Undocumented and Underserved

First written March 14, 2014 by Kyle Southern

Each year in this country, approximately 65,000 students graduate from high school in the United States, only to find uneven prospects for further education as a result of their undocumented immigration status. These students in general have known only the United States as home and came to this country under the compulsion of their parents or guardians. Many achieve at high academic levels, and then find the halls of higher education foreclosed to them by a patchwork of state and federal policies that make college a real possibility for a student in California but a remote prospect in Alabama.

In 1982, the Supreme Court affirmed in Plyler v. Doe the right of all young people in the United States to receive a free public K-12 education. The Court remained silent, however, on the question of a high school graduate’s ability to access the benefits of in-state residency tuition and public financial aid programs. Because some states — including South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Indiana as the most restrictive examples — have interpreted federal policy and their own political cultures as prohibitive of such public benefits for undocumented students, thousands find their high school diplomas insufficient to access the American dream.

Writing for the majority in Plyler v. Doe, Justice William Brennan wrote, “Paradoxically, by depriving the children of any disfavored group of an education, we foreclose the means by which that group might raise the level of esteem in which it is held by the majority.” Restricting access to education would, in Brennan’s estimation, render these young people to a “permanent caste of undocumented resident aliens, encouraged by some to remain here as a source of cheap labor, but nevertheless denied the benefits that our society makes available to citizens and lawful residents.” Unfortunately, some states have decided to codify this status. As a result, only 5–10% of undocumented students pursue some form of higher education at present.

Across the country, more than 11 million undocumented immigrants contribute to the economy through their participation in the American workforce. Approximately 8 million undocumented immigrants participate in the workforce, including 10% of the total workforce in Nevada, 9.7% in California, and 9% in Texas. The fact that 71.4% of undocumented residents of the United States participate in the workforce — compared with 63% of the overall American population — indicates the disproportionate share of this population of working age, as well as the motivation driving them to risk life in this country without documentation: finding work. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented residents paid an estimated $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010. Many of those tax dollars contribute to state higher education support funds inaccessible to their children.

Following Texas’s 2001 lead, fifteen states have passed measures to allow resident undocumented students who graduate from high school to qualify for in-state residency tuition benefits at public institutions of higher education. These states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. In addition, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education and Boards of Regents for the University of Michigan, University of Hawaii, and Ohio public institutions have voted to offer in-state tuition rates to qualified undocumented students.

State by state, leaders are recognizing that perpetuating an underclass of under-educated residents does not befit the public service mission of higher education anymore than it befits the principles of compassion and justice. Students who want to learn in this country and contribute to its society deserve the benefits conferred by their states of residency to students who are their neighbors — many of whom they have outperformed academically.

Last week, I missed writing my blog post. I must confess, I was enjoying the freedom to travel by celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I happened to strike up a conversation with a man I estimated to be in his sixties sitting next to me at a bar. Somehow our conversation wound its way to this issue. My seat neighbor mentioned owning several mobile home parks in southern Mississippi around his hometown.

He spoke movingly of struggling to find a way to help a long-time employee — an undocumented contractor. He worried about the ability of his employee’s son to continue living in this country if his father should be deported. He felt disappointed that his employee’s son could not be considered an American, even though he had lived nearly his entire life in Mississippi. But at some point, he did not see prospects improving for this family anytime soon, as Congress cannot find the courage to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and the legislature of Mississippi seems unlikely to move toward making benefits such as in-state tuition rates available to undocumented students. Here is a man who gets the issue, but can’t find a way to help people he considers part of his own family, because they are excluded from membership in the American family.

Tennessee presents an interesting test case this legislative session, as a member of the legislature recently introduced a bill to enable long-time resident undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition rates at that southern state’s public institutions.

Undocumented youth do not seek free rides to American universities, but they deserve to have the opportunity to continue their education and to do so at the same rate in their states of residency as the peers with whom they have shared so many of their formative years. Resources across states and institutions of higher education vary, but every young person in the United States deserves an equal opportunity to pursue the education they need to contribute fully to this country’s growth and development. Our current fractured politics on this issue ignores the principles of fairness and denies our history as an immigrant nation of strivers.