Immigration issue will have economic implications

PHOENIX — Whenever Inside Higher Ed posts an article about undocumented students, the online higher education publication usually gets a swarm of e-mails asking why it doesn’t instead use the term “illegal aliens.” That’s because some organizations opposed to illegal immigration monitor the site and send e-mails to their members asking them to query about the choice of terms.

Editor Scott Jaschik said it illustrates how fiery the issue of illegal immigrants is. And community colleges—which have historically served nontraditional students—and are in the thick of it.

“Community colleges are in the front and center of the issue,” he said during a focus session on immigration during the annual American Association of Community Colleges convention.

Opponents of allowing undocumented students to receive in-state tuition or even to attend college argue that the practice is especially unjust for legal residents during the current economic climate, when two-year colleges are scrambling to serve more students with smaller budgets.

But proponents contend that serving undocumented students is critical to the economy, particularly in states such as California that will over the next decade see a huge increase in its immigration population as well as in increase in the shortage of workers.

All eyes are also on California because its supreme court is expected to decide this year on the legality of its eight-year-old law permitting undocumented students who have attended high school for at least three years to pay in-state college tuition rates. Proponents of the law say striking down the California law could prompt other states that offer in-state tuition for undocumented students to review their laws.

“If we are not able to stop that from taking place, we are in serious trouble,” said Eduardo Martí, president of Queensborough Community College in New York, one of the states that has such tuition waivers.

A change in California law would force many undocumented students to drop out because they would have to pay 10 times the tuition they currently do, said Richard Dittbenner, government relations director at the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) in California. Such as decision would also affect the economy of California—the seventh largest in the world—because the state wouldn’t have enough skilled workers to fuel it.

The issue is so important to SDCCD that it plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the state law.

“We feel we need to stand up for the residents of the region,” Dittbenner said.

Congress could help resolve the issue by passing the federal DREAM Act, which would remove certain barriers to state laws permitting in-state tuition for undocumented students as well as provide a path for citizenship, in part, through higher education, according to proponents of the bill. Congress almost passed the legislation last year, and it was reintroduced in both chambers last week.

Community colleges should mobilize their students to encourage lawmakers to pass the legislation, Martí said.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities has even provided on its Web site an electronic form that backers of the DREAM Act can use to encourage their lawmakers to support it.

Community colleges looking to garner support for such bills should also seek advocacy help from business and industry, which will need more skilled workers as baby boomers retire, Dittbenner noted.

“Stress the economic importance of the students at your college,” he said.