SAN DIEGO — The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that illegal immigrants are still eligible to pay in-state tuition for public college.

The court ruled on a suit originally filed in 2005 but a group of students and parents from 19 states outside of California. The plaintiffs claimed that a 2001 state law improperly circumvented a federal law intended to prevent in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.

According to the Los Angeles Times, 25,000 illegal aliens get in-state tuition rates.

Monday’s ruling guarantees lower tuition to students who attended high school for at least three years in the state of California. This includes students who live in other states but attended boarding school in California.

The law was carefully drawn to avoid conflict with the federal statute, according to Ethan Schulman, a San Francisco attorney who represented the University of California system.

“We’re really pleased with this judgment,” said Constance Carroll, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, which advocated for that outcome. “As we said in our brief, this is really a matter of California law and California decision making. We feel that these young immigrants, who have bright futures, are being treated fairly.”

Nine other states have already adopted similar tuition laws. Similar legislation is pending in 12 additional states, including Massachusetts, according to www.finaid.org.

About The Author

Kristen Gard is a Blast Magazine correspondent and Certified Personal Trainer. She is the founder of Ace Boot Camp in Jacksonville, N.C.

3 Responses

  1. Heidi Panichello

    Can somebody please explain the reasoning for this outrageous ruling? So by these standards, if I’m a natural born citizen of the United States living in, I don’t know, Washington State and I want to go to college in California, I have to pay out-of-state tuition? But… If I’m in this country illegally I can go to college and pay in-state tuition? Talk about rewarding criminals!!!

    Reply
  2. Milan Moravec

    Fiscal common sense needs to be brought to UC President Yudof and UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
    A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Competent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million of inefficiencies….until there was no money left.
    It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
    In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, Academic Senate, Cal. Alumni, financial donors, benefactors await the transformation.
    The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way the senior management operates.

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  3. Martha

    Según tengo entendido, desde mi total ignorancia, que utilizan la negativa a hacer horas extraordinarias para provocar una situación de huelga encubierta. Y si esto es así, ¿porque AENA no contrata a más controladores para evitar estos pruaelmbs?Salod, República y Socialismo

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