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news
Immigrants get
break
By Ben Dimapindan
On-line Forty-Niner
Gov. Gray Davis
signed a bill Thursday lessening the annual tuition of undocumented
immigrants who graduated from a California high school by
over $5,500 for all 23 California State University campuses.
Under this legislation,
undocumented immigrants are now required to pay the same tuition
as California residents for both community and state colleges.
But this bill would not be applicable to the University of
California system yet, depending upon the UC Regents' acceptance.
In the CSU system,
undocumented immigrants would pay approximately $1,839 per
year as a resident, as opposed to the $7,380 current fee for
non-residents, according to CSULB Financial Aid Director Dean
Kulju.
"Of course
the governor places the highest premium for the education
of California students," said Byron Tucker, spokesperson
for Gov. Davis. "The purpose of the bill is to ensure
that no one will be [denied] of a quality education."
The bill, which
was primarily authored by Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, D-Los
Angeles, is slated to go into effect in January 2002 and should
have an impact on thousands of people, Tucker said.
"We don't
have exact numbers right now, but we do know that this bill
will impact tens of thousands of young people who grew up
in California, went to high school here, and deserve the right
to receive a higher education in the state they grew up in,"
Tucker said.
According to Armando
Contreras, executive assistant to CSULB President Robert Maxson,
the precise effects of the bill on CSULB enrollment will not
be known until it is officially enacted, but Gov. Davis is
sending across a positive message about providing education
to immigrants in California.
"From my point
of view, the real issue here is whether we are providing access
to education for these [undocumented immigrants]. The answer
is we are," Contreras said. "These people are living
here and so the governor is trying to give them a means to
better themselves and improve their lives.
"I know a
few students who did not have proper documentation when first
applying here and they kind fall into that boat," he
said. "So for them, this will certainly be positive."
In addition, although
the bill does not concisely state that these students will
now be eligible to receive financial aid benefits, fiscal
assistance would not be completely out of the question, Kulju
said.
"Right now,
these students do not qualify for federal aid and most state
grants," Kulju said, noting that currently only citizens
may receive aid. "But the bill has mentioned the possibility
of state aid. We would definitely have to wait to get the
information filter down from [CSU] Chancellor [Charles Reed]."
Also, the signed
bill will not be applied to CSULB until detailed directions
are submitted from the office of the chancellor, Kulju said.
"Basically,
the chancellor will give us specific guidelines to follow
that explain what's going on," Kulju said. "[The
instructions] tend to come in last minute and we have to scramble
a bit to get everything in order, because it has to go through
a whole legal, bureaucratic process that travels from Sacramento
to the community colleges to the CSU campuses."
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