Financial aid for children of undocumented immigrants
Washington State just passed a law yesterday allowing children of illegal immigrants access to state grants and financial aid for higher education. This law is extremely important for Washington’s ever growing Hispanic immigrant population.
The affected group still has to overcome some hurdles though. They have to go through three years of high school to qualify for aid as opposed to just living in the US for a year.
An interesting part of this was that this bill was created by a bipartisan coalition of policymakers. While Republicans elsewhere often are very hostile when it comes to immigration, Republicans here passed a very pro-immigration bill. It probably has to do with the fact that because of the increasing number of immigrants, Republicans know they will lose office if they hold on to their old-fashioned beliefs.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-26/news/sns-rt-us-usa-immigration-washingtonstate-20140226_1_financial-aid-state-grants-new-mexico
Thomas, what’s happening in New York regarding in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants?
Also, to clarify, this applies to children of undocumented immigrants who were born outside of the US. Most children of undocumented immigrants, however, are US citizens because they were born here.
Does this mean that any child of undocumented parents can go to Washington after studying high school for three years in any state or does it have to be in Washington itself ?
They mean residency in Washington State for 3 years, not in another state. For US citizens and permanent residents (green card), students would only have to live in Washington State for 1 year before becoming eligible for financial aid.
The article says that this is the fifth state to pass a law like this, following California, Illinois, Texas and New Mexico.
Most surprising is the fact that Texas was one of the first, given its history of conservative policy. I’d have to look into it more, but I don’t think that the Republicans in Texas passed a law like this in order to secure office. Especially since its Texas.
You know, surprisingly, Texas has some relatively immigrant-friendly policies. Most people think George W. Bush was better for immigrants than President Obama, and he was a TX governor. Texas has a lot of immigrants who vote.
In NY, undocumented students can pay in-state tuition if they went to high school in NY state.
This just happened: http://gothamist.com/2014/03/18/a_nightmare_ny_state_senate_kills_d.php
The DREAM Act did not pass in NY, which means that although undocumented students can pay in-state tuition, they remain ineligible for financial aid.
One pet-peeve of mine is when Republicans or Democrats are accused of doing something in order to secure more votes – and often it is Republicans accused of this when really it is both sides playing the same game.
My issue with this is that it carries connotations of forgery and deceit to garner more votes – and while this may be true in part – it is also probably true that the politicians want their particular plan to pass because they believe in it – not just for more votes – and this is true for both parties.
I do not fully understand the intricacies of the party lines but as professor Aptekar has said, many people think Bush was better on his immigration policy than Obama. Many claim that Obama has deported more immigrants than Bush but this is because under Bush many people were not removed or deported. To be deported means to be technically recorded and go through a procession of events. Under Bush, the policy was geared more towards what were classified as returns. Returns were not classified as removals. Obama, in trying to do things more by the book, has far fewer returns and far more removals. In either case the amount of those deported ranges from 800 thousand to 1.8 million with Obama actually removing less people overall, though generally the same amount.
All of this is only to say that both parties are simply trying to do their best; to say that one is doing their job for votes implies this is a distinctive quality of the party – when it is not – it is a distinctive quality of politics.