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Access Denied:

Undocumented Students and Policy Reform in 2009
by Daniel J. Hurley

MARIA IS A HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR WITH AN OUTSTANDING GPA AND GOOD SAT scores. Her inventory of academic accomplishments and civic contributions is well stocked and includes roles in student government and volunteering as an after-hours math tutor: all assets that would seem to set the affable 18-year-old on a path toward achieving her long held aspiration to attend college and become a pediatric nurse. Maria expresses her happiness and gives her full support to her friends and classmates as they make plans for fall arrival on college campuses across her state. Her external well wishes, however, are tempered by her own internal sorrow; Maria will be staying home this fall, unable to afford the considerably higher—but legally required—out-of-state tuition prices at the public college she had hoped to attend, a result of her being brought to the U.S. illegally by her parents at age four.

Maria’s story is among an untold number, in which undocumented college student aspirants are either barred from attending or are prevented from doing so due to the increased financial barriers that come with “undocumented” status. Their stories reflect a “cancer of hopelessness,” as one Colorado legislator describes it, among young adults with much ambition and aptitude, but little hope, who face the prospect of a life consigned to working menial jobs, and are destined to a permanent underclass.

Free access to public kindergarten through high school is provided to children who are in the country illegally, an entitlement affirmed in a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe. Federal law with respect to postsecondary education, however, is less clear. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits states from providing a “postsecondary education benefit” to undocumented students that is not also offered to any other U.S. citizens, regardless of their residency in a given state. This provision is central to the debate over postsecondary education access for undocumented students, specifically whether they can be eligible to receive in-state, resident tuition rates.

In order to facilitate the college aspirations of motivated and academically high-achieving immigrant students, California lawmakers passed legislation in 2001 providing for in-state tuition rates for undocumented students. The stipulations: eligible students must graduate from and have attended a California high school for at least three years and sign an affidavit indicating their intent to gain permanent legal residency. Since then, nine other states have passed similar legislation: Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington.

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