Gallegly and College Official Divided on Immigrant Tuition : Education: At issue is a directive requiring that undocumented students pay higher fees than those with U.S. citizenship.

A Ventura County congressman and a top official of the county’s community college district have clashed over whether illegal immigrants should have to pay more than legal California residents to attend local colleges.

The exchange was sparked by a Ventura County Community College District board resolution urging state community college system Chancellor David Mertes “to immediately suspend implementation” of his directive requiring that illegal immigrant students pay substantially higher tuition fees than students residing in California with U.S. citizenship. Instead, the board said, the courts should decide the issue.

In a July 27 letter to Pete Tafoya, president of the community college district’s five-person governing board, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he “was dismayed” by the resolution, adopted on a 3-2 vote.

“Higher education throughout California is experiencing severe overcrowding and budget difficulties, and I strongly believe that our first priority must be to ensure that legal residents of our nation and our state are given access to services,” Gallegly wrote.

“By allocating increasingly scarce resources for people whose first act in the United States was to break our law, we are providing just one more incentive for more people to come here illegally.”

Gallegly, a conservative Republican, is a three-term incumbent running for reelection in Ventura County’s 23rd Congressional District. His opponent in the general election is Democrat Anita Perez Ferguson of Oxnard.

One of Gallegly’s major campaign issues turns on halting the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. He has declared that undocumented aliens are draining California’s economy to the detriment of Americans and foreigners who are legally residing here.

In this regard, Gallegly has introduced a legislative package in Congress that features a controversial constitutional amendment to prohibit children born of illegal aliens from automatically becoming U.S. citizens. Perez Ferguson opposes the amendment.

“The issue here is legal versus illegal,” Gallegly said in an interview this week. “I will go to the mat for people who want to legally emigrate to this country.”

An angry Tafoya called Gallegly’s letter “a real cheap shot.”

In an interview, Tafoya declared: “Either we have a priority for educating our students or we don’t. Whether students are legal or not, they are living in this country and to make them participants in this country, they have to be educated.”

Under the community college fee system before the Mertes directive, California residents were treated equally--whether the student was legally a resident of the United States or not. Students paid $6 per unit with a ceiling of $60 per semester. Non-resident Californians pay $110 per unit with no ceiling.

Earlier this year Mertes delivered his directive, prompted by a state appellate court decision requiring, in effect, that illegal immigrants pay the same rate as non-residents. However, because a Superior Court judge ruled that such a move would be unconstitutional, foes of the directive are urging Mertes to put the policy on hold until it can be resolved once and for all in the courts.

The higher tuition fees for undocumented residents would almost certainly preclude them from enrolling in the community college system, Tafoya said.

Approximately 45,000 students attend three county community colleges in Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark. Their fall semester begins in about three weeks. Unless Mertes changes his mind, the higher fees for illegal immigrants will take effect.

Tafoya estimated that about 1% or less of the student body would fall into the illegal immigrant classification.

Timothy Hirschberg, a member of the community college board who voted against the resolution, said he agrees with Gallegly’s position.

“I don’t think it’s fair to ask taxpayers to subsidize the college educations of people who are here illegally,” said Hirschberg, an attorney. “I think it strains their generosity, particularly in this economy.”

Gregory Cole, another member of the board and a financial contributor to Gallegly, said he believes the Simi Valley lawmaker is wrong on this issue.

Cole, a dentist, said the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause precludes a fee system that differentiates between students who are here legally and those who are not.

“The facts are that undocumented aliens pay taxes, they do contribute to our society,” declared Cole, who said his great-grandfather was an illegal alien from Norway.

“Our mission is education. And our mission is hard enough to achieve with the limited resources we have without having to play immigration cop for the federal government.”