Immigrant students seek in-state tuition

Despite advance notice that no vote would be taken Tuesday, a full contingent of immigrant students and supporters turned out at a Senate committee, urging lawmakers to pass legislation granting in-state tuition for certain immigrants without legal status.

Senate Bill 44, sponsored by Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, would apply to immigrants accepted into the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

That program grants temporary deportation deferrals and work permits to immigrants who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children.

Currently, DACA recipients must pay more expensive outof-state tuition rates to attend schools in the University System of Georgia. The high costs have prevented many of them from attending colleges to which they were accepted, the students said.

In June, a Fulton County Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the University System’s policy. The case is being appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals.

Last week, Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, cited the pending lawsuit as a reason for not taking a committee vote. As proposed, the bill would not pass out of committee without some revisions, including requirements for those students to become eligible for the lower-cost tuition rate, Millar said.