Per the Charlotte Observer:
North Carolina’s community college system has ordered the state’s 58 campuses to admit illegal immigrants, overturning a policy of letting the heavily enrolled schools set their own rules for handling undocumented applicants.
David Sullivan, the system’s top lawyer, dispatched a memo this month telling the community colleges that state regulations require the schools to admit illegal immigrants who meet the schools’ basic requirements of being either a high school graduate or an adult in need of skills training….
A study this year by a Duke University graduate-level class listed 22 campuses as having a written or unwritten policy to bar undocumented applicants. The Observer contacted the three schools nearest to Charlotte, McDowell Technical, Cleveland and Stanly community colleges. All said they had no such policy and had been admitting illegal immigrants.
Central Piedmont Community College has been admitting illegal immigrants.
Wake Technical Community College, in Raleigh, was among the schools that had to change its policy after the recent memo.
“We had just always required appropriate documentation,” including legal residency, said Laurie Clowers, the school’s public relations director.
The article also mentioned the cost:
Community college executives said the admissions guidelines won’t cost the state. Illegal immigrants must pay out-of-state tuition, $7,465 for a full class load, which is more than the actual cost of providing the education, $5,375, the officials said.They also emphasized that under the old policy, with most schools admitting undocumented applicants, 340 of the 270,000 students last year — or about one-tenth of 1 percent — were illegal immigrants. If that figure quadrupled, the system could handle it, Sullivan said.
Oh, I expect this will renew a push for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. If you don’t need proper documentation to be enrolled at a public community college in N.C., it will be horrible! unfair! racist! what-have-you to be forced — forced! — to pay out-of-state tuition. The state’s system won’t be “serving” our “undocumented community” or whatever other euphemisms can be dreamed up in the meantime.