‘Dreamers’ lose in-state tuition, but not college dreams

Garrett Shanley, Tribune News Service

This past spring, Faten was on the brink of achieving her lifelong dreams: graduating from college. Then a junior at Florida Atlantic University, she was on track to graduate in December and was just 10 credits away from a bachelor’s degree. She was also exploring her longtime passion for writing as a reporter for University Press, her school’s student-run magazine, where she had also been offered an editorial position for the fall semester. Then, Faten became ensnared in Florida’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

But it was not the threat of deportation that thwarted her graduation plans at FAU. It was the GOP-dominated Florida Legislature’s decision in January to repeal a decade-old state law allowing “Dreamers,” noncitizen students who have lived in the United States since they were very young, the ability to pay in-state tuition rates. The change has derailed many of those students’ graduation plans and, for some, made higher education completely inaccessible. The now-repealed 2014 state law allowed undocumented students to seek a waiver to pay in-state tuition rates if they had gone to high school in Florida for at least three consecutive years and enrolled in college within two years of graduating from high school.

Faten, a Palestinian immigrant whose family arrived in Florida from Rafah when she was 5, is one of an estimated 6,500 students at Florida’s public universities and colleges who lost access to in-state tuition July 1. Faten asked that her last name be withheld for fear of retaliation. The repeal was part of a sweeping immigration reform package pushed by the DeSantis administration for the purpose of preemptively supporting President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Those efforts have been accompanied by controversial formal agreements between state school police departments and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which effectively deputize campus police officers to act as immigration agents, allowing them to question, detain and transport suspected undocumented immigrants to ICE facilities.

Undocumented students now must pay out-of-state tuition rates, which can be triple that of in-state rates and are now slated to be raised by up to 10% at some schools. At FIU, for instance, in-state students pay $205.57 per credit hour, or $3,084 per semester; out-of-state rates now sit at $618.87 per credit hour, or more than $9,283 per semester. Supporters of the repeal argued that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for students who aren’t US citizens and that universities were losing out on millions of dollars by not charging out-of-state rates. But critics counter that it’s unlikely undocumented students can afford out-of-state tuition fees and emphasize that these are students who came to the US as children, brought here by their parents and raised in Florida, where they went to school, graduated and worked hard to pursue a degree.

Dreamers and undocumented students cannot receive state or federal financial aid — including money from the Bright Futures Scholarship Program, a Florida Lottery-funded program providing full rides to high-achieving students — and must pay out of pocket or secure private scholarships or loans.

For Faten, navigating the changes was confusing. Because of her immigration status, Faten is not eligible for any state or federal financial aid. That left her with few options. At first, she planned on taking out student loans and working a summer job in order to afford her last semester at FAU. But in mid-April, she discovered it would cost her family $21,000 to complete her degree at FAU. They couldn’t afford it. With just one semester left, she had to drop out of FAU. “My family was consoling me, because I was just crying the whole day,” Faten said. “It’s not fair. I don’t want to leave.”

TheDream.US, an immigrant advocacy organisation that provides scholarships to undocumented students, ended its scholarship programme with eight of Florida’s public universities in April, citing the in-state tuition revocation as well as the alarming number of schools with police forces that have enrolled in the 287(g) programme with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“People are completely devastated, and the questions that we’re getting mostly are just ‘why?’” said Gaby Pacheco, the CEO of TheDream.US. “These are young people that are trying to understand the world and trying to accomplish their dreams and are being told by the leaders that are supposed to be protecting them and helping them that, ‘No, sorry, because you are not born in this country, your dreams are not worthy.'” Losing the students has financial consequences for Florida schools. TheDream.US has channeled nearly $27 million in scholarship funds to its eight partner schools in Florida. The nonprofit was FIU’s largest private scholarship provider, according to Pacheco, giving $9.5 million since the partnership began.

But it’s not just TheDream.US pulling funding from Florida schools. Mike Fernandez, a Cuban-born businessman who lobbied hard to pass the 2014 waiver law, has suspended a combined $11 million in pledges toward FIU and Miami-Dade College, and is channeling some of those funds toward TheDream.US scholarships.

“The state is shooting themselves in the foot,” Pacheco said.

Now, TheDream.US is partnering with private and online universities to provide replacement scholarships. Pacheco said her organisation is in the process of transferring scholars to private schools like Lynn University and Barry University, which are now supporting scholarships for undocumented students. In early April, Pacheco, along with a handful of Dreamers, met with state lawmakers in hopes of passing an amendment that grandfathered in students currently using the waiver. It didn’t work.

“What we’re asking is not big,” Pacheco said in an interview at the State Capitol building that day. “What we’re asking is fair, and it’s within the hands of the body that is here. It is just to allow for the young people who are in college right now to have the opportunity to finish their education.”

One of those students at the Capitol that day was Carlie, then a University of Central Florida student who was two semesters away from graduation. “What I gathered from the conversation is that they know that what they’re doing is not okay, they know how it’s affecting us, but no one is willing to take a stand and do something about it,” she said. “They’re all saying, ‘Oh, I understand where you’re coming from. I sympathise with you, but there’s nothing I can do.’”

Carlie, a Haitian-born student whose asylum application is still pending, had worked 20 to 36 hours per week at Publix to pay for basic living expenses, while TheDream.US covered her tuition. Carlie is not eligible for financial aid and does not receive support from her family. She also requested to withhold her last name for fear of retribution. Now, she is on track to resume her studies online with the Indiana-based Purdue University, which accepts scholarships from TheDream.US. Carlie, who lives in Orlando, said she did not feel safe transferring to another Florida school because of the school police’s agreements with ICE.

She said the transfer wouldn’t impact her financial situation, but it has the potential to delay her expected graduation date by up to three semesters. Carlie had 32 credits left in UCF’s 120-credit bachelor’s program; Purdue’s program requires 180 credits, and not all of Carlie’s UCF credits are accepted. At first, the tuition turmoil left Carlie “overwhelmed and depressed.”

“Because of the fact that this even happened, I kind of lost faith in this country, because it kind of feels like what I’m doing doesn’t matter, because everything might be taken away from me, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “I’m still feeling powerless, but I’m trying to just push through, because I got this far on my own.”