Thread: AZ: Graduation is so close, yet so far

http://www.statepress.com/issues/2007/02/22/news/699906

Graduation is so close, yet so far
Prop. 300 may force illegal immigrant students to abandon their studies

by Matt Stone
published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007

They have GPAs higher than 3.7, full tuition waivers, participate in ASU activities and want nothing more than a degree - but next fall it could all be erased for these two Sun Devils because they're illegal immigrants.

Proposition 300 passed in November, making illegal immigrants ineligible to receive in-state tuition or tuition waivers.

For a 20-year-old business junior and a 19-year-old electrical engineering sophomore, this law leaves them in limbo about whether they will be able to finish school.

The junior requested to be called David and the sophomore to be called Joel to conceal their identities.

"I didn't really by my own free will decide to come here - I was told to come here," said Joel, who came to the United States from Mexico in 1998. "I just said OK because that's what my parents told me to do."

It was the prospect of a better education and job opportunities that led Joel's family to attempt crossing the border - getting caught three times before succeeding, he said.

David's mother took him across the border with the same intent in mind, he said.

"We literally hopped the fence," David said, who crossed the border from Mexico when he was about 2 or 3. "I just remember this big, ominous black wall."

Both David and Joel excelled in school. David was the top in his class and was accepted to Stanford University - though he was unable to attend because of the cost, he said.

But both students were able to get full tuition waivers to ASU with help from their high schools.

Because school officials knew the two were illegal, they used contacts at ASU to push the applications through the screening processes, David said.

But in the fall, the waivers could be a thing of the past, as ASU plans to toughen those screening methods.

Proposition 300 doesn't change the ability for a student to be admitted to the University, said Mistalene Calleroz, assistant vice president of University Student Initiatives.

"It determines whether a student is considered a resident of Arizona for tuition purposes," Calleroz said in an e-mail.

With the new guidelines, student documentation would be required for in-state tuition, she added.

Still, while the two could still attend, the changes to the price of their education would make it impossible, David said.

"There's a real possibility that all of a sudden, three years of schooling is literally going to go down the drain," David said.

Since they came to the United States, Joel and David said they have tried to stay under the radar, using phony social security cards, fake IDs for work and looking for jobs that don't check papers.

"A lot of limits constantly remind me that I am an undocumented student on a daily basis," David said. "But I have found a way around a lot of those things."

These hardships aside, David and Joel said they don't mind paying the price if they have a shot at an education.

"I understand peoples' frustrations with the immigration problems," David said. "But my mother files taxes using her false social security number."

Becoming U.S. citizens is unlikely, since they are here illegally and would have to return to Mexico before they could start the long application process, David said.

The best chance they have is for the screening to be delayed in court or for the DREAM Act to be passed, David said.

The DREAM Act would override the proposition, leaving it up to individual state attorney generals to decide who receives in-state tuition.

During a visit from several U.S. House representatives Monday, Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., said a bill could be introduced in early March that would include the DREAM Act.

But if Proposition 300 isn't delayed, David and Joel said they would try to work for a few years and save enough to come back and finish their educations.

"We're like anyone else," David said. "It's just a legal technicality that differentiates us."

In the end, David and Joel said all they want is the opportunity for an education, a job and to contribute to American society.

Reach the reporter at: matthew.g.stone@asu.edu.

This is a variation on the pro-H-1b stories we hear whenever that issue is in the works as far as backroom politics is concerned. The same template is used: "Here is this superhumanly wonderful individual, who only wants to save America's bacon, yet our stupid laws are going to alienate him and cost us his invaluable assistance."

Maybe if we come up with a catchy name for this type of journalism and start calling the reporters on it out in public?