PBS
By Larry Gordon
April 7, 2016
Lupe Sanchez and Jacqueline Delgadillo have a lot in common.
Both
were born in Mexico and were brought across the border into the United
States as small children, without documents. Both did well in American
public schools. And both were given at least
temporary protection from deportation under the Obama administration’s
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy, which applies
to some undocumented immigrants who arrived before they were 16.
Then their paths diverged dramatically — mainly because of where they live.
Sanchez
grew up in California, where tuition and financial aid policies
encourage undocumented students to enroll at public colleges and help
them afford it. She’s now a freshman psychology
major at UCLA and gets substantial state aid for her tuition and other
costs.
Delgadillo’s
family settled in Georgia, which has some of the most restrictive rules
in the nation for undocumented students, even banning them from
attending some public universities. She
has delayed starting college for two years and now hopes that a
private, out-of-state school will accept her and provide her
scholarships.
“It’s
crazy. Being undocumented in Georgia is a totally different experience
than being undocumented in California,” Delgadillo said. “I do wish I
was in California.”
Political
dysfunction has deadlocked a national DREAM Act that would, among other
things, make federal loans available to some undocumented students and
make it easier for states to charge
them lower in-state tuition at public universities and colleges. But an
increasing number of states have already extended those benefits, and
even added scholarship support.
The
contrast among them, however, illustrates the fractured national
picture — and difficult personal dilemmas — facing undocumented
immigrants who aspire to go to college.
Some
state legislatures and university governing boards continue to be
roiled by questions of whether longtime resident undocumented immigrants
should be charged sharply discounted in-state
tuition rates, or, like out-of-staters and international students, pay
double or three times as much. Several lawsuits on the matter are in
state courts. In February, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the higher
tuition when it ruled that the higher-education
governing board could not be sued by immigrant advocates.
Debate
also continues over whether the undocumented, with or without DACA
status, should be eligible for state financial aid. That’s important
because no undocumented students can get federal
Pell Grants or, without a national DREAM Act, federal subsidized loans.
Opponents of such aid say it might encourage more illegal immigration, and that public resources are limited.
Missouri,
for example, has placed restrictions on tuition discounts and aid to
undocumented students at state universities and colleges. In the fall,
the state legislature overrode a gubernatorial
veto and passed a law forbidding even immigrants with DACA protection
from getting scholarships toward community college tuition.
Giving
the funds to undocumented students “would be taking money away from
everyone else,” Missouri State Rep. David Wood, a Republican who is
chairman of the legislature’s Joint Committee
on Education, said. “My vote was to take care of those who had legal
status in the state of Missouri first.”
Advocates
for such aid contend it makes no sense to put educational barriers in
the way of people who came to the United States as children, and that
undocumented immigrants can help the
nation meet its goals of increasing the proportion of the population
with degrees — goals toward which the nation is falling behind.
Many
policymakers seem to agree. The recent trend has been for more states
to adopt so-called “tuition equity” allowing the undocumented to pay the
in-state rates, according to the National
Immigration Law Center, a pro-immigrant organization. All or some
public colleges in 21 states offer such equity, a survey by the center
found.
At
least six states — California and Texas being the largest — provide
some financial aid to undocumented students who meet various criteria.
Some public universities in others, such as Hawaii,
Illinois and Minnesota, offer aid that’s paid for by private sources.
In states without explicit policies, some colleges quietly create their
own “don’t ask, don’t tell” rules.
“It’s definitely been a more positive trend,” said Tanya Broder, staff attorney at the immigration law center.
More
than 75 percent of foreign-born residents live in states with tuition
equity across the board or at some major campuses, Broder said.
While
solid national statistics are not available on the impact on this, she
said it appears that significantly more undocumented students are
studying at state universities than just a few
years ago. In California, for example, university officials estimate
that 1,100 undocumented students study at the two most coveted campuses,
UCLA and UC Berkeley — four times as many as were enrolled before they
qualified for state financial aid beginning
in 2012.
Just
the hope of being able to afford to go to college may help reduce high
school dropout rates and create high school climates where “the
expectation is that everyone is at least thinking”
about applying to colleges, said Broder.
But restrictions seem firmly in place in some states, particularly in the Southeast.
Georgia
bans the enrollment of any undocumented students at its top five
campuses, including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, and
charges them higher out-of-state rates at its
other campuses — even if they’ve lived there for the period of time
required of other residents.
At
Georgia Southern University, that means $9,222 for tuition this year,
compared to $2,613 for people recognized as in-state residents.
Immigrant students lost their court challenge to this
rule.
In
the Atlanta area, an organization called the Freedom University offers
undocumented young people college-level classes along with SAT prep,
college counseling and financial support.
The
program is unaccredited, meaning that the credits can’t be transferred
or used toward a degree. But many of its students go on to attend
private colleges, often in other states, that
offer financial aid, said Laura Emiko Soltis, executive director of
Freedom University.
The result, she said: a “brain drain” out of Georgia.
“It’s
a loss for our state,” said Delgadillo. “It doesn’t make sense to me
how [state leaders] are OK with so many students going out of state and
then contributing to other states.”
That’s
precisely the reason six state senators have given for sponsoring a
bill, introduced in January, that would reverse Georgia’s restrictions
on undocumented immigrants.
When
Delgadillo graduated from high school in 2014, she said, she was priced
out of public colleges and even a private one in Georgia that offered
some aid, but not enough. Her father who
works on road construction and her homemaker mother don’t have the
money to pay for her tuition. So she’s been taking classes and getting
counseling at Freedom University, working at an ice cream store, and
applying to out-of-state private colleges. She hopes
to major in communications and media studies.
Many
private colleges and universities will admit and award aid to
undocumented students. But some categorize them as international
students, which means there can be significantly less aid
available compared to what U.S. citizens may receive, according to a
survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Meanwhile
at UCLA, Sanchez has benefitted greatly from financial aid. Without
such help, the UCLA freshman from Los Angeles said she probably would
have gone to a community college or worked
for a while to save money since her parents — her father is a janitor
and her mother is out of work — can’t afford to help much.
She said she wishes students nationwide could get similar support.
“They’ve
worked hard and are doing all the right things,” she said. “But solely
for the lack of documents, they are not able to afford their education.”
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