policy switch made in May. At that time, the state Attorney General’s Office advised Scott Ralls, the system’s new president, that admitting illegal immigrants might be against the law. Until then, individual campuses had formulated their own policies. A system-wide ban was put in place.

(Very few illegal immigrants — the number is in the low hundreds — were in the system anyway, largely because of the $7,000-plus tuition charges they face.)

Now, with a new finding by the Attorney General’s Office that no law bars enrollment of these young people, the board could have done the right thing. Or, at the least, it could have decided to reopen the college doors pending a study.

Instead it opted for exclusion. Some North Carolina high school graduates, through no fault of their own, will by conscious state policy be denied any chance to better themselves through a community college education.

That’s just wrong.