A Dalton Republican's bill that would have allowed young immigrants who have been granted a reprieve from deportation to pay in-state tuition at Georgia colleges and universities did not meet a key deadline at the statehouse, in part due to opposition from his county's GOP.
Rep. Kasey Carpenter's bill to allow the immigrants to be eligible for in-state tuition at some Georgia colleges and universities had momentum just weeks ago. It had bipartisan support and had been promoted by Carpenter as workforce development legislation. The bill easily got out of its House Committee assignment on a 16-4 vote.
However, some strong opposition from the Whitfield County Republican Party and between 10 and 20 Republicans in the House seems to have killed the bill for now.
Carpenter's bill never landed on the House calendar on Crossover Day, a key legislative deadline when bills from one chamber are supposed to proceed to the other.
Carpenter said Wednesday he thought the biggest reason why the bill didn't get past Crossover Day was because of misinformation from the opposition.
"People tend not to tell the truth," Carpenter said. "I don't have a problem, obviously, if you're against something, but I would much rather see you be honest about what the bill actually does."
On Feb. 19, the Whitfield County GOP sent an email to its followers with the subject line, "Call and Kill HB120" followed by a list of legislators and their phone numbers.
In the email, it read "American citizens that live in others states would have to pay sky high out of state tuition if they wanted to attend a college in Georgia, but folks illegally here would get a tuition break."
Others, including conservative media personality Phil Kent and his InsiderAdvantage Georgia website, said the bill would attract "illegal immigrants" to move to Georgia.
Carpenter's bill specifically lays out that in order to receive in-state tuition, students must have graduated from a Georgia high school, must be under the age of 30 and had to have lived in Georgia since 2013.
"You can bet [President] Joe Biden and the Democrats strongly support this bad bill," the Whitfield County GOP email read. "Hearing big business and their lobbyists backing it very strongly."
The bill was designed to benefit young immigrants under the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, or DACA, which holds off on deportation for children whose parents brought them to the U.S. without authorization when they were little.
Carpenter said claims that DACA recipients would be better off than other Georgia students and have a more advantageous position than out-of-state students is off-base.
Carpenter introduced similar legislation last year but it stalled in a Senate committee. The House Higher Education Subcommittee chairman did not move the bill forward last March as the fate of the DACA program was in flux.
In June 2020, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling retained the program after finding then-President Donald Trump's administration illegally rescinded it in 2017.
This time around the bill was moving along well, but Carpenter admits that it might have been tough for Republican lawmakers who were on the fence about it to support it when his own home county's GOP was against it.
"There was definitely some concern there, which is fair," he said. "Obviously they saw the heat that I was taking, and that's OK. But at the end of the day, the 10 or 20 people that are raising Cain are not more important than the 14,000 people that you represent."
Despite not making it past Crossover Day, Carpenter said he's looking at some avenues now to revive the bill.
Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6476. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickFilbin.