Compassion on the Campuses

The University of California and California State University have made wise decisions to treat all residents of California the same, even if some are not legal citizens. It is the fair way to treat young people who have attended school in the state and whose parents pay taxes, and it increases the opportunity for success for some who might not otherwise be able to afford to attend college because they would have to pay the higher non-resident tuition.

The treatment of these students, many of them Latino, had been at issue for several years. An Alameda County Superior Court ruled in April that illegal-alien children should be considered state residents if they had lived here more than one year and intended to stay. Lawyers for both university systems have decided not to appeal that ruling.

Uncertainty over their status had caused great dilemmas for young people who managed, often against considerable odds, to stay in school and earn the grades to qualify them for admission to either the UC system or Cal State. They could be honest and too often price themselves out of admission by forcing the state to charge the much-higher non-resident fees, or they could falsely call themselves citizens in order to pay the lower fees for legal California residents.

But, as the Cal State attorney said, “What we need is an overall immigration policy from the federal government.” Until that happens, the status of people who have entered the country illegally will continue to cause tensions in their own lives as well as in government dealings with them on health care, education and other social services.