The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: in state tuition
Veterans Win In-State Tuition Benefit

Veterans Win In-State Tuition Benefit

By Adrienne Lu, Stateline.org

As president of the Collegiate Veterans Association at Florida State University, Abby Kinch often heard from veterans who ran into a stumbling block before they even started their college careers.

Veterans new to the state who enrolled at Florida State soon discovered they had to pay out-of-state tuition for their first year –– an additional $15,000. (By the second year, they had lived in the state long enough to have established residency.) For some, that meant the difference between attending college or not. For many others, it meant the burden of student loans they hadn’t planned on.

In May, however, Florida joined a growing list of states that have made it easier for veterans to qualify for in-state tuition. And starting next year, recent veterans in every state should be able take advantage of in-state tuition rates, thanks to a little-publicized provision in a $16 billion federal law signed by President Barack Obama this month.

Aimed primarily at improving veterans’ access to health care, the law allows any veteran who has served at least 90 days of active service to pay resident tuition rates in any state within three years of leaving the military. The law also covers spouses and dependent children of veterans meeting certain criteria. Effective July 1, 2015, the law would apply to any public college or university receiving federal funding through the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

In 2013-14, the average in-state published tuition and fees at public colleges was $8,893, compared with $22,203 out of state.

“I think that because student veterans spent their careers defending the United States, it’s important to welcome them back to the United States with an education wherever they would like to study, not just in their home of record,” said Kinch, who spent more than two years working for the passage of the Florida legislation.

Veterans and veterans’ advocates applaud the measure, which will help alleviate the problem of veterans failing to qualify for in-state tuition after leaving the military because they have been required to move for their service. But others wonder what the change will cost state colleges and universities, and what the effect might be on tuition or services, which may be impossible to know until veterans start taking advantage of the new law.

More than 1 million people have attended college with the help of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which covers most in-state tuition costs and fees in a veteran’s state of residency. In the next few years, 1.5 million more veterans will be discharged from the military, and about a third are expected to use GI Bill to attend college, according to Wayne Robinson, president of Student Veterans of America, a nonprofit coalition of student veterans groups on college campuses.

Suzanne Hultin, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures, said at least 32 states already offer veterans resident tuition rates. Many states have adopted legislation in recent years. In some states, such as Alaska and Georgia, public university systems have created such policies.

The rules vary across states. Some require veterans to declare or establish residency, some cover only veterans who have been honorably discharged and some call for veterans to live within the state throughout their enrollment in college, for example. Rules for spouses and dependents also differ across state lines.

Washington was among the states that enacted legislation this year to remove a waiting period for veterans to be eligible to pay resident tuition. The state is home to the largest naval station on the West Coast, on Whidbey Island, as well as Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which joined the Army’s Fort Lewis and the Air Force’s McChord Air Force Base.

“I hope that we will keep our veterans and their families when they separate from the military here,” said state Sen. Barbara Bailey, the Republican who sponsored the legislation. “They are great members of our communities.”

In North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, this year proposed a $5 million scholarship fund for the state university system to cover the gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition for veterans, as well as a waiver granting veterans in-state tuition rates for community colleges. The legislature ultimately approved $5.8 million for public colleges and universities, including community colleges, to participate in the federal Yellow Ribbon Program, which provides schools matching federal funds to cover part of the gap between in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition or tuition at private institutions.

Jon Young, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at North Carolina’s Fayetteville State University, where about one in five students are affiliated with the military, welcomed the federal legislation. Young said it would help to clarify some of the confusion about when veterans and their spouses and dependent children become eligible for in-state tuition, which is about $10,000 less per year than out-of-state tuition.

In a June letter to Congress, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities expressed deep concern that the federal legislation would mean the loss of Yellow Ribbon educational benefits paid to public universities, while private colleges, including for-profit institutions, would continue to receive the money.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the new law would save the federal government $175 million in Yellow Ribbon benefits from 2015 to 2024.

The association also asked that the legislation be pared back to cover only veterans and not their spouses or dependent children, and urged Congress to consider that state governments have historically determined their own residency requirements for in-state tuition rates.

Beyond the loss of the Yellow Ribbon benefits, no one knows yet how much the federal law will cost public colleges and universities in lost tuition.

AFP Photo/Frederic J. Brown

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Drawing Undocumented Immigrants Out Of The Shadows

Drawing Undocumented Immigrants Out Of The Shadows

By Jake Grovum, Stateline.org

WASHINGTON — With federal immigration bills stalled on Capitol Hill, many states are charging ahead on their own to open doors to unauthorized immigrants, from allowing them to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities, to giving them driver’s licenses and providing them with welfare or Medicaid benefits.

Sixteen states now offer in-state tuition rates to students who are in the country illegally and at least four other states (Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island) seem to be moving in that direction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Unauthorized immigrants can now get driver’s licenses in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Just five years ago, no state issued the licenses.

Other states are pursuing smaller, yet still significant, measures to make life easier for unauthorized immigrants and draw them out of the shadows. Some of the proposals would allow them to vote in state elections and even run for office, while others are looking to smooth immigration-related problems in foster care programs, for example.

It’s all part of a trend of states moving away from the enforcement-focused immigration laws that took hold after the 2010 elections, most notably in Arizona, which pushed local law enforcement to check the status of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Courts have largely blocked enforcement of the Arizona law.

One measure of the momentum is that some Republicans are getting on board. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who took a hard line on illegal immigration during his campaign in 2010, signed a bill this year to offer unauthorized students in-state tuition. Last year, Nevada’s Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a driver’s license law, which cleared the Democratic-controlled legislature.

“It seems like it’s becoming more widely accepted across political lines that it makes sense to invest in immigrants who live and work in our communities,” said Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant advocacy group.

Washington state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, a Democrat who co-chairs the NCSL immigration task force, said states are filling the vacuum left by Congress.

“Without federal action states are really focusing in on what is the specific nature of immigration or immigrant integration policy that resonates or that is a priority at home,” she said. Santos is worried, however, that the recent influx of Central American children on the U.S.-Mexico border could reverse the trend. “It does make me concerned that we may see a resurgence of border security proposals,” she said.

Few states have gone as far as Democratic-dominated California in aiding unauthorized immigrants. For example, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown last year signed a law directing child welfare courts and agency workers not to let a potential guardian’s citizenship status stand in the way of placing a child in the guardian’s care.

Previously, courts or social workers across California handled the issue inconsistently, sometimes placing children with noncitizen guardians, other times seeing immigration status as a roadblock, said Phil Ladew, legal director at the California CASA Association, whose members serve as court-appointed advocates for children in the foster care system.

“When you do that, and you have a system that’s overburdened, time passes and after a year the child is still in foster care, then you just threw a grenade into the entire family,” Ladew said. “This is getting back to that notion that in the first instance you need to keep the child with that family.”

In 2012, Brown signed another measure designed to keep immigrant families together. Under the Immigrant Family Reunification Act, immigrant parents who have been placed in immigration custody or deported now have an additional six months to meet the requirements of the courts for family reunification. The bill also allows children who cannot be reunited with their parents to be placed under custody of a relative without taking into consideration the relative’s legal status.

For years, many California cities have been “sanctuary cities,” offering assistance and protection to undocumented immigrants. And California is one of four states (New Mexico, Texas, and Washington are the others) to offer state financial aid to unauthorized immigrants, in stark contrast to those states where even offering discounted in-state tuition rates paid by all other residents remains a political nonstarter.

New York state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx, last month introduced what might be the most sweeping state-based immigration measure in the country. Under the New York is Home Act, New York could declare both documented and undocumented immigrants citizens of the state, regardless of federal immigration status.

The measure would make unauthorized immigrants eligible to participate in most aspects of civic life, from voting in state elections and serving on juries to holding public office, earning professional licenses and enrolling in safety-net programs such as Medicaid.

“There has not been a proposal that is this broad and this comprehensive,” Rivera said. “The purpose of this bill is to recognize that there are people who are already contributing.”

While the measure has limits — applicants would have to prove their identity and that they have lived in the state and paid taxes for the previous three years — it has garnered plenty of skeptical and negative headlines. Even Rivera sees a long road ahead before it would become law, although he’s already in contact with interested lawmakers in other states.

“I understand that it is new and out-of-the-box thinking,” he said. “There are a lot of details that would have to be worked out.”

Others see it as simply the latest attempt to whittle away at the distinction between citizens and noncitizens, all but neutering federal immigration policy in the process. Indeed, some see the New York proposal as the culmination of the chipping away at immigration policies that has been underway for years.

“This is usually how these things start,” said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that supports more border security and limiting illegal immigration.
“It is part of this incremental acceptance based on helping people who have violated the law in the first place.”

The problem, he added, is “if you sort of take the position, ‘Well they’re here, so we have to accommodate,’ you’re going to have to keep accommodating.”

The New York move also sets up a potential clash with federal law, although Rivera said his measure is designed to focus only on areas under state control.

Nevertheless, components like allowing unauthorized immigrants to sign up for Medicaid — the joint state-federal health care program for the poor — would surely raise questions about whether federal money is being used to care for people who are in the country illegally under federal law.

Photo: Anuska Sampedro via Flickr

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Supreme Court to California: Your Immigrant College Students May Attend In Peace

By refusing to hear a challenge to the California law that allows local high school graduates–regardless of their immigration status–to pay in-state tuition at local public universities, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided wading into the fires of the immigration debate in a way that riled up anti-immigration activists. A Los Angeles Times editorial, which praised the decision, outlined how getting rid of these kinds of laws could hurt state economies.

It wouldn’t just be bad for the students themselves, who bear no responsibility for their illegal status, the public also loses when it pays for a bright student’s education through high school but then does not allow that student to become a college-educated adult capable of contributing more fully to the economy and society. [Los Angeles Times]