http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_4086966

States opening up financial support
Nation: Immigrants getting access to aid for education.
By Juliana Barbassa, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - When he started high school, Matias Bernal's English was so limited he stumbled over the words for numbers and colors. Four years later, he was on the wait list at Princeton.

But Bernal is an illegal immigrant from Mexico City. Without access to financial aid, grants and most scholarships, he had to push aside the Ivy League brochures and prepare to attend Fresno State, where he can live with family and pay tuition with money from jobs he's not supposed to have.

"I was crushed," he said.

Some 65,000 illegal immigrants graduate from American high schools each year. With partisan Washington hopelessly deadlocked over immigration, many states have been taking matters into their own hands.

Legislatures from Arizona to Wyoming have passed 56 laws affecting immigrants this year - most of them cracking down on foreigners - but access to higher education seems to be one area where immigrants have been inching forward.

Nebraska just joined nine other states, including California, Texas, New York and Illinois, that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at their public institutions. Although there are states with large immigrant populations, such as Florida, that have seen similar laws fail, the majority of undocumented students in the U.S. can already count on paying the same tuition as the citizens who sit next to them in class.

California legislators are now seeking to take the next step and join Texas and other states that allow undocumented students to apply for financial aid from the state when they attend California schools.

This state-by-state approach is better than nothing, supporters said, but it leaves a lot of gaps, helping some and shutting out other students in neighboring states who could do just as well if they could afford to go to school.

Five years ago, federal legislators first introduced a measure that would have filled in the gaps.

The DREAM act, as it's known, sought to allow illegal immigrants who graduate from U.S. high schools to become temporary residents, eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid, as long as they pursued higher education. If they met these requirements, and stayed out of trouble, they could become legal residents.

It never came up for debate. Although it's been reintroduced every year since, the DREAM act inevitably becomes tangled in the politicized immigration rhetoric of Capitol Hill, said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., one of the bill's sponsors.

"It's gotten caught up in the larger immigration debate," said Diaz-Balart. "It's unfortunate - this is a fairness issue with regard to hardworking, studious people."

Although measures that make education more accessible often garner bipartisan support, such as the DREAM act, any move to improve the lot of people who are here illegally is still very controversial.

Opponents argue that every seat taken in a classroom by someone like Bernal means one less seat for others.

"There are other victims here," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that seeks to stop illegal immigration. "If we admit someone who is here illegally, we're saying no to someone else."

Some universities, including the University of California system, have publicly supported the measure, saying they're interested mainly in getting the best students they can, whatever their immigration status.