Sen. David Nelson’s grandfather came to the U.S. from Finland as an uneducated, illiterate immigrant. He made a point to educate his children, who educated theirs. Nelson (R-Pendleton) is sponsoring a bill that would give the children of today’s Oregon immigrants the same opportunity.
Nelson, along with Sen. Frank Morse (R-Albany) and Rep. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland), is backing House Bill 2939, which had its first hearing before the House of Representatives Education Committee on Monday.
The bill would allow undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition if they attend an Oregon high school for three or more years, graduate from that high school, are admitted to an Oregon university and work toward residency. Currently these students must pay out-of-state tuition, and supporters of the bill say the high cost of that tuition is prohibiting undocumented students from attending college at all.
Oregon is the only state on the West Coast that has not enacted tuition equity laws. Eight states in the western U.S. have similar legislation.
Supporters of the bill say it would be an investment in Oregon’s future – that it represents sensible long-term planning.
“These are young people that are already here,” University President Dave Frohnmayer said in an interview Monday. If Oregon offers those students, most of whom have gone all the way through K-12 education in the state, an affordable university education, they will hold better jobs and pay more taxes to the state in the future, he said.
Frohnmayer said students who graduate from Oregon universities are twice as likely to stay in the state. Recent numbers are even higher. Seventy-eight percent of 2005 Oregon University System graduates stayed in Oregon.
OUS spokeswoman Di Saunders said the university system sees the bill as serving Oregon residents – even the undocumented ones.
If Latino students, who make up most of Oregon’s immigrants, can’t afford a college education, they will be confined to an underclass where they won’t be able to contribute well to society, Saunders said.
Latino students are one of the smallest demographics in the OUS, she said, but have one of the highest retention rates. For this reason, it only makes sense to encourage more Latino students to come, she said.
“They are our future leaders, our future workforce,” she said.
Sen. Nelson agreed. “If we give people opportunity, that’s a good thing,” he said.
Some suggest it would be the opposite of an investment. ASUO Vice President Johnny Delashaw said, “I see iProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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as a motivation for undocumented people in the United States to move to Oregon and take advantage of the system.”
But even if that were true, Nelson said, it would not be bad. People already move to the state for its Oregon Health Plan, he said, and “that makes us a pretty decent society.”
In Colorado, which voted down a similar bill a week ago, opponents of tuition equity also said it did not make fiscal sense. That state faces a $350-million higher-education deficit, and legislators said tuition equity would only add to that burden.
Oregon’s Legislative Fiscal Office has not yet analyzed the bill’s potential fiscal impact on the state, said Paul Siebert, higher education analyst in the LFO.
Emily McLain, spokeswoman for the Oregon Student Association and 2007-08 ASUO president, thinks the bill could benefit OUS financially. The students who would be helped are not attending college at all now, so instead of a loss of out-of-state tuition, the bill would result in a gain of in-state tuition, she said.
“That could be a net increase for the Oregon University System,” she said.
Nelson conceded that Oregon’s current financial situation was likely to be one of the largest barriers to it passing this year. Tuition equity already failed in Oregon in 2003, when it was first introduced, and in 2007. It has failed federally, in the form of the DREAM Act, nearly every year since 2003.
Frohnmayer is enthusiastic about the bill’s chances, in spite of Oregon’s financial atmosphere. “I think it’s more likely to pass this time,” he said.
Republican opponents of the bill in Colorado also said it conflicted with a 1996 federal law that disallows undocumented immigrants from getting college benefits unavailable to U.S. citizens.
Kari Herinckx, a member of the Oregon Students of Color Coalition, said the bill is not meant to give immigrants privileges Oregon residents don’t have.
“It is not a benefit, not a free pass for anyone,” she said. OSCC presented HB 2939 to Congress this year.
For supporters of the bill, the bottom line is that it will invest in education and invest in a generation of people. For them, it is less about immigration policy than about the importance of a university education.
Diego Hernandez, a member of the University chapter of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, and supporter of the bill said, “If we make it an immigration issue, we’ll lose – if we make it an education issue, we’ll win.”
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Tuition equity bill hopes to aid children of immigrants
Daily Emerald
April 13, 2009
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