RALEIGH – The N.C. community college system seems bound and determined to permit illegal aliens to attend North Carolina colleges. [Groan.] And once again, defenders of the policy are calling all of their critics racists, while hotheads on both sides are doing their best to complicate an already controversial subject with irrelevant claims. [Sigh.]
Let’s walk our way through the immigration thicket one more time.
First, virtually no one thinks it practical, and few would think it proper, to expend huge amounts of taxpayer resources and governmental power to round up all the illegal aliens residing in America and deport them. If you hear someone on either side of the debate promising or warning against such a policy, ignore him.
Second, not very many people who are paying attention to the political or fiscal realities of immigration think it would be practical or proper for Congress simply to legalize all the current illegal aliens. The public would never stand for it. And whatever immigration policy you think America should adopt, you can’t possibly believe that current illegal residents should be allowed to remain in the country even if they have 1) prior felony convictions, 2) severe drug addictions or mental illnesses, 3) ties to criminal gangs or terrorist groups, 4) serious communicable diseases, or 5) no obvious means of support save government entitlements.
Third, given the first two propositions, and the manifest need to rationalize the nation’s immigration policies for the 21st century, the only feasible federal policy right now is a targeted enforcement policy that reduces the number of illegal aliens over time, by focusing law enforcement efforts on those who violate other laws (by committing crimes or torts) while refusing to treat illegal residents as if they were legal residents. Only after the ranks of illegal aliens shrink, through a combination of targeted enforcement and gradual self-deportation, can immigration reformers in Congress rewrite the laws to allow more people to immigrate legally into the country to work and become Americans the right way.
Now, combine these three propositions and the following reality becomes inescapable: for the foreseeable future, there will remain significant numbers of people residing in North Carolina illegally. For state and local policymakers, the question becomes how to respond to this reality sensibly, affordably, and fairly.
To start with, pretty much everyone agrees – and the courts already require – that North Carolina governments must provide emergency services to all residents, regardless of their immigration status, and that they cannot withhold services such as public education to minors who are in the state illegally through no fault of their own.
The reasoning isn’t hard to fathom. Violating the nation’s immigration laws is a serious offense, but it hardly justifies being denied police protection after an assault or an ambulance ride to the hospital after a car crash. As for public education and other services to children, it would be wrong to punish them for their parents’ misdeeds.
Once you get past these two exceptions, however, it becomes very difficult to justify the extension of any other government services to illegal aliens. There are three compelling reasons why.
First, while illegal residents do pay some state and local taxes, their status prohibits them from shouldering the same tax burden that legal residents do. Extending services to them essentially compels taxpayers to subsidize lawbreakers. That’s wrong – and they’ll never stand for it. And don’t feed me any bunk about how illegal residents would have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend colleges, thus fully covering their costs. Very few of them will enroll on such terms. The clear intention, already well telegraphed by the past statements and actions of sympathetic politicians, is to keep the current policy for a while and then push for in-state tuition status.
Second, extending services such as higher education to adults residing illegally in the United States makes it less likely that they will do the right thing – comply with current law, move to their countries of origin, and then take their proper place in line. Such services, then, conflict with the only feasible federal immigration policy we have at the moment. It is quite simply incoherent for the state of North Carolina to provide ongoing services to adults who can’t legally be in the state to receive them. In this case, it’s doubly incoherent for the state to provide vocational training to adults who can’t obtain legal employment in the state.
Third, extending such services to illegal residents is so outrageous to the majority of voters that it has the effect of postponing the date at which it will ever be possible to get comprehensive immigration reform through Congress. That’s why, as previously argued, I think that self-styled “immigration reformers” are doing themselves and their cause tremendous harm by continuing to insist on indefensible ideas such as admitting illegal aliens to state colleges and universities.
But the state is going to do it, anyway. [Snort.] For now.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation