Chicago
Tribune…
States make their own
tuition rules for undocumented students
By Julie Mianecki, Washington Bureau
May 15, 2011
Reporting from Washington— Anngie Gutierrez was a child when she
arrived in the United States as an illegal immigrant 10 years ago.
There’s still no path to legal status for her, but in Maryland and a
handful of other states, there is a more affordable road to college.
Gutierrez, a high school junior in Hyattsville, Md., will benefit from
a new state law that allows illegal immigrants who reside there to pay
in-state tuition rates at Maryland’s public colleges. If she lived in
Virginia, about 15 miles to the west, she would find that many public
colleges require undocumented students to pay out-of-state tuition.
Some Virginia legislators want to go further: In February, the House of
Delegates passed legislation that would prohibit the state’s public
universities from admitting illegal immigrants. The proposal has not
passed the state Senate.
The states’ radically different approaches illustrate the polarization
of Americans over what to do about the estimated 11 million illegal
immigrants living in the U.S., and the heated nature of a debate that
extends far from border states such as Arizona and California.
The tuition battle has grown, in part, because of a lack of action by
Congress. The federal government holds jurisdiction over immigration
law, and a 1982 Supreme Court ruling mandated that states provide
illegal immigrants with access to K-12 education in public schools. But
the absence of a comprehensive federal immigration plan has given
states relatively free rein to impose their own rules on issues such as
who can attend public colleges, and at what rates.
“If you don’t have a coherent immigration policy, then you end up with
50 different rules about what kinds of authority police have to stop
people, what kinds of documents you have to carry around and so on,”
said Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at the Center
for American Progress, a think tank in Washington. “You can have two
states right next to each other, identical profiles of the foreign-born
… and yet you get this incredible difference in outcome and treatment
toward newcomers.”
Gutierrez also would be eligible for in-state tuition if she graduated
from high school in one of 11 other states, including border states
such as California, New Mexico and Texas. On Thursday, Connecticut’s
House passed a bill guaranteeing in-state tuition at its public
colleges to illegal immigrants who live there.
But Gutierrez would pay out-of-state rates if she lived in Arizona,
Georgia or Colorado. Georgia adds an extra barrier by prohibiting
public universities from enrolling undocumented students if the school
has rejected any academically qualified applicants for the last two
years because of enrollment limits.
South Carolina does not allow undocumented students to attend its
public universities. Alabama bars admittance to its community colleges.
Other states — including Virginia — avoid the issue by leaving it up to
individual schools to determine tuition rates for undocumented students.
Immigration policy has long been a divisive issue, but since a federal
judge blocked controversial parts of an Arizona immigration law last
year, the topic has been dominated by heated rhetoric. The federal
DREAM Act, which would provide young people who were brought to the
country illegally a path to citizenship if they met certain criteria,
failed in Congress last year. It was reintroduced by Democrats on
Wednesday, but faces long odds in the Republican-controlled House.
Read the rest of the story at the Chicago Tribune
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