Thread: New Jersey College Reportedly Votes to Charge Higher Rates t

New Jersey College Reportedly Votes to Charge Higher Rates to Illegal Immigrants

Published April 22, 2011

| FoxNews.com

A New Jersey college reportedly reversed a policy it approved just two months ago by voting Wednesday to charge illegal immigrants higher tuition rates than other students who live in the county.

The County College of Morris board of trustees voted 9 to 2 to charge undocumented immigrants out-of-state tuition, the Daily Record of Parsippany reports. The vote followed a meeting that lasted nearly four hours and included dozens of people and emotional testimony.

Chairwoman Elaine Johnson and Michael Van Allen were the only votes for the lower rates, the newspaper reports.

CCM’s trustees voted 7-1 in February to allow some undocumented students who live in Morris County into the school after 10 years of barring them admission. They also voted at the time to charge those students in-county tuition rates, according to the Daily Record.

Freeholders, meanwhile, had asked the trustees to reconsider, saying the board didn't want to supplement illegal immigrants' tuitions with taxpayer money.

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Lawsuit worries prompted reversal on college tuition for illegal immigrants
Trustees' chairwoman says board had been bullied
6:49 PM, Apr. 21, 2011

Written by
ABBOTT KOLOFF
STAFF WRITER

One County College of Morris trustee mentioned the prospect of being sued and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. Others said legal considerations played a part in their deliberations over tuition rates for illegal immigrants.

In the weeks leading up to their vote on Wednesday night, CCM's trustees had received letters from freeholders and a national conservative group called Judicial Watch saying they were violating federal laws. Concerns about those laws, and the possibility of lawsuits, seemed to spur a 9-2 vote to charge higher, out-of-state rates to undocumented students even if they live in the county.

The vote came at the end of a meeting in front of more than 200 people that lasted almost four hours and included emotional testimony from dozens of people on both sides of the issue.

After the vote, some undocumented students who said they could not afford out of state tuition rates had tears in their eyes. The vote reversed part of a policy that the same board approved, 7-1, just two months ago.

"I'm not in favor of defending in court a vote of ours that might cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees," trustee Alan Gordon said during the meeting.

Elaine Johnson, chairwoman of the trustees, voted with the minority and said she believed the trustees had been bullied, although she did not specify who was doing the bullying. She said the February vote to charge in-county tuition to undocumented students, many of whom have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, seemed simple at the time.

"Then the bigotry, hatred, threats and lies came," she said. "I realize bullying is so wrong. . . . There is no law that currently exists that makes the act we took (in February) illegal."

The CCM trustees voted on Feb. 26 to allow some undocumented students into the school — as long as they lived in the U.S. at least five years and were here before they were 16. They had been barred following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The trustees also voted to charge in-county tuition to students who live in Morris County.

That gave CCM a written policy similar to what many other county colleges are doing across the state without writing it down. A recent New Jersey Press Media survey found most county colleges, without adopting policies, check only whether students reside in their counties and not whether they are documented.

Morris County freeholders, saying they didn't want to support tuition breaks for illegal immigrants with taxpayer money, asked the CCM trustees to reconsider the lower tuition rates.

"I was pleased with the (Wednesday night) vote, and I also was pleased with the process," said Margaret Nordstom, a freeholder liaison to CCM.

Edward Yaw, president of CCM, said college attorneys in recent weeks had taken a closer look at relevant laws and court cases related to them, and that "the legal aspect" had been a driving factor for many of the trustees' apparent change of heart. Yaw had been in favor of the February policy but didn't take a position on Wednesday's amendment, other than to say it allows undocumented students to get an education. He did say laws related to tuition breaks for undocumented students are ambiguous.

"I still believe there's no law that prohibits the actions (that the board) previously took," Yaw said. "We felt all along the potential was there to be sued by one side or the other."

About one week before the vote, Judicial Watch sent a letter to Johnson saying CCM's policy adopted in February violated a 1996 federal law barring illegal immigrants from receiving "local public benefits" unless they are provided by state law. Judicial Watch has sued a Maryland school over in-county rates for undocumented students.

Paul Orfanedes, director of litigation for Judicial Watch, said his group is considering whether to continue the lawsuit now that Maryland has passed a law that, once signed, would make it the 11th state to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students. He said the letter to CCM was meant to clarify the law.

"If you think encouraging people to follow the law is bullying, then we are bullying," he said after being told Johnson had used the term "bullying" to describe some of the reaction to CCM's February policy change.

Alina Das, a professor with the New York University Law School Immigrant Rights Clinic, said the federal law does not "specifically prohibit" lower tuition rates. The NYU clinic has been giving legal direction to Wind of the Spirit, a local immigrant rights group.

Yaw said CCM might revisit the issue if additional court cases clarify related federal laws.

A related federal statute prohibits providing postsecondary benefits to illegal immigrants based on state residency if the same benefit isn’t available to legal residents. County freeholders have argued that means CCM would have been required to charge in-county rates to students from other states.

However, the California State Supreme Court recently ruled that the federal law didn’t preempt a state law allowing in-state tuition for undocumented students who graduate from California high schools. Judges said in their ruling that the state law is based on where students go to school and not on “residence,â€