The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
The case known as Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, et al., is the first by a state court to find that a law providing in-state tuition to nonresidents violated the 1996 federal statute, which holds that immigrants who are not legally in the United States cannot be eligible based on their residence in a state for "any post-secondary benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit."
The California law, enacted in 2001, allows students who attended California high schools for at least three years, including undocumented immigrants, to pay the lower tuition rate that California residents pay. Undocumented immigrants receiving the exemption must also promise to actively seek U.S. citizenship.
The plaintiffs' case centered on the question of whether high-school attendance could legally replace the residency requirement for receiving in-state tuition. The appeals court said it could not, finding that the state's approach violated federal law. The lawsuit, which sought class action status, was brought by out-of-state students against California's three public higher education systems: the University of California, California State University, and the community colleges.
The University of California said it offered 1,639 exemptions under the tuition law in the 2006-7 academic year. Students classified as "potential undocumented" immigrants received 271 of those. Most of the other exemptions went to students whose families had recently moved to California. Community colleges offered an estimated 19,300 exemptions, with about 90 percent of those believed to be undocumented immigrants.
Related issues, involving whether undocumented immigrants can attend public universities, have cropped up in Arkansas and North Carolina. The North Carolina community-college system recently banned undocumented immigrants from attending its institutions, while the Arkansas attorney general ruled last week that state and federal law did not prohibit undocumented immigrants from attending state institutions.
Doesnt this ruling contradict the pending Federal DREAM act?
2 comments:
If the federal DREAM Act passes it would make this ruling ineffective or the plaintiff's argument moot in court because the federal Dream Act (as it is written now) strikes down the statute, the ONLY statute that gives or may give these plaintiffs legal standing. (8 U.S.C. § 1623)
Btw - you want to exchange links? I am a pro-migrant post-graduate student blogger in California.
Cheers,
Prerna
My blog post on this is here
http://prernalal.com/2008/09/16/making-college-less-accessible-for-immigrant-students-one-lawsuit-at-a-time/
P.S. I am actually quite interested in your research as well seeing that it seems quite relevant to my own life and the live of a lot of students I know.
Drop me a line when you have time.
Email - prerna@prernalal.com
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