|
Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Colorado's attorney general clarified on Aug. 14 a gray area in the new immigration law about who qualifies for in-state tuition.
Those under the age of 23 who qualify otherwise for in-state status, but whose parents are undocumented immigrants, will no longer pay out-of-state tuition.
"Because it is the student, rather than the parents, who is the legal beneficiary of in-state tuition status, the fact that the parents may be in the country illegally is not a bar to the student's receipt of that benefit," wrote Attorney General John Suthers in a statement.
The ruling comes less than a week after President Stephen Jordan announced a change in Metro's policy. Until the school received a response from the attorney general, Metro would consider such students as residents, Jordan said in a letter posted on Metro's website.
According to a more than 40-year-old Colorado law, schools must look at parents' residency when establishing a student's tuition, but the law does not address whether or not the parents must be legal residents.
A 2006 immigration law, House Bill 1023, states that undocumented immigrants cannot receive in-state tuition, federal or state financial aid or money from the Colorado Opportunity Fund.
Together, the two laws could have left legal residents excluded.
Students younger than 23 must file a form describing their parents' income and tax returns. If the student fails to describe any tax history for the parents, or included no social security numbers, they are disqualified from any educational benefits.
A U.S. citizen born and raised in Colorado would then be forced to pay more than three times the tuition and denied financial aid, because his or her parents had no papers.
The legal vagary was left to interpretation by each college.
Mesa, Western and Adams State colleges and University of Colorado at Denver chose, like Metro previously, to charge out-of-state tuition, while the University of Colorado at Boulder, the community college system and Colorado State University considered them in-state.
Metro's change followed recent media attention the issue received after Colorado higher-education director David Skaggs asked Suthers to officially clarify the law in such cases. Skaggs advised him to consider the students as residents, not to penalize them for their parents.
Jordan's letter said he hoped Suther's decision will bring a uniform policy to the state's education system, and that all Colorado residents will be treated the same, regardless of their parents' residential status.
Jordan said that he was not aware of the various interpretations around the state of the law until he read about it in the Denver Post.
"When this issue was brought to our attention, and when the Latino community expressed some concern with it, then Dr. Jordan and our on-staff attorney got together and decided to implement interim policy," said Cathy Lucas, assistant vice president of communications for Metro.
Lucas said that, to her knowledge, there was one student that applied to Metro this fall who was affected by the situation.
She said the school wanted to thank Skaggs' leadership in bringing about the change.
|
|
|
