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04-04-2012, 02:12 AM #1
Immigrant students urge Albany for tuition support
Currently, undocumented students cannot apply for state or federal aid
By Erica Pearson / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 1:17 AM
All spring, immigrant teens and college kids have been trekking by bus from New York City to Albany, urging lawmakers to make it easier for undocumented students to pay for college.
Next week, Woodside, Queens, student Jaqueline Cinto also plans to make the trip — only she’s going on foot.
“I think it will be a challenge,” she admitted. “It’s a lot of miles during the day.”
Cinto, 26, and nine other members of the New York State Youth Leadership Council are planning to log 12 miles a day, leaving on April 9 and arriving on the 16th.
“We figured we needed to do something symbolic,” said recent Brooklyn College grad Anayely Gomez, 24, who is organizing the long march.
“I think it’s really important because, in New York City, it’s more of a safe zone for undocumented youth,” she said. “Once you get upstate, it’s completely different. People are more afraid to come out as undocumented because they might get into deportation proceedings if they say something.”
The day after they arrive in Albany, they will lobby lawmakers about the New York State DREAM Act — introduced by Sen. Bill Perkins
(D-Harlem) and Assemblyman Guillermo Linares (D-Washington Heights) — that would open the state Tuition Assistance Program to all students, regardless of immigration status.
Currently, undocumented students cannot apply for state or federal aid.
Assemblyman Francisco Moya has introduced a second bill setting up a fundraising commission to provide private scholarships to all children of immigrants.
Both measures face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled state Senate.
Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Board of Regents have all voiced support for a state DREAM Act — proposed after a federal version died in the U.S. Senate.
But Assemblyman Dan Burling (R-Warsaw) and other critics have said the bills wrongly reward people who break the law to come into the country.
Cinto, who is getting her master’s in education at CUNY, said she fulfilled her family’s dream by being the first to graduate from college. But paying for school has been difficult.
“I know the challenges and struggles to find the money, to take semesters off to afford it,” she said. “I am walking because I don’t want high school students who are applying now to go through the same struggles.”
The walk is just the latest bid by immigrant activists to get attention from Albany.
Last month, cops arrested three students for blocking traffic at a New York DREAM Act rally in front of Gov. Cuomo’s Manhattan office. The governor has been mum on the measures so far.
Lehman College student Janet Perez, 20, College of Staten Island student Sara Martinez, 22, and Columbia University student Rosario Quiroz, 23, sat in the middle of Third Ave. and refused to leave. They were later charged with disorderly conduct and released.
“This is a step that we, as undocumented youth, had to take to put more pressure on Gov. Cuomo,” said organizer Daniela Alulema of the New York State Youth Leadership Council.
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04-04-2012, 04:46 AM #2“This is a step that we, as undocumented youth, had to take to put more pressure on Gov. Cuomo,” said organizer Daniela Alulema of the New York State Youth Leadership Council.
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