Court Rulings Help Illegal Immigrants’ College-Bound
Children
Published: September 5, 2012 - New York Times
Several states with financial difficulties have moved
quietly in recent years to reduce spending on college education by denying low
tuition rates and financial aid to American citizens who are the children of
illegal immigrants.
But in separate decisions over the past month, courts
in New Jersey and Florida have rebuffed those efforts, adding new limits to the
measures state officials can take to crack down on illegal immigrants by denying
benefits to them and their families.
The latest ruling came on Friday from a federal court
in Florida, which threw out state regulations defining American children of
parents without legal immigration
status as out-of-state residents, ineligible for tuition breaks given to state
residents at public colleges and universities. Tuition for out-of-state students
can be as much as three times as high as the rate for residents.
The five students who brought the lawsuit against
Florida education officials were born in this country. They had been living in
Florida for most or all of their lives and had graduated from public high
schools there.
One student, Noel Saucedo, was born in Florida in 1991
and graduated from a high school there in 2010. But according to the suit, he
was not even able to complete his application to Florida International
University, one of the leading four-year schools in the state system, because he
could not provide proof that his parents were legal residents of the United
States.
Mr. Saucedo was offered a full scholarship to Miami
Dade College, a two-year school, the lawsuit said. But when he could not show
that his parents had legal immigration status, he was deemed to be an
out-of-state resident. His scholarship was reduced and his tuition was raised,
so he could not afford to go to college full time.
Florida’s regulations were adopted in 2010 and 2011,
with the most recent coming under Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who took office
in January of last year.
In a broad decision, Judge K. Michael Moore of Federal
District Court in Miami found the regulations unconstitutional because they
“create a second-tier status of U.S. citizenship,” by denying benefits to the
students in the lawsuit that were freely available to other Americans.
The policy “does not advance any legitimate state
interest,” the judge wrote, while it hindered Florida’s goal of “furthering
educational opportunities for its own residents.” The lawsuit was brought by the
Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
Policies to deny college assistance to American
children of illegal-immigrant parents build on efforts by many states to deny
aid to immigrant students who themselves are here illegally. But they have
attracted far less attention than other state immigration laws, even though they
affect thousands of Americans in Florida alone.
“Legally, the issue is straightforward,” said Michael
A. Olivas, a professor of immigration and education law at the University of
Houston. “These children are citizens. These are not kids whose status is at
issue at all. The provisions are struck down on plain vanilla equal-protection
grounds.”
Lawyers said many American students had been reluctant
to challenge the policies for fear of exposing their parents to the possibility
of deportation.
That was the situation of an American student, now 18,
who brought a challenge anonymously, under the initials A. Z., to financial aid
laws in New Jersey. A. Z. had been living in the state with her mother, an
illegal immigrant from Guatemala, since 1997. After graduating from high school
with honors, she was accepted at a four-year state college, according to
Alexander Shalom, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who helped
bring the lawsuit.
A. Z. applied for state financial aid based on her
mother’s yearly income of $4,950. Her application was denied by New Jersey
education officials “because your parents are not legal residents,” they wrote,
under a policy put in effect in 2005.
In a ruling on Aug. 8, a New Jersey state appeals
court rejected that decision. “She is a citizen,” three justices found, adding
that the record clearly showed that A. Z. had also shown “lengthy and continuous
residence” in New Jersey.
“Here is a citizen being denied rights and privileges
because of who her parent is,” Mr. Shalom said. “We think that’s decidedly
un-American.” She plans to reapply for the aid next year, he said.
In California, state officials agreed in 2007 to
settle a similar lawsuit, putting an end to policies there that denied residency
to American students with parents in the country illegally.