Photo Courtesy of Associated Press: Undocumented students protest at Georgia University
Nathan Crites-Herren
The Paw Print
The state of Georgia, one of the 10 states up for grabs in the Republican presidential contest has been visited by the Republican candidate hopefuls throughout the past months hoping to win the state on Super Tuesday. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the house appears likely to win Georgia. Gingrich and other Republican presidential candidate hopefuls visited Georgia on numerous cases presenting their platform for a more prosperous Georgia, which has fallen on hard economic times recently. Not surprisingly, Gingrich and other candidates overlooked a key reason why Georgia is in such difficult economic position, House Bill 87.
Georgia’s House Bill 87, a copycat anti-immigrant law based on Arizona’s law requiring police to demand documentation of residency and to detain people they suspect are in the country without permission, devastated business and forced many immigrants to lose their jobs or flee the state altogether. On top of House Bill 87, Georgia’s State Senate recently approved a measure that would ban undocumented immigrant students from all public colleges and universities.
It seems the small but influential conservative and xenophobic elements of the Georgian leadership has yet to learn the important lesson of tolerance, even with the state’s history of segregation and civil rights struggles Georgia remains a clandestine bastion for racist and conservative “good old boy” mentalities. Conservative Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, opposed the new measure that would ban all undocumented immigrant students from attending colleges and universities, but even his influence was not enough to stop the further isolation of the immigrant community in Georgia.
The paramount issue faced by undocumented residents in the United States is that there are no legal manners to become documented while living in the country. The only avenue for undocumented residents to gain citizenship is to turn them into immigration law enforcement that will in turn deport the undocumented resident, forcing them to apply for citizenship from their native country. Obviously, this is not an option for undocumented residents especially in the case of undocumented students, who came to the United Sates at young ages and only know this country as their own.
Essentially, what has been occurring is a permanent marginalization of the undocumented community in the United States, leaving no legal recourses to move out of their status, undocumented immigrants and specifically students are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The banning of undocumented students at colleges and universities adds insult to injury. The issues of undocumented students supposedly “taking advantage” of the college grant system and tuition breaks across the nation does not apply. Undocumented students must pay out of state tuition and are not eligible for federal and state education grants, so the reason for banning undocumented students is not fiscal, but rather based on the ingrained intolerant attitudes towards immigrants legal or not.
No person is illegal, but the US government’s definitions of legal citizen and illegal citizen and how those roles are achieved, has helped to create the growing caste system that has been holding immigrants down for generations. Georgia’s undocumented college and universities students are looking in the face of a policy that is destroying their dreams of a world class higher education in this country. If the US government and its pacified citizens are willing to allow the legacy of segregation to be born again in Georgia in the form of banning undocumented students then this country is truly past the point of no return.
What’s Been Said…