Sen. Joyce Elliott pushes (again) for a bill to extend in-state tuition to undocumented students.
STIck IT Where The Sun DoeS ShIne
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BY DAVID KOON
urrently, 12 states — including Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts — have laws that extend in-state tuition to undocumented students. Most were put in place since the federal DREAM (Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors) Act — which would have established temporary legal residency for undocumented students who came to the country as minors and who were pursuing higher education or military service — was first introduced in Congress in 2001. Variations on the DREAM Act have been considered by Congress at least five times since then, but none has passed, with the failures mostly due to Republican concerns that it would constitute an amnesty program. In response to the DREAM Act stalemate and stories of young immigrants being arrested and deported to countries they only knew as children or infants, the Obama administration announced their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) plan last summer. The plan, which began accepting applications last August, allows young people brought to the U.S. when they were under the age of 16 who are currently in school or high school graduates to request a temporary two-year exemption from deportation and apply for a work permit and a Social Security number. As of January 2013, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had accepted 394,533 applications for Deferred Action, though Pew Hispanic Research recently estimated there are up to 1.7 million undocumented students in the U.S. who are potentially eligible for the program. Though Deferred Action has allowed many undocumented students to emerge from the shadows and talk about their
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BRIAN CHILSON
BRIAN CHILSON
‘A HUMAN SHOP LOCAL ISSUE’
experiences in public for the first time, there is still the barrier of economics, including the requirement that undocumented residents brought to Arkansas as children pay out-of-state tuition. In Arkansas, one legislator working to close at least part of the tuition gap for undocumented students is Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock). Elliott is drafting a bill that would extend in-state tuition rates to any student who has gone to school in Arkansas for three years and who graduates or receives a GED, regardless of immigration status. For undocumented CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
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FEBRUARY 21, 2013
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