By Stefani Price
Carrboro Commons Staff Writer

America is becoming a “majority of minorities,” said an award-winning investigative reporter and author.

Paul Cuadros, who is also an assistant professor of journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill, told a group at The Chapel Hill Institute for Cultural and Language Education (CHICLE) about the North Carolina Community College System’s changes in policy regarding the admission of undocumented immigrants.

Paul Cuadros, right, talks with audience member Jerry Markatos of Pittsboro after his presentation on the educational future of undocumented immigrants in North Carolina.

Staff photo by Stefani Price

On the third floor of the Weaver Street Market is the office of CHICLE. The organization reserves its Sunday afternoons for introducing speakers to discuss key topics primarily on the issues of immigrants, language and cultures.

On Sunday, CHICLE hosted Cuadros, author, investigative reporter and assistant professor at the UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication who lives in Pittsboro. Cuadros’s literary work focuses on the issues of Latinos while his day-to-day activities involve teaching journalism, mentoring and coaching both boys’ and girls’ soccer teams at Jordan-Matthews High School in Chatham County.

Cuadros has become very close to several of the Hispanic teenagers with whom he works; so when in June of this year some of those young students were denied acceptance into community colleges due to their lack of U.S. citizenship, Cuadros empathized with their feelings of rejection and exclusion.

The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) has gone back and forth on the issue of enrolling undocumented immigrants into its institutions, according to Cuadros’s research and records on the NCCCS Web site.

Dr. Martin Lancaster, former president of the NCCCS until his retirement in 2007, supported the notion that the system should remain open and accessible to any and all students, including undocumented students.

The NCCCS documents also show that after Dr. Lancaster was replaced, that agenda came to an immediate halt in May 2008 as the board ruled that North Carolina community colleges should no longer accept undocumented immigrants until the issue had been further reviewed. This review process was anticipated to go on for two years with no changes in the admissions policy.

In spite of this commonly held belief, Cuadros said the North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper provided clarity on the situation, announcing that the Department of Homeland Security does not deem any federal laws to prohibit the admission of undocumented students into public educational institutions and that states are allowed to form their own policies on the issue. Even with this new information, the NCCCS continues to keep its doors closed.

The question that arises is simply put by Cuadros, “Do we want a population where everyone has the right to an education? Or do we want to close that off and only make it available to certain people?”

To answer that question, Cuadros made a thought-provoking argument for the admission of undocumented immigrants, emphasizing that Latinos are “the group that will be the future.”

The Latino population is increasing more quickly than any other ethnic group in America — something that cannot be ignored and is “no longer silent or hidden, but it’s in front of us” said Cuadros.

This rapid growth is giving researchers reason to believe that the nation will become, as Cuadros put it, a “majority of minorities” by the year 2042. Latinos are expected to comprise one-fourth of the American population by that year—a fact that “for many people [is] a scary thing” to have so much change in demographics.

People are seeing what Cuadros referred to as the graying and the browning of America. The graying of America indicates the aging of the older generation; the browning represents the younger generation primarily composed of Latinos.

“The country is getting older [as] the long term generation has had their kids,” Cuadros stated. This signifies the shift towards an economy dominated by young Latino people and away from the nation’s familiar faces. With this in mind, education for the nation’s future is very integral to the success of not only its youth, but also its own economic system.

As Cuadros explained, since the Supreme Court ruled long ago that all children must attend school, undocumented children are receiving an education, making them an unused investment of the citizens and the state. Latinos have greatly increased their numbers in NC public schools, yet they are being prohibited from pursuing a higher education. Cuadros believes that the NCCCS’s new policies are creating a “group of people who are alienated and who can’t achieve their dreams [of a higher education].”

It is common knowledge that a higher education leads to higher paid jobs—something that is vital to the continued success of the economy. Cuadros said using undocumented immigrants in the job industries but disallowing them the opportunity for a higher education perpetuates the cycle of keeping them at the disadvantaged status of being incapable of improving their status.

While undocumented immigrants may not presently attend a two-year community college program for credit, they can enroll in a four-year university—something that Cuadros researched and found to be paradoxical in itself, since very few can even finance this venture, voiding the prospect as a far-off hopeful, while the more realistic approach remains cut off from their reach.

Regarding how UNC-CH handles this issue, Cuadros explained that the university does not reject undocumented students from enrollment, but instead registers them as international students. With this differentiation, undocumented students must pay the additional tuition rates as an out-of-state student, even if they do live within the area. So undocumented immigrants continue to take the available GED, ESL, and night classes, but also continue to be excluded from credit degree courses.

“The Latino community is a very voiceless community,” Cuadros said as he told his small yet attentive audience about the one-sided bias slanted against Latinos. Some places across the nation are very intolerant towards the Latino population because of locals who view all Latinos as illegal aliens.

Cuadros said, “There is a real disconnect [between the Latinos and the rest of the nation].” But Cuadros confidently asserted, “These towns are going to change because the nation is going to change.”

And according to the numbers Cuadros presented demonstrating the ever-growing population of Latinos in America, the people will have no choice but to come to accept Latinos and come to terms with issues surrounding immigration.