The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Emory to help immigrant students

Scholarshi­ps to private university could lead to more financial aid.

- By Jeremy Redmon jredmon@ajc.com and Janel Davis jhdavis@ajc.com

Immigrants without legal status have demonstrat­ed for years against Georgia rules that bar them from attending some of the state’s top universiti­es and paying in-state tuition at others.

They’ve sued Georgia’s Board of Regents, lobbied at the state Capitol and staged acts of civil disobedien­ce, seeking to reverse the state’s policies. All without success.

But they are now cheering a victory outside of the state’s University System, a win they hope will boost their momentum.

Emory University, a private research university, recently announced it would offer scholarshi­ps to students who qualify for a special reprieve

from deportatio­n through the Obama administra­tion’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Emory’s move is significan­t because DACA recipients don’t qualify for federal student aid.

There are still many unanswered questions, including where the money will come from, how much will be available for each student to cover Emory’s steep annual tuition — now at $44,400 — and how many students the university expects to apply for it. The university, however, said it would use “private, nongovernm­ental resources” to aid the students, starting with the class entering this fall.

With its announceme­nt, Emory joins the ranks of many other private colleges and universiti­es that admit DACA recipients and give them financial aid, including Dartmouth College, the University of Notre Dame and Tufts University.

Valentina Garcia, a native of Uruguay who graduated last year from Berkmar High School in Lilburn, applauded Emory’s move, saying she hopes the university will become a trendsette­r in the South. She is among 19,883 immigrants living in Georgia who have been accepted into the DACA program, which is aimed at young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, attend school here and have no felony conviction­s.

Garcia said she would have applied to the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech if the state didn’t bar students like her from attending them. She is instead enrolling this fall at Dartmouth, where she wants to study medicine. She said her younger brother, a Berkmar freshman who plans to apply for DACA, could benefit from Emory’s decision.

“This gives us hope,” said Garcia, who joined a coalition of Emory students and others in pushing for the change at the university. “This is an amazing win for the undocument­ed student movement.”

Supporters of Emory’s decision say Georgia’s efforts to restrict access to its state universiti­es are self-defeating. They point out that state taxpayers have invested in students such as Garcia by giving them a public school education. They also say such students could contribute more to Georgia’s economy if they were able to attend colleges here.

Shawn Hanley, the vice chairman of Georgia’s Immigratio­n Enforcemen­t Review Board, said he doesn’t agree with Emory’s decision and wants to learn more about what it intends to do. Noting Emory is a private institutio­n, Hanley said he is particular­ly concerned about granting immigrants without legal status access to taxpayer-supported universiti­es.

“I certainly don’t like to see undocument­ed (people) get rewarded in any way within the private or public arena,” said Hanley, whose board is aimed at cracking down on government officials who don’t comply with Geor- gia’s immigratio­n laws. “It is not something I would support if I was sitting on the Emory board or if I was an active influencer within the Emory alumni community.”

Georgia’s University System prevents DACA recipients from attending any institutio­n that has not enrolled all of its academical­ly qualified applicants for the previous two years. That prohibitio­n now applies to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia State, Georgia Regents and Georgia College and State universiti­es. The system also bars these students from paying in-state tuition, which is about three times lower than the out-of-state rate.

A spokesman for the Board of Regents said that Emory’s announceme­nt would have no impact on the regents’ policy.

A group of 39 DACA recipients has resumed its legal fight against the state’s in-state tuition policy. It filed an appeal Wednesday with the Georgia Supreme Court after losing at the state Court of Appeals and Fulton County Superior Court. Both of the lower courts ruled sovereign immunity shields Georgia’s Board of Regents from such lawsuits.

Observers say the board may have given the plaintiffs a legal opening in March when it voted to allow residents in neighborin­g states to pay in-state tuition in Georgia. The initiative is aimed at helping South Georgia colleges that have declining enrollment­s.

“The Board of Regents’ new policy granting in-state tuition to outof-state students certainly smells of unfairness to Georgia resident DACA recipients, and may give rise to an equal protection claim in federal court,” Charles Kuck, the attorney representi­ng the plaintiffs in the case, said in an email. “We continue to explore all our options.”

The Board of Regents’ spokesman cited the board’s original policy on in-state tuition for out-ofstate students, which included a provision that says “no person who is unable to show by the required evidence that they are lawfully in the United States shall be eligible for any waiver of the tuition differenti­al.”

Twenty-one states now allow students without legal status to pay in-state tuition, according to the National Conference of State Legislatur­es. Lawmakers in eight other states, including Georgia, have introduced bills this year to make that happen. Georgia’s Senate Bill 44, however, never got out of committee during the legislativ­e session that ended last week.

As immigrant-rights activists campaigned for SB 44 and fought in court, Emory students — including Hannah Finnie, Julianna Joss and Andy Kim — pushed for changes at their university. They wrote opinion pieces for the student newspaper, held panel discussion­s on campus and met repeatedly with Emory’s administra­tion. The students teamed up with DACA recipients and Laura Emiko Soltis, executive director of Freedom University, a nonprofit organizati­on that offers tuitionfre­e college-level courses to students such as Garcia. And while they were all celebratin­g their success at Emory this week, they said they had more work to do.

“This announceme­nt is a game-changer in Georgia,” said Soltis, an Emory alumna. “Freedom University and undocument­ed students are going to continue to urge other private universiti­es in this state to follow Emory’s really courageous example.”

 ??  ?? Valentina Garcia:“This is an amazing win for the undocument­ed student movement.”
Valentina Garcia:“This is an amazing win for the undocument­ed student movement.”

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