Because of the presidential election campaign, a great deal of media attention has been focused on Gov. Rick Perry's policy (based on laws he signed) of allowing the children of undocumented residents to pay in-state tuition. Reports from around the state indicate that several candidates for the Texas Legislature have promised to abolish the program.
Now it turns out that these students are also currently eligible for TEXAS Grants, according to an article in the Texas Tribune by Reeve Hamilton and Thanh Tan.
TEXAS Grants, a need-based grant program that covers tuition and fees at most institutions, is only available to Texas residents. Students unable to prove U.S. citizenship may establish residency if they graduated from a Texas high school, have lived in the state for three years before applying, and sign an affidavit indicating their intent to apply for permanent residency status as soon as possible, the article reports.
In today's political environment, it is hard to imagine many candidates embracing the program as currently constituted. In fact we can likely expect proposed bills to eliminate the practice, as all students and their parents cope with higher tuition and reductions in financial aid. This will likely affect two-year college students in particular.
The Trib piece does a nice job of examining some real-life situations and researching the statistics (please read the entire article):
Two TEXAS Grant recipients who are not in the country legally shared their stories with the Tribune on Monday. One is a Texas A&M graduate who is now working in a restaurant because he can't provide the documentation necessary for an employer to hire him legally in his field of study, biomedical science.
The other is a recent graduate of Austin High School, the school Perry's now-grown children attended. The student's high school counselors described the student as a high achiever — a model student who had been accepted to numerous universities but had chosen a more affordable two-year college.
Now starting his first year at Austin Community College, the 18-year-old native of Mexico told the Tribune that he could not qualify for federal aid because of immigration status. So he filled out the Texas Application for State Financial Aid, a 16-page document that requires students to simply prove they have been a resident of Texas for at least three years before they can qualify to pay the in-state tuition rate.
The student told the Tribune he is receiving $1,300 in state aid, which will pay for about 70 percent of his education. The rest he earned in scholarships as a high school student. Brought to the United States at the age of six months, he plans to study business management so that he can run a restaurant. He said he reached that decision after seeing his father work for years in various kitchens.
“Some people are taking heat over undocumented immigrants. I guess I’m just thankful for Perry," he said. "Most Republicans don’t understand my situation, that I really had no choice. I had no say in coming here. I’m not going to leave because I’ve never been to Mexico. I don’t remember it. I don’t know anything about it.”
The state scholarship money spent on students who are not in the country legally is not a significant percentage of the total amount allocated by the state. A total of 68,119 awards were distributed in fiscal 2010, at a total cost of $274.1 million. It’s not even a large portion of the total student population. About 16,500 students signed affidavits in 2010 asserting they would apply for permanent residence status — out of a total of almost 1,400,000 students paying in-state tuition rates.
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