By John Brummett

There was a modest rally late in the week for Gov. Mike Beebe’s assertion that, under federal law, we’d best not risk giving in-state college tuition rates to qualifying high school graduates who happen to have been brought here by illegal immigrant parents.

Alas, though, the rally fell short.

It is, in fact, legally arguable that, as Beebe says, this tuition proposal by Sen. Joyce Elliott of Little Rock runs afoul of a federal law that says you can’t provide an illegal alien with a college benefit that you don’t also provide to an out-of-state natural citizen.

But “legally arguable” is a long way from “legally definite,” and mere uncertainty is not reason enough for Arkansas to decline to join Texas, California and nine other states in this noble, sane, fair and decent public policy.

It happens that California has a law on its books that is worded precisely as Elliott has worded her proposed law for Arkansas. It simply says that if you attend high school in the state and graduate and otherwise qualify for college, you may be admitted on resident tuition charges.

It makes no mention of ethnicity or parental documentation. The plain purpose, of course, is to correct the unfairness by which kids brought here by illegal immigrants and educated in our public schools, as required by federal law, can’t go to our colleges on significantly more affordable resident tuition rates.

So some anti-immigration forces cooked up a case in California by which plaintiffs from out-of-state argued that they were treated illegally under that federal law because they were charged out-of-state tuition while children of illegal aliens coming out of California high schools got the resident discounts. The district state court threw out the case. On appeal, an intermediate court reversed the lower court.

It’s now before the California Supreme Court. There is no injunction. The tuition policy is continuing apace as the case proceeds.

Now comes state Sen. David Johnson of Little Rock, a highly regarded young legislator and lawyer, to say that he supports Elliott’s bill on merit but that, having read the California intermediate court’s ruling, he fears Beebe is right legally.

Johnson says he is averse to voting for a state law that violates a federal law. It could turn out, Johnson says, that the state would have to pay back millions in out-of-state tuition charges.

This would be the first time, to my knowledge, that the Arkansas Legislature fell in behind a California court. We didn’t follow the California courts on letting gays get married. Nor did we follow a California court on taking “God” out of our kids’ Pledge of Allegiance.

I continue to think that Beebe is relying on this legal issue to cover his right political flank.

This can be argued well enough either way.

The issue comes down to whether we can do something for, say, Juan, an Arkansas child brought here illegally, that we wouldn’t do for, say, Ralph from South Dakota.

But if Ralph wants to move down here and live with Arkansas folks and graduate from one of our high schools, then he would get the same treatment as Juan.

Is that the ultimately prevailing legal interpretation? That’s going to depend on the judge.

But what we do for Juan in the meantime — and Ralph, too, for that matter, if he wants to move down — is not up to the judge. It’s up to us.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.