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Roy Cooper: Ignorant of Basic Law

Byoliveridley

No federal law prohibits North Carolina from admitting illegal immigrants to its colleges and universities, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said today.The statement from federal officials contradicts a letter sent this week by the office of state Attorney General Roy Cooper.The letter from Cooper’s office advised the state Community College System that federal law bars the admission of illegal immigrants to public colleges and universities, even if they pay out-of-state tuition.The letter said that the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, was responsible for enforcing the law and offered to ask the department for further clarification of the law.

newsobserver.com | Feds: College OK for illegal immigrants

So, what kind of person randomly makes up U.S Federal laws about undocumented immigrants (illegal, he calls them) and college? Well, the top lawyer of North Carolina’s government, Attorney General Roy Cooper of course! Glad that he was caught out.

The issue? The hordes (350 or so scattered around the University and Community college system) of undocumented immigrants who pay out-of-state tuition and are admitted on merit to attend colleges in North Carolina. Conservatives want college systems to enforce immigration law. What next, have your papers checked every time you fill gas? The claim has often been made that there are a lot of hidden costs that this out of state tuition does not cover and actually, even out of state tuition paying students are being subsidized. No data has been put forward to back up this claim. Note the hactackularness of this tome by the John Pope institute, which makes a lot of conclusions based on their analysis of census data while not actually sharing any of the analysis/results.

Clearly, undocumented immigrants are not overwhelming the system, or even making a dent. So, this is all about demagoguery and I am glad that Governor Easley has overruled his attorney general and come out against colleges acting as immigration police. Life for one of these students is hard enough as it is, getting past the high admissions standards, affording the steep out-of-state tuition, they don’t need to keep looking over their shoulder every time they go to class.

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    NC Primary – Vote for a Non Panderer

    Byoliveridley

    Apparently, there’s a relevant presidential election this time around in my erstwhile home state, woohoo! (Not that it matters to me, when I was living in the States as an alien on parole, I did not have a vote, and I don’t even live there no more, but I follow US politics religiously!). I do have a dog in the fight (okay, references to dog fighting are no longer cool), being an Obama supporter (he’s skinny, brown and intelligent, and his name, he could be me!). He has tried hard, and only occasionally failed in his attempts to not pander, to not go against his broad principles or intelligence (do not get me started on his famous coal fetish). Clinton, on the other hand, is losing her mind, and here’s the end result.

    Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports

    As Clinton Seeks Gas Tax Break for Summer, Obama Says No – New York Times

    GasPrices.jpgSo, 18.4 cents a gallon, ai, let’s see, ah, friendly chart of gas prices in North Carolina this MONTH (courtesy Gas Prices) shows the price jumping about 36 cents a gallon, or double this so called tax break. By the time the holiday weekend rolls around, prices would have gone up a little more. What exactly does this accomplish? It fails the first test of not providing meaningful relief to anyone concerned. Most people don’t know that the tax directly funds transportation infrastructure.

    The highway trust fund that the gas tax finances provides money to states and local governments to pay for road and bridge construction, repair and maintenance. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton propose to suspend the tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the peak driving season, which would lower tax receipts by roughly $9 billion and potentially cost 300,000 highway construction jobs, according to state highway officials.

    So, take money from the federal government and give it to whom? Here’s a word from Dean Baker, my favorite economist.

    Actually, almost all economists would agree that the tax cut proposed by Senators Clinton and McCain would save consumers nothing. With the supply of gas largely fixed by the capacity of the oil industry (they claim to be running their refineries at full capacity), the price will
    not change in response to the elimination of the tax. The only difference will be that money that used to go to the government in tax revenues will instead go to the oil industry as higher profits.

    So, Hilary Clinton supports the transfer of money from the government to the the oil companies? I don’t think so and she ought to know better, she’s a smart and intelligent woman. So, what gives? Why the pander?

    Of course, she claims that she will make up the funding shortfall by increasing taxes on the oil companies. Who is she kidding here? You think our emperor (yes, he’s still there) will allow any new tax increases on his buddies in the oil industry? He’ll happily veto any such bill that comes his way!

    Note that I did not have to make a single environmental argument about how high gas prices will, in the medium to long run, eventually result in increased fuel efficiency, investments n public transit and hopefully, a shift away from the American (can’t say “our” any more!) car driven model of planning.

    Oh well, at this point in time, everyone’s mind’s made up anyway. Cheers and enjoy your rare meaningful vote.

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    Dole Begone

    Byoliveridley

    Facing a close re-election race in North Carolina, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) recently released an ad attacking her opponent Kay Hagan, falsely accusing her of being “Godless.” The end of the ad shows a photo of Hagan while a woman yells, “There is no God!” Watch it:

    via Think Progress » Elizabeth Dole ad falsely suggests opponent Kay Hagan is ‘Godless.’

    Dear fellow Tar Heels:

    Please give this inept, ineffectual, incompetent excuse for a senator the retirement she so richly deserves.

    Sincerely,

    The Olive Ridley Crawl

    Of course, she yelled “Godless” in my face, I’d say, “Yeah”!! But as we know, atheists are not very popular…

  • Police charge pair with 'crime against nature'

    Byoliveridley

    Raleigh police are charging two adults for sodomy in private, although the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have outlawed such charges five years ago.Police on Saturday charged two West Raleigh men with a “crime against nature” for having sex early that morning. Each faces up to two years in prison if convicted of the Class I felony.

    newsobserver.com | Police charge pair with ‘crime against nature’

    When I read the headline, I thought maybe they killed some deer, or emitted too much carbon dioxide, or something. Global warming is a crime against nature, not this!

    If you can stop shaking your head and read the rest of the article, you may conclude that a crime may have been committed, maybe a sexual assault on one man by another, who knows, but to arrest both of them for having sex, ah well, back in the 19th century for you.

    The police/DA may claim that this law is not enforced, so it need not be removed. Our esteemed Southern lawmakers (some of whom may be breaking this “law” anyway) can’t bring themselves to vote to legalize anal sex and oral sex. But why don’t the courts when faced with even one of these prosecutions immediately call the law unconstitutional? I mean, legal precedent points in that direction.

    Oh North Carolina, why?

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    Canadian Citizenship Oath in Court, and Royal Baby!

    Byoliveridley

    royalbabyA number of Canadian immigrants want the right to NOT swear allegiance to the Queen (of Canada). Their reasons are varied, they don’t believe in a monarchy, they moved from recently decolonized countries where atrocities were committed in the name of the queen, their religion doesn’t permit it, and more. They have lost their case at every step, and the originator of the case, Charles Roach, passed away recently, but they persist, and it is now going back to court. The globe and mail reports rather breathlessly with a heavy handed dose of editorializing. 

    But with a royal baby on the way, and a federal government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper that has dedicated itself to reviving the country’s connection to the monarchy – restoring the word Royal to the Royal Canadian Air Force, among other measures – the dissenters may have their work cut out for them.

    Would-be Canadian citizens set to fight oath to Queen – The Globe and Mail.

    The hilarity of the Globe and Mail thinking that the unborn Royal Baby(tm) has anything to do with a serious court case should be the topic of a much longer rant on the sorry state of this newspaper. More importantly, this is an interesting and brave protest by the litigants.

    Here’s the oath:

    I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.

    The oath is a strange and anachronistic beast that literally puts allegiance to a hereditary, unaccountable set of people who won a birth lottery in front of duty to the country and its laws. It’s completely understandable that some would balk at swearing this oath. Only half of Canadians surveyed in 2012 supported the notion of Canada remaining a monarchy. It seems unfair to ask a set of people to swear to something only half of the country supports. Would the settlers and descendants of settlers who acquired citizenship through birth like their citizenship to be contingent on pledging allegiance to the British (and Canadian) royal family? I don’t understand how it is acceptable to make one group of people swear an oath, while exempting a whole other group of people.

    This troubles me: The notion that the grant of citizenship is a one-way privilege, something that immigrants should be so grateful for that they don’t exercise their charter rights to dissent.

    “Canadian citizenship is an honour and a privilege,” spokeswoman Sonia Lesage said.

    Immigration is a two-way arrangement, one that benefits the people immigrating and the country. Repeated studies show this, so while immigrants are generally happy to become citizens, the country should be equally honoured and privileged that they chose to stay here rather than elsewhere. A country ruled by the descendants of those who colonized by displacing the original inhabitants of this land through force, spreading disease and attempted assimilation should be more humble in its pledges. It is especially troubling to hear this one-sided understanding of who is privileged by immigration coming from a country with this history.

    I swore my oath sincerely because for me, the benefits of being a Canadian citizen outweighed my distaste for the monarchy. As a recent immigrant and recent citizen, my desire to stay socially engaged, commitment to acting for change, and being the best family member, partner, friend, coworker and activist matter way more than an anachronistic pledge, and those are the standards I would want to be held to.

    Update: An interesting article on how close PM Chretien came to scrapping the oath and making it something more meaningful.

    More Update: My partner pointed out in conversation that the citizenship ceremony’s focus and tone were quite the opposite of all this honour and privilege language spouted by the conservative government mouthpiece. Multiple speakers specifically talked about how happy and lucky the country was to have us become citizens,and how much the country would benefit. They also talked about responsibility and civic engagement, which is as it should be. Multiple speakers specifically acknowledged our presence on Lekwungen and Coast Salish homelands.

  • | |

    Who is Local?

    Byoliveridley

    “Ahmadi is still months away from getting permanent resident status, putting him in the unlucky group of middle-class British Columbians who have found themselves targeted by a tax purportedly imposed to crack down on rich real estate speculators from overseas”

    I’ve never been this hopeless

    I would not call Hamed Ahmadi unlucky, he’s a victim of the all too common policy apparatus that confuses residency with visa status. The BC non-resident tax of 15% on properties is supposed to target “foreign” (read Chinese) investors buying in Vancouver with no intentions of living there. I presume there are multiple other ways to determine residency and “localness” for the purpose of determining who lives here and who does not. The BC government, in its haste to demonstrate it was doing something, took the easy route and used visa status as a proxy.

    Hamed lives and works in BC, which meets my definition of local. While a speculation tax on non-residents is a reasonable approach, using visa status to determine residency, and providing no sensible exceptions for locals with alternative paper work is lazy and thoughtless policy making, so is not providing exceptions for people with home buying applications already in process. It’s almost as if someone looked at the polls and press and wrote the law in a day.

    In many ways, this is personal for me because I lived in the US for 10+ years under various non-permanent visas that left me vulnerable to these poorly designed, thoughtless policy measures. I lived in the same town for 10 years, was very much a local by the time I’d left, with a stable set of friends, family, work, places I shopped in, hiked to, causes I supported, volunteer work I did, and more. So, Hamed’s story could have been mine, and in some smaller ways, was mine for other parts of my life.

    “CTV News spoke with BC Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson on Wednesday and asked several times for comment on Ahmadi’s situation. Wilkinson responded by repeating a piece of blanket advice for the people impacted. “Those who find themselves affected by the tax should seek legal advice because individual circumstances vary,” Wilkinson said.

    This is typical of policy makers who are so removed from the day to day lives of the people whose behaviour they seek to regulate. The casual assumption that regular people can afford professionals who bill at multiple hundreds of dollars an hour speaks more about the types of people these ministers hang out with than anything else. But this sounds familiar too, I needed to consult lawyers multiple times to help me with immigration paper work.

    As someone with a high level of institutional trust, and who thinks governments can affect our lives for the better with sound and thoughtful policy interventions, these types of hasty policy making are deeply disappointing. There are multiple other policy measures to make housing more affordable. The CCPA just released a comprehensive document of policies, focusing on the actual problem, the lack of affordable housing. Investment in affordable housing with a focus on cohousing and social housing, and zoning changes that reduce the protections afforded to affluent property owners would go a long way.

    Originally posted on Interrobang 04-August-2016

  • Want a tougher Canadian Refugee Policy? Read this

    Byoliveridley

    Deported to torture – thestar.com

    The memories aren’t all good. The country the Benhmudas love is also the country that rejected them as refugees. In 2008, the Canadian government deported the family back to Libya — even though the two youngest boys, Adam and Omar, are Canadian citizens by birth.

    For the boys’ father, it meant being deported to torture.

    Adel Benhmuda, now 43, says he was detained on arrival at Tripoli’s airport and taken to the notorious Ain Zara prison on the outskirts of the Libyan capital. For a total of six months, during two separate periods of detention, he says he was repeatedly beaten.

    Note that the tougher it is for refugees to prove their case, the more likely it is that some will be sent back for further persecution.

5 Comments

  1. Read the AG’s letter. It does not say what the paper reports. Only the paper uses the words illegal immigrants. And that is to sell the paper. The letter does not advise the Colleges that federal law bars admission. It says the courts are unsettled on the matter. This is the paper creating controversy to sell the paper.

    As a researcher you should know to go to the primary source.

  2. I did read the letter and yes, he does not use the magic lines “Illegal must not go to college”. His prose is much more political and lawyerly. But, his letter can’t really be interpreted any other way. He says federal law denies benefits to undocumented immigrants, but somehow weasels in an interpretation that even offering admission at out of state tuition rates is a “benefit”. This is the crux of his misinterpretation.

    Of course, the N&O converted all his undocumenteds into illegals, typical of them. But this is not a case of a paper making a big deal. The letter is pretty damning. If you read the follow up article interviewing Scott Ralls, the community college system president, he does say that they found the letter ambiguous, which it is, and asked for clarification. It is on this clarification that they made their so called decision.

    No one’s being very honest or clear here, but Roy Cooper’s letter, while vague, definitely interprets every statute in a way that bars undocumented immigrants. This was unnecessary and unwarranted under the law.

  3. No, I don’t see anything in the letter that determines whether admission is a benefit or not. It appears carefully drafted not to say that. Yes, it is lawyerly. That is because, well, they are the State’s lawyers.

    Having read the letter I think you must also concede that the AG never refers to any immigrant as “illegal” as you state with such assurance and spite in your original post. It is the paper that uses those words and it is the paper that has created uneccesary confusion.

    Your continued reliance on the N&O to reach conclusions about what advice may or may not have been given in a private meeeting is mystifying. State agencies have a long history of wanting to blame decisions on their lawyers (as do many private entities). But lawyers don’t make the policy decisions.

    This is all a charade. The AG’s letter does not dictate that the Community Colleges do one thing or another. My reading of the letter is that both admitting or not admitting immigrants can pass “judicial scrutiny”, one is more likely to, but it does not say the other wouldn’t. This means no action was dictated by the AG. The AG just gave the Community Colleges a legal risk assessment.

    The Community Colleges likely assessed the non-legal risks, like the mood of their constituents, and chose what they considered to be best for them from a policy perspective and then throw up their hands and claim they were just following the advice of their lawyers. Quite a performance if you ask me.

  4. You’re right. This conversation had me thinking and looking a little more deeply into the Kabuki theater between Scott Ralls, the N&O and Roy Cooper, which is a bit suspicious. And of course, Roy Cooper does not use the word illegals, that’s all the N&O’s wonderful doing. I wrote <a href=”http://www.oliveridley.org/2008/05/17/no-stop-using-the-word-illegal/”a short post about that, really pisses me off!

    No shortage of blame here, Scott Ralls is playing some kind of game here, absolutely right about that. But all Roy Cooper had to say was that he could find no law forbidding undocumented immigrants from college and leave it at that. He half says that in the letter, then half gives Scott Ralls permission to deny admission. He did not have to do that. All the additional bits in the letter provide cover for the community college system to discriminate. He just had to say that there was no legal basis for discrimination and end the letter.

    But, thanks for the comments, definitely had me digging deeper and finding that the Community College administration was no innocent in this matter.

  5. I don’t know if I am right or not. Who knows. But I do think if the N&O had not (as it continues to do) reported that the AG said you can’t let “illegals” in (which he didn’t say) then it would have been harder for the Community Colleges to change their policy.

    I believe the N&O, by sensationalizing a somewhat say-nothing advisory letter, gave cover to the Community College to cave to their local governing boards. Had they just reported what the letter said and not their spin on it I doubt there would have been a change.

    Kabuki dance indeed!

    Oh well, let’s go back to fixing the environment. Thanks for your work.

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