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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are considering two bills that would block undocumented immigrants' access to education to an even greater degree than current state law.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain's office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation
The Asian Pacific American Legal Center has released four video shorts calling on Congress to enact a fair and humane immigration reform that includes measures to support the successful integration of immigrants.
"During a recession, all workers and residents should play a role in plans to stimulate the economy," said Sara Sadhwani, immigrant rights project director. "Our research and outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as well as broader immigrant communities has shown that immigrants want to participate in building a bright future for the United States."
The short films follow immigrant community members on their quest to learn English and include interviews with leading academics, adult school administrators, ESL teachers and volunteers.
"Over the past few months, I visited a dozen adult education schools in Los Angeles and Orange counties," said Will Coley, videographer and producer of the films. "I had the opportunity to meet determined administrators, passionate teachers and lots of eager students."
California has the largest adult education system in the country and is supported in large part by state funding. "Unfortunately adult schools have faced severe cut backs due to the state budget negotiations," said Sadhwani. "Including immigrant integration measures in a comprehensive immigration reform package, such as funding for ESL and citizenship services, will be an investment in our nation's future."
Four videos are available for viewing on YouTube or by following the links below:
Disclaimer: This issue does not relate to me. I am not an AB-540 student and nor have I ever benefited from it. In fact, I paid International Student fees for my Graduate education so I should have a major problem with AB-540 right? No, it makes me mad that people are scapegoating fellow college students who have worked really hard to get where they are .
Seriously, college education should be free for all and then we wouldn’t be fighting over the small piece of the pie. Alas …
Kris Kobach finally got his first and last victory in the battle to end in-state tuition for undocumented students. The 3rd District California Court of Appeal issued a decision yesterday that challenges a state law allowing some undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition. (Explanation here)
After losing the battle in district courts and appeals court in various states, Kansas Chairperson of the Republican Party, Kris Kobach made one final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be turned down. Obviously, the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court had nothing to say on the issue that hasn’t already been said by the district and appeals courts: the plaintiffs do not have a right to sue.
He vowed to keep trying to make life more difficult for undocumented students or immigrants without legal status (whom he would call ILLEGAL students) and collect more plaintiffs in order to sue states for providing in-state tuition to undocumented students who had graduated from those state high schools (i.e. in California, your eligibility for in-state tuition is determined by whether you have attended a California high school for 3 or more years).
(While we are on the topic of “illegal,” for those who don’t know, Kris Kobach is the GOP politician that sent out emails boasting about voter caging–an ILLEGAL tactic employed by the Republican Party to purge likely-Democrat voters from the polls. I thought ‘illegal is illegal’ - Why is this guy still allowed to roam around free after disenfranchising thousands of voters?!)
While the DREAM Act does not grant instate-tuition rights to undocumented students, opponents of the legislation have effectively spread myths purporting that “illegal aliens can get instate-tuition anywhere” with passage of the legislation. This is baseless and untrue–in-state tuition and residency determinations is a state prerogative. Eleven states currentlyprovide in-state tuition to children without legal status in the United States (Texas, California, Utah, Washington, New York, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Nebraska.) ALL legal challenges and lawsuits filed against these states had been dismissed by courts until yesterday when the on-crack judges wanting some fame of their own reversed a decision by Yolo Superior Court Judge Thomas Warriner in 2006 that upheld the AB-540 tuition law passed by the Legislature in 2001.
While the courts in California battle over the issue, undocumented students are expected to continue paying in-state tuition till a final ruling is given on this matter. That is what I gathered from ImmigrationProf. (I would suggest that the AB-540 students hustle with their education and take as many units as possible while they can at lower prices, to stay on the safe side)!
Below is some material that I had published earlier to provide a better background on the in-state tuition debate.
BACKGROUND
For a legal background of the in-state tuition debate, we first look to Vlandis v. Kline et Al (1973), in which two students who had recently established residency in Connecticut brought suit against the state under § 1983, alleging that the provisions of 1971 Conn. Pub. Acts § 126(a), which created an irrebuttable presumption of nonresidency for purposes of determining tuition between residents and non-residents in the state’s universities, violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the suit—“the state was forbidden by the Due Process Clause to deny an individual the resident rates on the basis of a permanent and irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence when that presumption was not necessarily or universally true in fact.” The court concluded that due process required that students should have the opportunity to present evidence of their bona fide residency within the state for in-state tuition purposes.
This holds true for undocumented students—children that are brought up in a particular state, and attend and graduate from secondary schools in that state should indeed be deemed residents for tuition purposes. Most statutes that give undocumented students instate-tuition are based on this premise. After all, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe:
The undocumented status of these children vel non does not establish a sufficient rational basis for denying them benefits that the State affords other residents.
Neither is there any merit to the claim that undocumented children are appropriately singled out because their unlawful presence within the United States renders them less likely than other children to remain within the State’s boundaries and to put their education to productive social or political use within the State.
Undocumented or Illegal is not an immutable characteristic for these students—it is subject to change. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the ‘illegal alien’ child of today could be the U.S. citizen of tomorrow and there was no way of determining that the undocumented child would in fact be deported hence, “it would of course be most difficult for the State to justify a denial of education to a child enjoying an inchoate federal permission to remain.” Similarly, since deportation is a federal procedure and until it is completed in cases of individual undocumented students, it is impossible for a state to deem that a person is a ‘non-resident’ for tuition purposes because s/he may just indefinitely remain in the state after establishing it as home. Hence, granting in-state tuition to undocumented students based on their residency in the state becomes a rational and reasonable objective for the state.
There are a lot less people here to see McCain in San Diego, today. Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), just introduced John McCain in a heap of praise over how John McCain has always kept the door open to NCLR. If NCLR is so important to John McCain, then how come he doesn't list this speech in the Upcoming Events section of his website? It lists the Coronado Campaign headquarters Grand Opening across the bay from here, but not the NCLR speech.
I'm here in San Diego where Barack Obama just spoke at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference. NCLR flew out me here and provided with me accommodations at the luxurious San Diego Marriot Hotel & Marina. I was given the opportunity after I helped publicize NCLR's latest We Can Stop the Hate video using Digg and StumbleUpon, among other new media tools. I didn't do it to advance myself in an particular way. I just thought the video provided the most succinct description of the link between leading "anti-illegal immigration" groups and white supremacy. I wanted as many people to see it as possible.
In fact, when NCLR invited me here, I did everything I could to get them to bring one of myblogmig@s along with me, or in my stead. I identify as white and there should be a latin@ blogger here covering this conference. I hear Todd Beeton of MyDD, and Lucas O'Connor of Calitics are here liveblogging Obama's speech, as well. They probably weren't hand picked by NCLR like I was, but if you don't see a problem with three white male bloggers covering a National Council of La Raza conference, I'll leave that for a post that I'll write when all of this is done. For now, we'll get back to Obama's appearance here.
It appears that most things don't happen in a STRAIGHT line (neither do brain waves and heart beats FYI).
After my constant repetition of "undocumented or illegal is not a permanent immutable characteristic" this past week, the Public Policy Institute of California has just confirmed the accuracy of the statement.
In a new study based on a survery of 8000 people, the PPIC found that 52% of Californians had past experience of living in the country illegally at one time or another. It absolutely smashes the ill-promoted dichotomy of legal/illegal, proving that binary modes of thinking about immigration policy are superficial, baseless and untrue.
"It highlights how overly simplified our understanding of immigrants and immigration can be," said Hill, who said a stark distinction between "illegal" and "legal" immigrants does not acknowledge the frequent correlation between both categories. "We need to be a little more cognizant of the variety and breadth of experience."
The ALIPACers are seething. They cannot believe that the lines between legal and illegal can be blurred. After all, we are talking about black and white, engraved-in-stone distinctions, right? You can see the obvious physical, emotional, spritual, intellectual and personality differences between a legal and illegal migrant, right? Some have even gone as far as to say that "if they are going to break simple immigration laws, they will break other laws." Yes, because if you run a traffic light or drive above the speed limit, it immediately makes you more likely to commit felonies, right? Believe it or not, there is such a thing as "ex-illegals."
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