New Trump order threatens to take away in-state tuition for Dreamers
PHOENIX (AZFamily) —Arizona law and the Trump administration are now at odds with each other.
An executive order signed this week orders the Justice Department to crack down on states that offer in-state tuition to non-citizens, including Dreamers who were brought to the US as children.
But in 2022, Arizona voters decided that in-state tuition for some non-citizens is a constitutional right. The approved proposition allows undocumented students to get in-state tuition if they went to high school for 2 or more years and graduated from an Arizona high school.
The measure narrowly passed at 51%. The question now is whether an executive order trumps the state constitution and that will likely play out in court.
“Not everybody can afford a college education,” said Judith Coronel, a May Day protester at the State Capitol Thursday. “We’re working and we’re trying to make ends meet because our parents came here with nothing, you know. And so it, it puts us at a bit of a disadvantage,” Coronel said she is a first-generation American herself.
Others, like protester Jazmine, say this executive order feels like a personal attack. “My siblings were Dreamers. And it’s just like, even because it doesn’t impact me, it impacts my classmates like people I go to school with. They’ve lived in Arizona their whole lives like they’re in-state students,” she said.
Reyna Montoya is the CEO and founder of the immigrant advocacy group Aliento. She said, unlike U.S.-born students, Dreamers cannot get federal aid. That means, in-state tuition is one of the only ways dreamers can get access to affordable education. “This is not a free handout. Arizona voters decided to give them that opportunity to pay the same as their peers. So this executive order is technically going against a voter-protected measure in the state of Arizona,” she said.
According to President Trump’s executive order, the action is intended to prevent measures that favor non-citizens. Right now, there are about 24,000 people in the state who are current DACA recipients, sometimes referred to as Dreamers, meaning they would be eligible for in-state tuition.
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