Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is siding with a group of 39 plaintiffs who are suing for in-state college tuition for immigrants who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children.
In a letter he sent a Fulton County Superior Court judge last week, the mayor said the benefit should be available to immigrants like the plaintiffs who have been accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The federal program grants people two-year deportation deferrals and work permits. People granted those benefits are legally present in the U.S., according to the federal government. Georgia’s in-state tuition policy requires “lawful presence.”
But state attorneys have filed papers seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the program doesn’t affect Georgia’s tuition policies or give the plaintiffs any rights to in-state tuition.
Reed pointed out his city grants business licenses and other benefits to applicants after confirming their “lawful presence” as required by state law. Work permits obtained through the Deferred Action program can be submitted as proof of legal presence, the mayor said.
“I have many of my city’s citizens who are being denied the right to attend the Georgia college of their choice and the right to pay an otherwise deserved instate tuition rate, simply because of an intentional misreading of the law of ‘lawful presence’ by the Board of Regents,” the mayor said in his letter. “I am deeply concerned by this seeming contradiction in interpretation.”
Fulton Superior Judge John Goger heard arguments in the case on May 6 and is expected to issue a ruling any day.
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