Betsy DeVos Blocks Emergency Aid For “Undocumented” Students
By Brock Simmons
Published April 22, 2020 at 8:30pm
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Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, announced on Tuesday that “undocumented” students will not be eligible for emergency aid.
Many of these students are from the DACA program, and are, for some reason, eligible for all sorts of student aid.
Politico reports:
The Trump administration on Tuesday prohibited undocumented college students from receiving emergency federal cash assistance for expenses like food, child care and housing.
The economic rescue law passed by Congress gives $6 billion to colleges to dole out to students for expenses stemming from the disruption on campuses caused by the pandemic. But Education Department officials in new guidance said the money can go only to students who qualify for federal financial aid — U.S. citizens and some legal permanent residents.
That prevents undocumented students from accessing the money, although the law includes no explicit restrictions on which students could receive the emergency grants.
The group that won’t receive assistance includes hundreds of thousands of members of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has provided work authorization and deportation protections for undocumented people who were illegally brought to the United States as children or overstayed a visa. The Supreme Court is considering whether the program should continue and is expected to issue a decision by June.
The policy says that students must have filed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid — or at least be eligible to file the form, known as the FAFSA — in order to be eligible for the emergency aid. Undocumented students are not eligible for most types of financial aid provided by the federal government, though they qualify for assistance under some state-based financial aid programs.
Of course liberal heads are exploding, as Daily Kos spins it:
Education secretary and astroturf protester backer Betsy DeVos has gone out of her way to block Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and other undocumented students from emergency pandemic funding the department received, Politico reports. That $6 billion is intended to assist students with expenses like childcare and housing, “but Education Department officials in new guidance said the money can go only to students who qualify for federal financial aid—U.S. citizens and some legal permanent residents.”
Luz Chavez Gonzales, a junior at Trinity Washington University, said DeVos’ “cruel” move affects her entire family. “Since the outbreak of COVID-19, I’ve become the sole provider of my household since my parents and younger siblings lost their jobs,” she said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “We’ve had to cut back and budget on essential items. DACA allows me to work, and with a health crisis and the uncertainty of an upcoming DACA Supreme Court ruling, my family could lose their only source of income.”
Education advocates like National Education Association slammed the department’s guidance, calling it a “heartless decision” and continued agenda of “division, xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants.” Much of the nation is on pause right now as a matter of public health, but if there’s one thing the Trump administration won’t halt right now, it’s being hateful.
Common Dreams also put their own spin on the story:
Immigrant rights groups on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration’s decision to block undocumented students from a $6 billion aid program that the Education Department unveiled earlier this month, calling the exclusion needlessly “cruel.”
Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, called the move “cruel and outrageous.”
Vanita Gupta
✔
@vanitaguptaCR
Cruel and outrageous. Why are you doing this, @BetsyDeVosED? https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...nts-aid-199465 …
3:28 PM - Apr 21, 2020
The Education Department’s new rule was issued two months before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down a ruling on whether the DACA program should continue.
As Cristina Jimenez, co-founder of youth-led immigrant rights group United We Dream, wrote on social media, DeVos’s guidance is just one of several attacks on immigrants by the Trump administration since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Cristina Jiménez
✔
@CrisAlexJimenez
Just today:
-Trump announces immigration order to suspend green cards, impacting millions
-Devos bars undocumented students from emergency aid
-Congress agrees on another stimulus that excludes immigrants in a pandemic
Yep, this is what’s like to be an immigrant underTrump
6:29 PM - Apr 21, 2020
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/202...nted-students/
DeVos Blocks DACA Students From Coronavirus Emergency Grant Aid
April 21, 2020
Wesley Whistle
When Congress passed the CARES Act to provided relief from the coronavirus impact, it sent about $14 billion to institutions of higher education to address the unique impact the virus has had on college campuses. Half of the money sent to institutions must be in the form of emergency grant aid directly to students to address living expenses such as housing, food, health care, and more.
Colleges and universities had been waiting for the Department of Education to release guidance to detail how exactly schools could allocate the grant money, including who is eligible. Today, Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department released new guidance to address that and more.
In the guidance, DeVos chose to limit the students eligible for the grant aid to those eligible for federal student financial aid — meaning U.S. citizens and some noncitizens. This means that undocumented immigrants participating in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—also known as DACA—created in the Obama Administration will not be eligible for these emergency grants.
The Department’s spokesperson said, “the CARES Act makes clear that this taxpayer funded relief fund should be targeted to US citizens, which is consistently echoed throughout this law.” Aside from the fact that DACA students are taxpayers themselves, the CARES Act did not prohibit DACA students from receiving this emergency aid.
This aid is also not considered normal federal financial student aid. And that is something that Secretary DeVos recognized by excluding it from the 90-10 rule – a rule that limits the share of federal student aid dollars that make up for-profit colleges’ revenues. It is unclear why this distinction is made when it comes to these undocumented students participating in the DACA program, but not in other areas.
Some believe this exclusion is due to federal legislation from the 1990s that prohibited those who immigrated illegally from receiving federal benefits. But neither the DACA program not the CARES Act money existed at the time. The Department could have remained silent on the issue but did not.
The coronavirus will impact these students just as much as other students, if not more. Institutions will hopefully act to help these students or others will hopefully step up to meet their needs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wesleyw.../#38675f54762a
