Students who are not in the country legally should not be admitted to Georgia state colleges if other qualified students are turned away, a state committee and lawmakers say.
“Our concern was where we felt there might be situations where someone who is undocumented might be causing someone else to not be able to get a seat at that institution because of the grades or whatever,” said Georgia Board of Regents member James Jolly, who chaired the Residency Verification Committee.
PDF: Review of Student Residency Status
Out of 310,000 students in all of the state’s colleges, 501 were found to be undocumented as of Sept. 15, according to the Board of Regents.
The verification committee recommended that five institutions where enrollment is at capacity – Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Medical College, UGA and Georgia College and Georgia State University – deny admission to undocumented students if legal residents and citizens are being turned away for space reasons.
The five schools had a total of 29 undocumented students.
Committee members also suggested having a more thorough process to determine applicants’ legal status, including use of a federal verification program called SAVE.
The full Board of Regents will vote on the recommendations this month.
But Jolly, who is from Dalton, Ga., said not all of the undocumented students are illegal immigrants.
The list might include those who didn’t provide the necessary documents in time for registration and were charged out-of-state tuition, he said.
Rep. Barbara Massey Reece, D-Menlo, said that undocumented students shouldn’t get in the way of legal residents.
“We have so many young people and grown-ups going back to college now because they realize they have to have more knowledge and skills to compete in the job market out there,” Reece said. “I really think that our students and our citizens should have first preference on slots in college classes.
UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTSHere are the five colleges and universities in Georgia with the highest number of undocumented students as of Sept. 15:1. Georgia Perimeter College: 2102. Gainesville State College: 523. College of Coastal Georgia: 344. Dalton State College: 305. Georgia State University: 23Source: Board of Regents University System of Georgia
At the same time, she said, young undocumented people who are going to stay in the United States should be “as well educated as possible, because we certainly don’t want them on the streets.”
At Dalton State, 30 students – 11 new and 18 eligible to return – were identified as undocumented.
The college doesn’t know how it will be affected if the committee’s recommendations are approved, said Jodi Johnson, vice president for enrollment at Dalton State.
“Our policies have not changed. Nothing has changed for us at the moment,” Johnson said. “We are waiting for further direction.”
The Board of Regents asked the state’s colleges and universities to count undocumented students after an incident at Kennesaw State University. A student there was found to be in the country illegally and paying in-state tuition. Undocumented students may attend Georgia colleges but must pay out-of-state tuition, which can be two or three times higher than in-state tuition.
Overall, the number of students the committee identified as undocumented is 2/10ths of 1 percent, Jolly said. Contrary to public perception, none were paying in-state tuition, he said.
State Rep. Tom Dickson, R-Cohutta, said the committee recommendation is a strong first step. He said he doesn’t think the Legislature will try to interfere.
“We probably ought to give the Board of Regents a chance to make that work before the Legislature tries to jump in and go beyond that,” he said.
Besides, he added, “we are going to be concentrating, I think, on much more than college students, but on illegal immigrants themselves and whether or not they are here lawfully in the state of Georgia.”