Fitzsimon File

The disturbing back and forth about access to higher education for undocumented students continues. The News & Observer reported Friday that Attorney General Roy Cooper's office told community college officials this week that they may admit the students, exactly the opposite of what Cooper's office told them in May.

The May ruling prompted the Board of Community Colleges to adopt a formal policy of refusing admission of undocumented students even if they paid out of state tuition.

Advocates for immigrants pointed out in May that the Attorney General's interpretation of federal case law was wrong and that federal courts had ruled that admission to college was not a benefit prohibited by federal law.

Federal immigration officials sent a letter to Cooper Monday making that point clear and a lawyer in the Attorney General's office then sent a memo to community college officials.  State lawmakers declined to consider the issue in the summer legislative session.

Kids who were brought here from another country by their parents and have succeeded in pubic schools are still in limbo about their access to higher education, and now have to wait for the community college board to take up the issue again in light of Cooper's reversal.

Too bad  politicians won't step in to stand up for the students and stop cowering in fear of a vocal minority of ant-immigrant groups that have help create an atmosphere where children are left alone on the side of the road in the zeal of local law enforcement authorities to assume the role of federal immigration officials.

The latest Civitas poll is out with its usual leading questions and surprise or two for the folks on Right Wing Avenue. One of the group's press releases says that the majority of state voters are unwilling to pay more for gas or electricity to address global warming.

No surprise that people don't want to pay more for gas they can already barely afford. But just to make sure, the question includes the phrase, "what many perceive as the problem of global warming."  Perceive? What about what leading scientists and everyone from Al Gore to Elizabeth Dole agree is a problem? Didn't make the poll.

Neither did this question. "Given that oil companies are enjoying record profits while the cost of gas continues to increase, would you be willing to pay even more for gas to increase those profits further?"

In case you are wondering, voters also think taxes are too high and don't "think that the Mexican government should be allowed to use government property to give ID cards to illegal aliens."  That sounds like something we might see soon in commercial by a candidate running for statewide office on an anti-immigrant platform, maybe one who is now the mayor of a large city on the South Carolina line and whose campaign manager used to run the Civitas outfit.

The folks who cooked up the poll can't be too happy about two results that have not been featured in any recent press releases.

When voters were asked "on the issue of crime and punishment, do you generally think we need longer prison sentences or more intervention and rehabilitation for criminals?" 48 percent said more intervention and rehabilitation while 37 percent said favored longer prison sentences. 

And despite all the misleading claims by the market fundamentalist think tanks that teacher pay in North Carolina is already above the national average, the voters don't buy it.

The Civitasers asked people what one thing they would do to improve education and raising teacher pay was far and way the top choice.  Better get back to the anti-public education, anti-teacher pay propaganda drawing board.

Speaking of the folks on the right, they have been awfully quiet about news that Republicans have formed a national political action committee to help gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory, taking advantage of a new state law that allows the PACs to accept unlimited individual contributions.

Lawmakers were forced to make the change after federal courts threw out North Carolina's law limiting individual contributions to the committees to $4,000.  The folks on right howled as the bill was working its way through the General Assembly, saying it would open the door for big labor money to flood the state.

But they haven't said much about the fact that a handful of wealthy Republicans from all over the country are now writing checks for as much $100,000 to play a role in who our next governor will be, though it's awfully nice of those folks to help, don't you think?

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.