In the wake of his letter last week regarding undocumented students and in-state tuition rates, Attorney General Roy Cooper received the most crucial of political lessons: Voters are fickle, self-interested and generally lacking in empathy.
In one of the most public instances of actually doing his job, Cooper was ripped by representatives of undocumented students pushing for in-state tuition rates. His statement that undocumented students are ineligible for in-state tuition and that immigration policy falls under federal jurisdiction was heralded as political and unjust.
Perhaps in the sense that Cooper has selectively decided to stop selectively defending North Carolina’s laws, the opinion was political. As I see it, Cooper displayed the sort of integrity and respect for the office that’s been lacking since he decided to run for governor.
It’s not lost on me how important this outcome is to immigrant students. My mom and her parents immigrated here legally in the 1970’s because, for some reason, small Japanese men like my grandfather were uniquely qualified to determine the sex of a baby chicken at frighteningly fast speeds. My mom had a green card from the moment she arrived right until she took the oath of citizenship.
That green card allowed her to pay N.C. State’s absurdly low 1980’s tuition and take a job at IBM, which in turn will allow me to work Excel for 80 hours a week under the guise of capitalism. As the gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition rises, that legal residency becomes so much more important.
But Cooper was right. Undocumented students are not legal residents of the state of North Carolina, and they never will be until they become documented. And, to be completely honest, I don’t have a huge problem with that.
The “One State, One Rate” campaign has no limiting principle. Yes, the undocumented students who would benefit from in-state tuition are high achieving in the face of serious obstacles. But the same arguments applied to “One State, One Rate” can be used for other residency-based programs like welfare, Medicaidand food stamps.
Undocumented immigrants live here, work here, shop here and pay certain taxes here. They participate in the economy alongside documented immigrants and citizens. As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Arizona v. United States, it’s not a crime for an undocumented immigrant to remain in the US.
But what delineates the benefits this state is legally and morally obligated to provide to undocumented immigrants? Surely welfare and Medicaid represent more pressing human needs than in-state tuition.
