IT BEGAN with a traffic violation. Last March Jessica Colotl, a 21-year-old political-science major at Kennesaw State University, was arrested for “impeding the flow of traffic”. Cobb County authorities, who participate in a federal immigration-law enforcement programme, found that Ms Colotl was in the country illegally. She had entered with her parents when she was 10. She graduated from high school with an A average, and wanted to become a lawyer. Instead she will probably be deported in the spring, after she graduates.

And if Tom Rice gets his way, there will be no more Jessica Colotls. In October Georgia's Board of Regents, which oversees the state's public universities, banned illegal immigrants from the state's five most popular universities, and said that they cannot be admitted to the other 30 ahead of qualified legal residents, having found 501 undocumented students among the 310,000 enrolled in Georgia's public universities. For Mr Rice, a Republican state representative, this was not enough; he pre-filed a bill with the state's Assembly that would ban all illegals from public universities. If it passes when the legislature convenes in January (and it stands a good chance), Georgia will join South Carolina as the only states with such a ban.

The same week that Mr Rice filed his bill, California's supreme court ruled unanimously that illegal immigrants can attend California's public institutions at in-state tuition rates; nine other states have similar laws. And then there is the federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), which provides a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants under the age of 35 who came to America before they were 16 and either graduate from high school or obtain an equivalent degree and then complete two years of military service or higher education and maintain “good moral character”.

The Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank, estimates that 2.1m people—934,000 of whom are under 18—nationwide would be eligible to apply for conditional legal status. More than one-quarter of those 2.1m people live in California; a mere 3% of them live in Georgia, but of Georgia's Hispanic population, almost 11%—the fourth-highest proportion in the country—could benefit from the DREAM Act.

According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, there were around 425,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia in 2009, comprising 6.5% of the state's labour force. Some estimate that in agriculture, the state's biggest industry, half the workers are in the country illegally. A legislative panel in Georgia is considering whether to adopt Arizona-style laws requiring local police to enforce federal immigration laws, as well as whether to make it a criminal offence to pick up day labourers or encourage illegal immigrants to move to Georgia. And in 2005 a legislator from Georgia introduced a bill to bar illegal immigrants from all public schooling (despite the United States Supreme Court having ruled that unconstitutional in 1982).

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi say they want the lame-duck Congress to vote on the DREAM Act next week. This would be the ideal time or perhaps the last chance: the Congress that convenes in January will be more favourable to America's Tom Rices than its Jessica Colotls.