Legal Talk About DREAMers - Financial Aid and Taxes

Immigration Prof Blog reports that Law Professor Michael Olivas has published a paper titled "Undocumented College Students, Taxation, and Financial Aid: A Technical Note," which explains in detail the issue about the cost of financial aid for DREAMers.

This is an important document to distribute.  Many well-meaning college administrators only see DREAMers as a drain on the system and don't realize that the benefit they provide has a big payback.

For DREAMers: the power of secrets

It is amazing how many things we don't know.  Just as the Underground Railroad was a secret to many people, the "unofficial" list of private colleges to provide financial aide to DREAMers has been functioning well under the wire.

There really are people out there who want to help.  Lets hope each DREAMer can find one.

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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/16/vassar

U.S: A Message to Prospective Undocumented Students
InsideHigherEd.com, October 16, 2008
By Elizabeth Redden

High school counselors keep lists - short lists based on unofficial, one-on-one conversations about which colleges, mostly private ones, admit and grant institutional aid to illegal immigrants, says David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

"What I consistently hear from counselors is they're constantly trying to figure out what colleges they might have any chance to send an undocumented student to, realistically, with financial aid," Hawkins explains. "It seems that there's this underground information that is flowing. It's not well-known, and it's not coordinated in any way."

"There are a lot of private colleges that actually do give undocumented students financial aid. It's just that they don't advertise it."

With some states barring these students from public colleges, private colleges may soon be forced to consider advertising their own policies. In the meantime, if a pending recommendation becomes policy, high school counselors could confidently add Vassar College to their respective lists. In a recent recommendation to the president, Vassar's Committee on Inclusion and Excellence proposed that the private institution adopt and publicize a new policy clearly signaling that it "will give admission applications submitted by undocumented students the same consideration given to any other applications it might receive. Undocumented students who are admitted to Vassar will be offered financial assistance based on demonstrated need following the same procedures Vassar uses to grant aid to accepted international students." (Undocumented students aren't eligible for federal aid.)

Vassar now has no formal policy on undocumented student admissions and aid, says David Borus, dean of admission and financial aid at Vassar and a member of the 20-person committee of administrators, faculty and students that put forward the proposal.

"We wouldn't get many applications in a given year from undocumented students, and when we did, we would handle them on a case-by-case basis," Borus explains. "There are a number of schools that have quietly but consistently admitted and funded undocumented students over the years…. Vassar isn't looking necessarily to be a trend-setter here or make a statement. We're trying to clarify what our own procedures and policies should be."

"It is in everyone's best interest for colleges to be clear, or clearer, about what their policies are with regard to the admission and financial aid process," Borus says. "Currently there is no stated policy and we don't want to leave students and families and counselors and others wondering where they stand and what the possibilities are. We'd like to make it a bit clearer and more explicit."

In 2007, Vassar returned to a "need blind" admissions policy for domestic students, meaning that applicants' financial circumstances aren't considered in admissions decisions. In March, Vassar announced it would replace loans with grants for students with family incomes of up to $60,000. Vassar's president, Catharine Bond Hill, is an economist who has specialized in issues of higher education affordability and access.

Katherine Hite, an associate professor of political science and director of Vassar's Latin American and Latino Studies program, is co-chair of the committee that offered the policy recommendation on undocumented students. "It's much in keeping with the kind of broad-minded understanding and inclusive spirit of the college," she says. "I am proud that Vassar is willing to consider that they should publicly step up."

The committee submitted the recommendation to the president September 19; its fate is still pending. The Vassar Student Association Council subsequently endorsed it unanimously, and the student newspaper, The Miscellany News, this week published an editorial in support. "A lot of federal policy, it revolves around exclusion," says James Kelly, a senior and the Vassar Student Association president. "We're just making those students aware that Vassar is an option. Because without saying it [explicitly], given everything else that's going on, it just might be perceived as an exclusive place."

About "everything else that's going on," while Vassar's home state, New York, is one of 10 states that extends lower in-state tuition rates to undocumented students, a number of states have restricted illegal immigrants' access to public colleges in recent months. (While a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, affirms the right of illegal immigrants to a K-12 education, it doesn't extend to higher education.)

Earlier this year, South Carolina barred illegal immigrants from attending public colleges as part of a sweeping new immigration law, and Alabama and North Carolina both prohibited them from entering community colleges. Meanwhile, in reinstating a dismissed lawsuit last month, a California appeals court found that in offering in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, the state was "thwarting" the intent of federal immigration law.

"Vassar College is very quick to forget that more than 40 percent of the country is on my side," says Jeremy Bright, a sophomore and president of the institution's Moderate, Independent and Conservative Alliance. Bright, who wrote an op-ed opposing the proposed admissions policy for undocumented students, says he opposes the recommendation "for both ideological and practical reasons."

"I can understand the logic of taking one or two, or selectively taking specific candidates, saying, 'Oh, this person's very qualified, and we need to bring him or her here,'" says Bright. "I may not agree with it personally, but at least I can understand the logic."

"But to publicly adopt a policy…basically endorsing illegal immigration, and saying that borders don't matter, citizenship doesn't matter, I'm completely against that."

"To me, it sends a message to other applicants about, 'This is the stated ideology of the school,'" Bright says.

Given the clashing ideologies characterizing the present political climate, a college is arguably brave these days for even attempting to enter into the immigration fray. Colleges typically have avoided formalizing their policies both because of the deep divisiveness of immigration issues, politically speaking, and, more practically speaking, the relatively low numbers of potential applicants any policies would impact, explains Hawkins, of the college admission counseling group.

But demographics are changing. Susan Klopman, vice president of admissions and financial planning at Elon University, in North Carolina - which, on the flip side of things, as a matter of practice but not formal policy does not admit undocumented students - says the issue of whether to admit or not to admit will likely attract greater attention at private colleges in the coming years. (Explaining Elon's own practice, Klopman cites a desire not to run afoul of the federal government, and its financial aid stream, and a desire to treat all non-U.S. applicants equally, in terms of visa requirements and such.)

"None of us quite understand how the changing demographics of this country are going to affect our institutions, and I think that will bring this question to the fore in a more pressing manner than we have had to deal with up to this point," Klopman says

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Schwarzeneger and Following the Crowd

A month or so ago I had a conversation on immigration with a New York Times reporter.  She told me that she had a sincere interest in reporting on immigration issues, but was cautious because it was such a controversial topic.  It seemed to me a reasonable thing to expect since she has a patron to please - that is if she wants to keep her job.  Unfortunately that type of caution is keeping DREAMers in hiding.

California is a sad place today.  Governor Schwarzeneger has decided that the education of DREAMers is too controversial - he vetoed SB1301 - which would have provided California DREAMers financial aide.  His statement refers to the state's budget crisis.  But anyone who knows about higher education is aware that even in a budget crunch, financial aide to kids who have a high rate of success, such as DREAMers, is a win-win situation -  in terms of taxes paid and productivity, the return on this type of investment is much more than what is used to finance their education. 

The Terminator Governor is under pressure now - he can't go against public opinion and actually do something for DREAMers.  It would make him look bad in these anti-immigrant days.  I do not know him, so I can't speak for his character.  If he is a good human being, the decision to kill SB1301 has to have felt bad.  But he is not strong enough to stand alone in front of the xenophobic masses. 

How many people- lawmakers- political leaders really care that DREAMers get an education?  How many actually care about the DREAMers' success?  There are most likely many people out there who are touched by the plight of the DREAMers.  But caring is not enough.  DREAMers need action.  What is missing are individuals (in a position of power) with the courage to stand up to the anti-immigrant mob mentality.  Where are they?

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In 1901 Mark Twain wrote satirical essay on lynching and the American mob mentality.  It was not published in his lifetime.  In fact, few people know about it.  

Below is an excerpt:

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The United States of Lyncherdom

...It must be that the increase comes of the inborn human instinct to imitate--that and man's commonest weakness, his aversion to being unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000. I am not offering this as a discovery; privately the dullest of us knows it to be true. History will not allow us to forget or ignore this supreme trait of our character. It persistently and sardonically reminds us that from the beginning of the world no revolt against a public infamy or oppression has ever been begun but by the one daring man in the 10,000, the rest timidly waiting, and slowly and reluctantly joining, under the influence of that man and his fellows from the other ten thousands. The abolitionists remember. Privately the public feeling was with them early, but each man was afraid to speak out until he got some hint that his neighbor was privately feeling as he privately felt himself. Then the boom followed. It always does. It will occur in New York, some day; and even in Pennsylvania.

When I was a boy I saw a brave gentleman deride and insult a mob and drive it away; and afterward, in Nevada, I saw a noted desperado make two hundred men sit still, with the house burning under them, until he gave them permission to retire. A plucky man can rob a whole passenger train by himself; and the half of a brave man can hold up a stagecoach and strip its occupants.

Then perhaps the remedy for lynchings comes to this: station a brave man in each affected community to encourage, support, and bring to light the deep disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places of its heart--for it is there, beyond question. Then those communities will find something better to imitate--of course, being human, they must imitate something...

No, upon reflection, the scheme will not work. There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a condition of profound poverty. We have those two sheriffs down South who--but never mind, it is not enough to go around; they have to stay and take care of their own communities.

But if we only could have three or four more sheriffs of that great breed! Would it help? I think so. For we are all imitators: other brave sheriffs would follow; to be a dauntless sheriff would come to be recognized as the correct and only the dreaded disapproval would fall to the share of the other kind; courage in this office would become custom, the absence of it a dishonor, just as courage presently replaces the timidlty of the new soldier; then the mobs and the lynchings would disappear...

from:

http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam482e/lyncherdom.html

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