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The federal DREAM Act failed in December, but similar legislation is gaining momentum in states, including California.
Under a bill working its way through the state Legislature, some undocumented college students could get access to Cal Grants, institutional aid and fee waivers at publicly funded colleges.
The bill, AB 131 [PDF], recently passed the Assembly and is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Education Committee next week. If passed, it goes to the Appropriations Committee and then to a floor vote. During his campaign last year, Gov. Jerry Brown said he would sign the bill.
Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, who authored the bill, told the Los Angeles Times the proposed law would help "children brought here through no choice of their own, who embrace our values and learn the language."
A companion bill, AB 130 [PDF], granting the same privileges for private financial aid, passed the Assembly last month and is currently in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The two bills are part of a legislative package – known as the California DREAM Act – that many Republicans oppose. In the past, the Legislature approved similar measures that were vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics argue that the legislation misuses the state's limited public funds to reward illegal immigration.
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“It is unconscionable that our Legislature would be considering a bill that grants financial aid to those who are in our country illegally, particularly at a time when we are forced to make cutbacks to our higher educational system and tuition for legal students is rising,” said state Sen. Mimi Walters, R–Laguna Niguel.
The federal DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act was first introduced in 2001 and was most recently defeated in December 2010. It was reintroduced in May of this year.
The California DREAM Act would work in tandem with AB 540, a law that made immigrant students who graduated from a California high school after at least three years of attendance eligible for in-state tuition rates. Only immigrant students who first qualify for in-state tuition would be allowed to compete for public and private financial aid. The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a challenge to AB 540 in a decision that reinforced the California law, as well as similar legislation in a dozen other states.
According to statistics from the California State University, University of California and California Community Colleges systems, about 42,000 students were granted in-state tuition rates last year under AB 540 – about 1 percent of the entire student body for 2010.
Maria Gomez is part of that 1 percent. She moved here illegally with her parents from Mexico when she was 8 years old. Now 26, she recently graduated from UCLA and is currently enrolled there in a master's program in architecture.
Gomez said AB 540 made it affordable for her to go to college. But she said she still had to come up with about $45,000 for her undergraduate in-state tuition. She found work cleaning houses, baby-sitting, tutoring and eventually working freelance for an architectural firm. But she said having to pay for college out of pocket took its toll.
“I wasn’t able to develop friendships," she said. "I wasn’t able to meet people. I felt like I was just passing by, like I wasn’t part of school. If the DREAM Act would pass, we could become real students.”
Gomez said she saw four close friends and numerous acquaintances quit school or severely cut back on their course loads because of demanding work schedules.
“Most of us are in this desperate mode where we are fighting for survival, for education, to make sure we don’t have to drop out,” she said. The DREAM Act "would ensure a lot of students not having to drop out.”
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