Texas’ guidance on end of in-state tuition for undocumented students doesn’t clear confusion, advocates say

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Student advocates say highly anticipated state guidance on how schools should follow a recent court ruling ending in-state tuition for undocumented students still doesn’t offer meaningful clarity on how to determine who still qualifies for the benefit.

Those advocates say clear guidance from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is urgently needed at a time when schools across the state, in a scramble to comply with the court ruling, have incorrectly told some students they can no longer pay in-state tuition.

“The rules don’t help at all. They create even more confusion…You're just going to have, again, more people getting wrongly denied,” said Julieta Garibay, co-founder of United We Dream, a national immigrant advocacy group.

On top of perpetuating confusion, advocates worry the coordinating board’s proposed rules will put undocumented students at risk.

The rules advise colleges with questions about a student’s legal status to get help from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. While the agency has historically reviewed immigrant applications, the Trump administration has newly created a branch of special agents who can arrest people for immigration violations. Advocates worried that schools could violate federal privacy laws and expose their students to immigration authorities if they share their information.

“At the end of the day, it's the student who now has to…worry about getting all of their personal [identifying] information handed over into an armed law enforcement agency — all of their most sensitive information about themselves, about their family — so that they can access a higher education in Texas,” said Kristin Etter, the director of policy and legal services for the Texas Immigration Law Council.

A federal court ruling gutted the Texas Dream Act in June, ending a decades-long benefit that allowed tens of thousands of undocumented students living in the state to pay for college at the same discounted rate available to other Texas residents. Since this fall, students are required to show they are “lawfully present” in the country to qualify for the benefit.

That term has been the root of widespread confusion. Attorneys representing Texas acknowledged in a court filing that immigrant students who are lawfully present, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA recipients, still qualify for in-state tuition. But as institutions have moved to comply with the court order without clear guidance from the state, student advocates have identified multiple colleges that have misinterpreted the ruling and shared incorrect information.

Blinn College in central Texas incorrectly stated on its website that DACA students would have to pay out-of-state tuition rates. Officials corrected their website this month.

About 300 miles away from Blinn, Laredo College issued a policy that said DACA students would no longer qualify for in-state tuition, the Laredo Morning Times reported earlier this month.

“If I'm a high school counselor, if I'm a student, I'm reading what is on the web pages of these schools,” said Barbara Hines, who helped write the Texas Dream Act 24 years ago and founded the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. “That’s why it's so important that the web pages of universities be updated and make clear that lawfully present students need to meet the exact same requirements that they did before.”

The coordinating board’s proposed rules, which come months after the court order, suggest students can prove they are still eligible for the benefit in the Core Residency Questionnaire, a state form students fill out to share details about where they live when they apply to Texas colleges. Schools can also ask for “reasonable documentation” to verify if students qualify for in-state tuition, though the proposed rules don’t specify what documentation is considered reasonable.

The rules fall short of providing a definition of lawful presence, which would help eliminate the confusion around who is still eligible for in-state tuition, Etter said.

The rules also propose making undocumented students ineligible for tuition waivers, a program that allows students who have not identified as Texas residents to pay discounted tuition rates because of academic achievement.

“It was the only lifeline that students had after the 24-year-old law was taken away,” said Garibay, referring to tuition waivers. “It's heartbreaking to see and hear that the state is doing everything in their power to make…higher education less accessible to undocumented folks.”

The price tag on college can make or break whether a student finishes their degree altogether. Students make careful choices about where they enroll with the price tag in mind, setting aside paychecks from second or third jobs and balancing that work with mounting school deadlines. Losing the tuition benefit could be enough for students to drop out altogether.

In the proposed rules, Charles W. Contéro-Puls, an assistant commissioner for Student Financial Aid Programs at the coordinating board, also said that repealing the Texas Dream Act will have no impact on the state’s economy.

However, recent economic analysis from the American Immigration Council suggests rescinding in-state tuition for undocumented students in the state could cost Texas more than $460 million a year from lost wages and spending power.

“Who is he trying to gaslight here?” said Chelsie Kramer, the director of Texans for Economic Growth. “Obviously rolling it [the Texas Dream Act] back is going to negatively impact Texas. We've shown that time and time again.”

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