A Bill granting in-state tuition for students illegally in the US signed into law in Colorado.
Immigrant students will pay significantly less in tuition at Colorado colleges under legislation signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday.
Hundreds cheered as the Democratic governor ratified legislation that was first proposed a decade ago but regularly rejected under less favorable circumstances for people in the U.S. illegally.
“Holy smokes, are you guys fired up?” he asked the loud, spirited crowd at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Colorado becomes the fourteenth state to allow immigrants who graduate from state high schools to attend colleges at the tuition rate other in-state students pay, rather than a higher rate paid by out-of-state students.
This month, a similar proposal was signed into law in Oregon. Texas was the first pass such a measure in June 2001.
Among those in attendance at the signing ceremony was Val Vigil, a former lawmaker who first introduced the bill in 2003 when only a few states had passed it. At the time, only two people signed up to testify in favor of the bill in committee, he recalled, and more than 20 people showed up to oppose it.
When the plan was discussed in 2008, immigrant students who signed up to testify in favor had their names turned over to federal immigration authorities by opponents of the bill.
When the bill was heard in the House Education Committee in February, no opponents signed up to testify.
“It took 10 years of coalition building,” Vigil said.
The new law grants in-state tuition for Colorado high school graduates regardless of their immigration status. To qualify, students must also sign an affidavit saying they are seeking, or will seek, legal status in the U.S.
The out-of-state rate immigrants in Colorado had been required to pay is sometimes more than three times higher than the in-state rate.
“Every kid matters,” Hickenlooper said. “We need every child that we can get to be as educated as they are capable.”
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