A new tuition exemption program will be enacted by the UC Board of Regents to allow some illegal immigrants and nonresident students to pay in-state fees if they attended a California high school for at least three years and graduated.
The UC Regents conditionally passed the exemption at a board meeting Jan. 16.
The exemption was passed to align the UC system with the California State University and community college policy that was established by Assembly Bill 540 last October.
AB 540, signed by Gov. Gray Davis, exempts students from paying out-of-state fees if they attended a California high school for three years, graduated from a California high school and are currently filing affidavits stating that they will file, or have filed, an application to legalize their immigration status.
State Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, a Democrat from Los Angeles, sponsored AB 540 following a decade-long struggle between immigrant student advocacy groups and the state of California.
During the 1980s illegal immigrant students were allowed to attend California’s public colleges and universities if they could demonstrate that they met the same residency requirements as nonimmigrant students.
This policy changed in 1991 when a UC registrar employee sued the University of California after he was fired for not upholding the Leticia A order, which granted undocumented students the right to pay in-state fees.
The lawsuit caused newly enrolled, undocumented students to pay out-of-state fees.
AB 540 will allow immigrant students, who make up less than half of one percent of California’s total university and college enrollment, to once again be allowed to pay in-state fees if they meet the new residency requirements.
The exemption is estimated to affect between 200 and 390 currently enrolled students in all the UC campuses, 375 full-time students at community colleges and 85 freshman students in the CSU system.
It is unclear at this time how many new students will be affected at the UC level.
“”We will not know how many more students will be affected until further in the future — presumably a few hundred,”” said UC Regent spokesman Trey Davis.
It is expected that additional eligible students will enroll because of the lower cost.
The University of California estimates the cost of the program to be between $2.3 million and $4.4 million — depending on the number of students who take advantage of it — at the UC level alone.
The UC Regents contend that the exemption’s intention is not to provide easier access to education for illegal immigrants or minorities.
“”This exemption is simply a matter of fairness for a fairly small number of students who have been a part of the California school system, not to increase diversity,”” Davis said.
The University of California has voted to adopt the exemption pending the enactment of further legislation that would limit UC liability should AB 540 be successfully challenged in the courts.
Provisions for the exemption should be in place no later than January 2003.
