Great Article on the California Dream Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court‘s refusal last week to overturn California’s law granting illegal immigrant students the right to pay in-state tuition at California’s public colleges and universities must have given heart to a lot of immigrant rights advocates. Ten other states have similar policies.

Under the California law, passed as AB540 a decade ago, anyone who attended a California high school for three years and who graduated pays in-state tuition. Even at the current rates, that makes attendance at California’s universities – and even at the community colleges -- thousands of dollars cheaper than it is for non California residents.

Now Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, maybe California’s most devoted immigrant advocate, and probably its most prominent, is trying again to take it a step further. Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, has spent a good part of his legislative career trying to open the doors still wider.

In the past couple of weeks, the Assembly passed Cedillo’s California Dream Act – a pair of bills that would give undocumented students a partial right to obtain some of the financial aid that legal residents are eligible for and that illegal aliens have long been denied. Both bills are now in the Senate.

In a rational world – or in the California of the 1960s, with its generous public services – there’d hardly be a doubt about the merits of Cedillo’s AB 130 and AB131, both of which were passed in the Assembly on straight party-line votes.

But as horrendous budgets are forcing enrollment cuts at all three segments of the state’s high education system and reducing course offerings and space in classes for those who do get in, is this the right time to add even marginally to the crowd at the door? Will this win any converts to the cause of legalization and normalization, or will it drive yet a few more people into the angry immigration restrictionist ranks?

Gov. Jerry Brown has a mixed record on this one. As a friend of the late Cesar Chavez, the long-time head of the United Farm Workers in the 1970s and 1980s, Brown pushed hard for what became the state’s pioneering Agricultural Labor Relations Act. But as attorney general he’s defended the federal Secure Communities program under which cities are required to help identify illegal-alien arrestees for the Department of Homeland Security and eventual deportation.

Bills similar to AB130 and AB131 were approved by the legislature before, but were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who contended that giving undocumented students access to financial aid would deprive legal residents of funds.

Cedillo has revised his bills so that undocumented students can’t get Cal Grants, the state’s major source of financial aid, unless all legal residents who were qualified had been funded.

But it would make all AB540 students eligible for scholarships derived from non-state funds at the institution where they’re enrolled. That includes a sizeable percentage of non-resident citizens who graduated from California schools.

Yet the overall numbers are small. Less than one percent of the students in California’s colleges and universities are AB540 students, and of those only a fraction are illegal aliens. So the symbolism here is more important than the substance. Still the symbolism cuts both ways.

Federal law prohibits states from granting illegal aliens tuition breaks not granted to legal residents in other states. But last November, in Martinez v. Regents, the state Supreme Court unanimously agreed with lawyers for the University of California that California’s tuition breaks are not based on residency – legal or illegal – but on attendance in, and graduation from, California high schools. It was that decision that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review last week.

That lifts a cloud for tens of thousands of students, not only in California but in Texas, Kansas, Illinois, New York, New Mexico and several other states. Conversely, some legislatures have also moved to ban undocumented students from attending their public universities even if they pay full tuition.

Cedillo has fought hard not only for his Dream Act, but to give illegal aliens the right to obtain California drivers’ licenses. That, too, would make sense in giving many more drivers access to insurance and in producing safer drivers generally.

In 2004 he had what seemed like a deal with Schwarzenegger for some sort of modified license for illegal aliens, but as in Schwarzenegger understanding on school funding with the teachers unions, Schwarzenegger reneged on that one, too.

In those years Cedillo was sometimes known in Sacramento as “One bill Gil” for his persistence on the driver’s license issue. But while the timing on the Dream Act may be politically premature, it probably won’t be too many years before his efforts will no longer be seen as wrong, only as too soon.

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/node/9061

Is financial aid available to those who are not residents of california that are paying out-of-state?

I think that was one of the controversy's regarding the Cal Dream Act and AB 540..

I think if your a Dreamer you pretty much have to an AB540 to qualify if this passes..

I could be wrong.. Anyways I hope you find your way I know it's tough..