El Pueblo to Push In-State Tuition for Illegals in NC Today!
4/6/2005
By PATRICK WINN, Staff Writer
Raleigh News & Observer
Topics: Illegal Aliens, College Scholarships, laws, border patrol, republicans, democrats, legislation
About nine years ago, Jackie -- who doesn't want her last name used for fear of deportation -- feigned sleep in the back seat of a car as a man she didn't know drove her into the United States from Mexico.
Read the latest headlines about illegal immigration.
She kept her eyes closed at the border crossing, even as her baby brother wet himself in her lap. The man her father paid to smuggle Jackie and her two brothers said guards probably wouldn't ask questions of three sleeping children. The man passed off some phony documents, and the car rolled into Texas.
Though the nine years since then have not made Jackie's life here any more legal, they have certainly made her more American.
Nearly 17, she's a junior at a Triangle high school who speaks smooth English, makes A's and B's and belongs to several campus extracurricular groups.
By any standard, Jackie is college material. But with her senior year only a summer away, she is scared.
A web of state, federal and university system policies keeps college entry out of reach for all but a slim margin of high school grads who lack citizenship documents.
"I'm worried I'll end up like my parents and take any job they'll give me," Jackie said.
Students with her predicament are a major focus of this morning's Latino Day, a rally at the General Assembly in downtown Raleigh. It's a push by dozens of groups and citizens to sway lawmakers toward policies that are friendly to Hispanics in the state.
They're asking legislators to help change laws that keep colleges from offering in-state tuition -- which is often one-third the cost of out-of-state tuition -- to students without citizenship documents. Such a change would make college accessible to an estimated 1,300 students in North Carolina, according to El Pueblo Inc., a Raleigh-based Hispanic advocacy group.
"We shouldn't punish kids just because their parents brought them here illegally," said Andrea Bazan-Manson, El Pueblo's director and top lobbyist. "They speak with a Southern accent. They're into Carolina basketball. They're more comfortable speaking English than Spanish. They're part of our state now."
Post-high school education has become more available to students without citizenship papers in recent years. In November, the 16-campus University of North Carolina system agreed to accept the applications of undocumented students. As of August, state community colleges will be able to enroll them as well.
But so far, North Carolina's colleges are barred from offering them in-state tuition. A federal immigration law forces a financially unfeasible scenario on any college openly offering in-state fees to illegal immigrants. If it gives in-state tuition to undocumented students, it must offer the same rate to all students, legal or illegal, even those from other states.
In some states, momentum is gaining for bills that would grant in-state status solely to undocumented high school graduates who meet strict conditions.
Shutting others out?
According to advocates, giving undocumented teenagers a shot at a college degree will inject more talent into the state's labor pool. Barring them, they say, penalizes young people who had no choice but to follow their parents to North Carolina.
But opponents of the act note that the state's public universities can't even hold all the qualified students with North Carolina citizenship.
"For every illegal student they allow, that's one less North Carolinian that can go," said Ron Woodard of N.C. Listen, an immigration reform group based in Cary. "Should we honestly be saying, 'Don't punish the child's illegal parent, punish the North Carolinian?' "
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