Westfield state Rep. Donald Humason said he hopes Massachusetts lawmakers will observe Connecticut like a “laboratory” to determine how the new law affects illegal immigration.
By KYKE CHENEY
BOSTON - As neighboring Connecticut embraces a plan to allow certain illegal immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition rates at the state’s public universities, advocates for Massachusetts immigrants are reacting with a mixture of hope and resignation given that their own proposal has languished and faced increasing hostility in the Bay State Legislature.
“The move by Connecticut to open up opportunities to children of undocumented immigrants to go to college by letting them attend public institutions at an instate rate is the latest in a national trend towards this policy,” said Rep. Thomas Sannicandro, Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s handpicked co-chair of the Committee on Higher Education.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed the bill on Monday. But at least one Massachusetts immigrant advocacy organization found little solace in Connecticut’s action.
“There is no legislative activity [in Massachusetts] whatsoever. I don’t think the votes are there,” said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, describing waning support for in-state tuition among Massachusetts lawmakers, despite Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s support for the proposal. “I don’t think [Connecticut] is really going to make a difference. I just don’t see it happening at this point. It is a very difficult climate.”
Asked why the proposal has found little traction in Massachusetts, Rep. Alice Wolf, of Cambridge, a sponsor of a bill to extend in-state tuition rates to certain illegal immigrants, cited a single-minded focus by lawmakers on the economy.
“There’s general skittishness both among the populace actually and among the legislature and the leadership because of the way people want to focus on the economy and the other things people feel are diversions,” she said. “This is a very important bill because it really sends a signal to young people as to whether we respect them and whether we really have hope for their futures and their parents’ as well. They’re Massachusetts kids. That’s what they are. Some of them are valedictorian kids in their high school class. I want them on a path to success.”
The bill, filed by Reps. Wolf and Denise Provost in the House, as well as Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz in the Senate, would extend in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants who have attended Massachusetts high schools for three years, earned a degree and won acceptance to a University of Massachusetts campus. Connecticut’s bill required that undocumented students attend all four years of high school in Connecticut to be eligible for in-state rates.
Backers of the Massachusetts bill say the plan would put a college education in reach for those undocumented students who perform well enough to attend UMass but can’t afford the out-of-state tuition rate they’re currently charged. The proposal, they argued, would actually boost revenue for the UMass system, bringing in tuition from students who might forgo college without access to in-state rates.
Critics have ripped the plan as a giveaway to students in the country illegally, while legal, out-of-state residents are asked to pay more. In addition, opponents have argued the bill endorses illegal activity and allows illegal immigrants to compete with Massachusetts residents for acceptance to public universities.
“The children of illegal immigrants are breaking the law. They basically jumped the line, they got into this country or into this state ahead of those people back home. To reward those folks – and many of them are very good, decent, hardworking people – but now that they’re here to give them these benefits … over legal residents of other states, I think sticks in the craw of many legislators here in Massachusetts,” said state Rep. Donald Humason, of Westfield.
Humason said Connecticut’s embrace of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants could worsen an already tenuous budget environment in the Nutmeg State. He said he credits Massachusetts voters for registering their support for crackdowns on benefits to illegal immigrants in “poll after poll after poll.” Those polls, he said, have resulted in bipartisan opposition to in-state tuition.
“I’m not surprised, with that governor,” Humason said. “I think he said he was going to support it before he got elected. He’s a Democratic governor, fairly liberal, a true believer in what government can do.” Humason added, “I think it’s going to draw more children of illegal immigrants to Connecticut. My belief is that you always get more of whatever you subsidize. If you say that Connecticut welcomes illegal immigrants … I think illegals are going to come to Connecticut.”
Humason said he hoped Massachusetts lawmakers would observe Connecticut like a “laboratory” to determine how the new law affects illegal immigration.
“They’re talking about some 200 students using or taking advantage of this benefit. I would like to see if that turns to 250 the following year, and 400 the next year,” he said. “That impacts the job market, that impacts the emergency rooms, the police department. It impacts housing.”
Rep. Richard Bastien, Republican of Gardner, a member of the Higher Education Committee, said he doesn’t expect the debate in Massachusetts to change, simply because of its neighbor’s actions.
Proposals to extend in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants seeking to attend the University of Massachusetts have faltered for years, and the number of lawmakers signing on as cosponsors plummeted to 29 this session from 44 last year. In fact, the Senate voted last year in favor of an outright ban on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.
As that vote occurred, just across Massachusetts’ southern border, momentum for such a plan was on the upswing, buoyed this year by inauguration of a Democratic governor and the takeover of both branches of the Legislature by Democrats.
“This bill isn’t controversial, it’s common sense,” Gov. Malloy said in a statement last month after the Connecticut Senate passed the bill on a largely party-line vote. “At a time when we need to be helping our state’s young men and women prepare for an ever-changing economy and compete with their counterparts in China, Japan and elsewhere, helping to make a college degree more accessible and affordable for those students who choose to pursue one is critically important.”
Although Gov. Patrick has expressed similar sentiment, he has expended little political capital on the proposal, which is awaiting a hearing in the Committee on Higher Education.
“I think that with every state that gets added to that list, it gets harder and harder to ignore the facts in play,” Chang-Diaz (D-Boston) said in a phone interview. “This is, in many ways, an issue apart from immigration issues. This is not about whether you like immigrants or not. But the state stands to benefit economically, very clearly, from this policy.”
Chang-Diaz noted that Texas, Utah, and Nebraska, typically right-leaning state, had embraced in-state tuition.
“They’re doing it because they see the economic sense in it,” she said.
Backers were also buoyed by a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to refuse to hear a challenge to California’s in-state tuition law, on the grounds that it only applied to those immigrants who attended high school within the state.
A spokesman for Gov. Patrick declined to address Connecticut’s action.
“The governor continues to believe that this is an issue of basic fairness: students who have grown up here, completed their secondary education here, and are trying to straighten out their legal status should be treated like their peers and pay the same in-state tuition as their classmates,” said the spokesman, Alex Goldstein. “The Governor supports the principle of legislation that has been filed in Massachusetts to address this issue.”
Despite lobbying efforts by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Service Employees International Union, MIRA and the National Association of Social Workers, support on Beacon Hill for an in-state tuition bill has eroded since 2006, when the proposal failed in the House on a 57-97 vote. Many members of Speaker DeLeo’s leadership voted against the bill at the time, including DeLeo himself, Reps. Patricia Haddad, Ron Mariano, Kathi-Anne Reinstein, Paul Donato and Garrett Bradley. Two of DeLeo’s four floor leaders - Byron Rushing and Ellen Story - supported the bill at that time, as did Assistant Majority Leader Charles Murphy.