Bill Seeks to Legalize Immigrant Students

Hoping to test what may be a new climate of compromise surrounding illegal immigration, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills) plans to introduce legislation today to offer legal status to illegal-immigrant students who want to attend college.

In the past, a move to provide a government benefit to a group of illegal immigrants would have been viewed as politically futile. Now, advocates on both sides of the nation’s immigration debate say the mood appears to be evolving toward greater moderation and compromise.

Berman’s bill targets a group that immigration advocates think will be politically sympathetic: children who immigrated illegally to the United States with their parents and were educated in U.S. schools. Such children complete high school only to find themselves effectively blocked from college by legal prohibitions on receiving in-state tuition rates or federal tuition assistance.

“They are highly motivated,” Berman said. “They want to do better for themselves. And they are here through no fault of their own.”

In addition to the moves in Congress, immigrant rights advocates say they have a chance at getting a bill through the Texas Legislature to provide tuition benefits for illegal immigrants attending state colleges and universities there.

Similar legislation is pending in California, where many analysts say voters now are in the mood for consensus on ethnically divisive issues and more likely to see immigrants as an economic boon.

“People are now looking for political solutions where they would otherwise discuss these issues in heated terms,” said Mark Baldassare, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco.

Opponents of illegal immigration concede that they are on the defensive. “It’s just one issue after another. It is like we are being attacked from all sides,” said Lupe Moreno, a member of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform.

Baldassare said new census data showing the state’s increased ethnic diversity seem to have left a deep impression, prompting many Californians to favor leaders who can balance ethnic concerns and promote peaceful coexistence.

In recent focus groups, pollsters have found “widespread recognition that we are living in a majority-minority state,” he said. “We would ask what that means, and people would say, ‘It means that we all have to get along.’ ”

The idea that immigrants help, rather than hurt, the economy has made it easier for advocates to frame the student issue in terms of capitalizing on immigrant talent.

In Congress, Berman’s bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) and by one Republican--Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, a member of the House Immigration and Claims subcommittee.

The bipartisan bill reflects an effort to “find some creative solutions,” said Cannon spokesman Thad Bingel, adding that the issue “doesn’t necessarily break down on party lines.”

Berman and Cannon are the latest of several public figures to weigh in on the issue of illegal-immigrant students, arguing that they should be encouraged to continue their educations and become fully integrated into American society.

Nationally, an immigrant diaspora spreading to the Midwest and Southern states has made some politicians more attentive to immigrant issues--particularly those in ethnically mixed districts like Berman’s.

The student measures face fierce opposition, however, and their chances of success are considered highly uncertain.

Opponents say the bills are basically unfair, favoring people who entered the country illegally over citizens, legal immigrants and people who seek to enter this country lawfully.

Additionally, opponents say the measures would require taxpayers to subsidize higher education for foreign nationals and allow illegal immigrants to pay even lower tuition than U.S. citizens who wish to attend college outside their states.

“This is discrimination against legal immigrants and U.S. citizens who honestly contribute to the system,” said Barbara Coe, chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which was instrumental in pushing California’s successful anti-illegal immigrant initiative of 1994, Proposition 187.

Coe said her group has made measures targeting illegal-immigrant students a priority, and vowed to bombard politicians with calls to oppose them, a strategy they have used effectively in the past.

Allan Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-based Republican consultant, said efforts to legalize undocumented students--though more politically palatable than simply giving illegal immigrants a break--will produce a result contrary to what advocates intend. The move will show that public sentiment remains against extending new services to illegal immigrants in California, even among liberals, he predicted.

Moreover, he said, voters are painfully aware of the competition to get into state universities and are unlikely to support the measures when many of their own children can’t get into UCLA.

The issue stems from essentially conflicting U.S. policies: Illegal immigrants are not allowed to live here, but children here illegally have the right to attend public school through the 12th grade.

As a result, a certain number of young people--no one knows how many--are graduating from high school into a void, although their grades and test scores are high enough to get them into colleges.

Berman’s bill seeks to give such students legal status, provided they are not yet 21 and have been here at least five years. Also, they must be “enrolled in or actively pursuing admission to” an accredited college.

The measure would apply only to those already in the country to ensure that it does not spur additional illegal immigration.

Many illegal immigrant students seem to be highly accomplished students. This has given the issue an emotional punch much capitalized on by immigrant advocates, who have been able to trot out a number of illegal immigrant valedictorians and scholarship winners to make their case.

The achievements of illegal immigrants in school also has brought a new political dimension to the debate, as university leaders, anxious to diversify their schools, have voiced concerns that undocumented status is impeding the admission of Latinos, whose numbers in college remain far below those in the overall population.