While teaching at a DeKalb County high school last year, I encountered countless amazing students, but Tony was special. Valedictorian. National Honor Society president. Varsity athlete in three sports. Member of the homecoming court.
Tony, with his contagious smile, was the type of magnetic student a teacher never forgets. He was a hardworking student leader and well-admired scholar who would be considered your typical high school All-American with a promising future ahead of him at the college of his choice.
But Tony is also an undocumented immigrant. And Georgia has closed and locked the doors of opportunity to him. To give Tony and students like him a chance, the Georgia Board of Regents must repeal its ban on undocumented immigrants from Georgia’s selective universities.
In 2010, the regents passed Policy 4.1.6., banning all undocumented students, including Tony, from selective universities. The regents believed this policy would prevent undocumented students from taking seats away from natural-born citizens.
But students like Tony have earned their qualifications through hard work and deserve the same chance as any qualified student to compete for admission.
If Tony wants to be an engineer and help push Georgia into the 21st century, Georgia Tech is out of the question. If Tony wants to pursue law and represent Atlanta’s most vulnerable populations, he can forget about Georgia State University. And if Tony wants to practice medicine in his community, Georgia Health Sciences University’s doors are closed to him.
This policy is a dream killer.
But it is not just Tony who loses. In denying a student of Tony’s accomplishments the top-notch education he earned and deserved, Georgia lost, too. This incredible young man is now impressing professors and students at a California university.
Like approximately 2.1 million other undocumented young people, Tony was brought to the United State as a small child. Atlanta is the only home he remembers. He grew up in American schools and played by the rules of the American Dream: If you are talented and hardworking, you have the opportunity for prosperity and success.
Tony is being punished for choices that were not his own. This is not how our system of laws should work. In fact, the Supreme Court said in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that states must educate all undocumented students in k-12 schools because banning them would be “a discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control.”
Tony’s potential didn’t end when he graduated from high school, and neither should this legal principle.
There has been both political activity and inactivity in Washington regarding immigration reform, but progress has now stalled. Nonetheless, both sides of the aisle indicate strong support for granting undocumented youth like Tony a shot in life through education.
In January, congressional Republicans released “Standards for Immigration Reform,” stating, “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children through no fault of their own, those who know no other place as home. For those who … attain a college degree, we will do just that.”
Meanwhile, on the left, the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program allows undocumented youth to apply for protection from deportation if they are enrolled in or have completed school or military service.
Despite this, as an increasing number of states are expanding opportunities by allowing DACA grantees in-state tuition, Georgia still refuses to allow grantees admission into our competitive universities. Georgia joins Alabama and South Carolina in moving in the opposite direction of both national parties by restricting higher education opportunities. However, I believe we can turn the page on our discriminatory ways.
As the former student body president at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!), I would have been honored to call Tony a fellow Bulldog. Tragically, I wasn’t able to promote my beloved alma mater to many of the qualified students I taught.
Tony had higher AP and SAT scores than I ever got in high school. We cannot continue to allow gifted young people, who could use their talents to enrich our campuses and drive our economy, to give up on their dreams or take their talents elsewhere. Georgia must not wait for Washington to act, for every day is too late for another potential doctor, architect or engineer.
The Board of Regents must adhere to its mission of “creating a more educated Georgia” by opening the doors of higher education to all of Georgia’s academically qualified young people.
