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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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Who is Local?
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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

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Smoking ban for N.C. Bars and Restaurants

Byoliveridley

The bill approved Wednesday falls short of how it began: a total and sweeping ban on smoking in all public places. But the House's original bill left a wide loophole for bars, an exemption that worried restaurant owners who feared bars would steal late-night customers.

via House approves smoking ban for N.C. – Politics – News & Observer.

The bill (soon to become law) still contains the giant “private club” loophole I had mentioned earlier, so, 1.5 cheers. And strange exemption for cigar bars (where smoke is emitted), but not for hookah bars (where water filters quite a bit of the smoke).

Critically, as Laura Leslie pointed out, the law will allow local health officials to go above and beyond state law. So, a floor was established, not a ceiling, which is good. They were previously forbidden to enact any smoking bans. Now Chapel Hill/Carrboro can do what it has been wanting to do for years and finally kill smoking in all public places.

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I love my erstwhile home state (Not!)

Byoliveridley

In April, Richardson asked the health and social services departments to determine the number of illegal immigrant clients by counting Spanish surnames.

The county commissioners are meeting with a lawyer to help identify public services that can be denied to illegal immigrants. And in cases where it is not legal to exclude people, they say they may eliminate programs entirely — including federally funded prenatal care for poor women — in an attempt to drive illegal immigrants from the county.

In an interview, Richardson twice referred to illegal immigrants as “wetbacks.” He said that they threaten to turn the United States into a bilingual nation and that he fears they will foment political and social dissent.

newsobserver.com | Beaufort County wants to stem migrant influx

No comment required…

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Carolina Everywhere

Byoliveridley

durant.jpgSo, reading some random article on Canadian Football, and who do we have starting for Saskatchewan Roughriders, but an old Carolina favourite (must say I am happy to be putting the u between the r and o as it should be done!) Darian Durant, only the best quarterback to ever wear a Carolina uniform bringing his team back from 8 points down with 4 minutes to go to an 8 point win, 16 unanswered points. Go Darian! He was an excellent quarterback who was deemed too short to play in the NFL. Glad he’s doing well for himself with the defending CFL champions. Turns out he got his chance to start when the number 1 QB got injured. Watch out, he’s good, he’s not going to let go of the ball!

Carolina connections do crop up in odd places.

N&O: Stop Using the word "illegal"

Byoliveridley

Colleges await more advice on illegals

newsobserver.com | Colleges await more advice on illegals

The N&O does a global search on every “undocumented” in official statements about immigrants and replaces with “ilegals”. Presumably, they are intelligent enough to know what they are doing and are doing this deliberately. Please write to the author of this particular piece, Kristin Collins at kristin.collins@newsobserver.com to let her know that this is disgusting and has to stop. Here’s some typical text…

I read with increasing dismay, the use of the word “illegals” in your articles to describe people who lack the necessary documentation to live in the United States. A small percentage of their actions can be termed illegal, but they are not “illegal” people. This is the same as saying that every one who drives 36 mph in a 35 mph zone is an illegal. A person may be guilty or charged of illegal acts, that does not make them “illegals”. Note that in the course of a day, an undocumented immigrant may perform  many many legal acts and a so called “legal” American may be breaking the law a dozen times. If the definition of illegal is knowingly breaking a law (whether you get caught or not), all of us are “illegal” in one way or the other.

I fear that your temptation to use one charged word to describe whole groups of real law abiding, tax paying people is lazy at best, and fear mongering and sensationalistic at worst. The N&O does good investigative work and need not sully its good name by stooping to such demagoguery. Please stop. If you want to use one word, use “undocumenteds”. It is more specific and conveys to readers exactly what illegal act these people are charged with.

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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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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=”https://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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