DAN ORZECHOWSKI
News Editor
New York is one of several states that have passed the DREAM Act, granting undocumented students the same in-state tuition as their peers.
The bill has been introduced to the federal level several times but has failed to pass each time. According to senior attorney at the National Immigration Law Center Tanya Broder, 20 states have passed legislation ensuring tuition equity to immigrant students. However, Broder explains that, “The way it operates and who qualifies can vary state to state and college to college.”
Formally known as the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, the goal of the federal bill was to provide undocumented immigrants a path toward permanent citizenship.
Even though the state had bypassed the federal failure, an incredibly rigorous path still lies ahead for undocumented immigrants.
Each applicant must have attended a New York high school for at least two years and have obtained a diploma. In addition, Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) requirements must also be fulfilled. Such requirements include enrolling as a full-time student, maintaining a C average and declaring a major by the student’s second year of schooling.
This doesn’t sound so bad to you?
According to collegeatlas.org, “70 percent of Americans will study at a four-year college, but less than two-thirds will graduate with a degree.”
Of course, this is a concern for every young person in the U.S. thinking about college, not just undocumented immigrants. However, collegeatlas.org continues by pointing out that, “children from low-income households are 7.6 times less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than those from well-off households.”
Even though it’s close to impossible to determine how much money undocumented people are earning, they don’t receive anywhere close to the amount of social security funding that they should.
Alexia Fernandez Campbell of The Atlantic wrote in her article that in 2010, “undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion into the retirement trust fund that year, and only got about $1 billion in benefits.”
Imagine pretending to pay for your retirement while in reality, you’re likely to never see that money again.
“OK,” you may ask, “but didn’t New York recently announce tuition-free college for low income families?”
In April, the New York State Assembly and Senate passed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to initiate tuition-free college for students attending the state’s public colleges to families making less than $125,000 a year.
This program failed to include undocumented people.
In response to the legislation, Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, thinks the governor could’ve done more.
“Many of the over 8,300 undocumented students in CUNY and SUNY schools — New Yorkers, graduates of our high schools who seek higher education — are shut out of their college dreams simply because of financial barriers due to immigration status,” said Choi.
This June, Cuomo responded to President Trump’s deportation efforts with an op-ed to The New York Daily News.
“The truth is that immigrants don’t hurt our economy, they fuel its growth,” he said. “From the beginning, my administration has prioritized support for immigrants to help them join our great mosaic of a society and contribute to our civic life.”
Oh, really? Whoever really wrote this speech must have thought they were slick by including words like “prioritized support” and “our great mosaic of a society.”
If Gov. Cuomo truly wanted to integrate undocumented people into this “great” society, he would’ve done the right thing by providing undocumented immigrants the same opportunities as everyone else.
This is just a drop in the bucket though compared to what the Trump administration recently declared.
Earlier this month, like a pawn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive order also known as DACA.
Since the dawn of the program, hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents were allowed to remain in the country. According to NBC News, 800,000 have applied since DACA’s initiation in 2012 under the Obama administration.
Without providing any data, Sessions declared that “[DACA] has denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”
Sessions continued by saying “failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism.”
To clarify, applicants can’t even receive DACA assistance if they have committed a serious offense. Every applicant must pass a background check.
He also said that former president Obama acted unconstitutionally by initiating DACA. Once more, Sessions did not explain how.
Sessions did not recite any hard evidence to support his claims whatsoever.
Since the announcement, new DACA applications will no longer be accepted. The administration is giving Congress six months to come up with a plan before DACA permits are officially discontinued.
We are responsible for who takes office. The burden of this decision falls on us. These people are our colleagues, neighbors, friends, brothers and sisters. If nothing happens, these people could be deported to countries where they have nothing.
I urge everyone to sincerely think about the consequences that come with refusing to vote. We have phonies like Cuomo, and heartless, irrational narcissists like Trump and Sessions running our country. Come next election, please reconsider not voting.
As for my DREAMer peers, I am so, so sorry for what you’re going through. No one deserves this harsh mistreatment. You inspire me with what you have accomplished with such little resources, and the lack of recognition is an absolute shame.