‘Dreamers’ in Arizona scramble to cover higher costs for college
Court ruling terminated in-state tuition benefit for undocumented immigrants
PHOENIX — David Montenegro worked part-time restaurant jobs and took advantage of Arizona’s lower in-state tuition as he labored through years of college. Now a senior and with his goal of becoming a teacher nearly in sight, the 29-year-old Mexico-born immigrant who arrived in the U.S. at age 11 faces a new hurdle.
Montenegro and more than 2,300 public college students around Arizona with deferred deportation status will have to pay thousands more for school in the fall under a state Supreme Court decision that deemed them ineligible for in-state tuition. Suddenly, they are scrambling to piece together private funding to continue their studies.
Students in the U.S. illegally cannot get federal funding, but there are private scholarships such as TheDream.US and Golden Doors Scholars for students covered by the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. Youths in the program are sometimes referred to as “Dreamers” after the DREAM Act, never-passed legislation that opponents say would reward people for breaking the law and encourage illegal immigration.
Montenegro said Arizona State University counselors helped him find modest funding from donors to finish his last year, and “I should be able to do it.”
But he and others said they fear a growing anti-immigrant bias in the U.S. under President Donald Trump, who has made tough immigration policies a key focus.
“It’s upsetting to know there are people out there trying to make our lives impossible,” Montenegro said.
Vasthy Lamadrid, another DACA recipient in ASU’s teaching program, acknowledged experiencing “a lot of anxiety and stress” after the decision. “Some students are freaking out, wondering if they need to move out of state or find other funding,” the 22-year-old said.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office sued the Maricopa Community College District in 2013, saying that extending in-state tuition to DACA recipients violated a 2006 voter initiative that requires people to have lawful immigration status to get public benefits.
The state Supreme Court ruled in April that state and federal law do not allow DACA recipients to get Arizona’s in-state tuition because they are not lawfully present in the U.S.
Although federal law does not prevent unauthorized immigrants from attending public universities, state laws vary on whether those who graduated from state high schools get in-state tuition rates. The National Conference of State Legislatures says 20 states offer in-state tuition to unauthorized immigrants.
In New Mexico, Western New Mexico University has used social media to woo high-achieving immigrants, extending in-state tuition to DACA recipients from Arizona, Colorado and El Paso.
The annual tuition for an estimated 300 DACA recipients at Arizona’s three public universities will rise from about $10,000 to $15,000 under a policy of charging non-citizen residents 150 percent of in-state tuition. Some 2,000 students with DACA status at the Maricopa County Community College District, the largest in Arizona, will see annual costs for a full-time course load jump from about $2,580 to $8,900.
Some students are attending private schools such as Arizona’s Prescott College, which has actively recruited DACA recipients, including 19-year-old freshman Itzel Rios Soto.
“When I got a scholarship, I broke down crying because it was the answer to my family’s prayers,” said Rios, whose tuition at the small liberal arts school is covered by its Freedom Education Fund.
After the court decision, Prescott College announced it would match Arizona state universities’ resident tuition rates for immigrants in the country illegally.
“They were brought here involuntarily, and this is the only country they know,” college President John Flicker said then. “Our state and our nation will be better if we educate them, not force them into the shadows.”