Who Gets the Break?

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"Pamela" would like you to know that she loves art. That she would have got honors at her graduation from Marlborough High School in Marlborough, Mass., last month, except for a slip on her Algebra II final. That she would go to the Massachusetts College of Art this fall, but her restaurant-worker parents can't pay the nearly $18,000 tuition. And that the tuition would cost just $6,400 if state legislators approved a bill to allow students like her, an illegal immigrant, to pay in-state rates at Massachusetts' public colleges and universities.

Pamela, who arrived with her family from Chile in 2000 and does not wish to reveal her real name, is one of an estimated 50,000 to 65,000 illegal immigrants who got diplomas from U.S. high schools this spring. They graduated into a furor over in-state tuition, one of the fiercest debates over immigration policy today. Illegal aliens can qualify for in-state tuition rates in nine states, including Texas, Kansas and California. But a lawsuit challenging Kansas' law and the failure of legislatures to approve similar policies in 18 other states this year reflect widespread unease about such benefits. Proponents in most of those 18 states plan to try again next session. Massachusetts' bill is still alive, but Governor Mitt Romney has said he will veto it. Pamela remains hopeful: "All I want is an opportunity to become somebody." Should the state subsidize her efforts?

Surprisingly, money is not the big issue. In Texas, which in 2001 became the first state to grant such tuition benefits, fewer than 8,000 undocumented immigrants--out of a public college population of more than 1 million--got reduced rates last year. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors tighter immigration rules, says it is more a matter of principle: "Extending in-state tuition is a way of legitimizing their presence. It is back-door amnesty."

Education is a tricky battleground. "There's an emotion to it that makes it different from day laborers hanging out in front of the Home Depot," says Krikorian. In North Carolina an in-state-tuition bill died in committee in May after talk radio helped stir a furor "one hundred times bigger than Terri Schiavo," in the words of Kevin Miller, a host at WPTF in Raleigh. Many listeners were worried that expanded in-state rates would not only suck up taxpayer dollars but would also make it harder for their kids to get into top state schools like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Opponents also fear that extending one privilege would open the door to granting other benefits now reserved for legal residents. "The other side is afraid this is the beginning of something more," says Josh Bernstein, of the National Immigration Law Center.