'Dreamers' demonstrate on UA campus for in-state tuition, April 29, 2015.Listen
Dozens of young people gathered at the University of Arizona University of Arizona Wednesday to rally in favor of charging in-state tuition to immigrant students who are granted temporary work permits.
Since President Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012 thousands of young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children have received temporary shield from deportation. Higher-education institutions, such as Pima Community College , have granted in-state tuition to Arizona students with DACA.
Undocumented students at the state’s three state universities who have the temporary permits have been paying out-of-state tuition no matter how many years they have lived in Arizona.
“Some of us, we went to Pima, we graduated from Pima and we’re stuck in between,” said Francisco Salcido, one of the people protesting at UA. “Do we move to another state that accepts us? Or do we continue to fight and lose precious time when we could be studying?”
While the possibility of in-state tuition is still off the table, DACA recipients’ tuition bills could be cut in half if the Arizona Board of Regents adopts a proposal to charge dreamers 150 percent of what Arizona residents pay.
The plan released last week would apply to students who went to high school in Arizona for at least three years and graduated from a school in the state. The student would also have to be lawfully present in Arizona. Being a DACA recipient could qualify as such.
For Salcido and others protesting Wednesday the plan does not do enough.
“It’s a great bump to 300 percent to 150 percent,” he said. “But we’re not second class citizens, we pay our taxes, we are considered residents, some of us have lived here over a decade and it’s not fair that I have aspirations to be a wildcat and for them say ‘you’re not a resident so we’re not going to offer you in-state tuition.”
The Arizona Board of Regents will discuss the tuition change proposal next week and vote on it in June.
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