At the last University of Minnesota (UMN) Board of Regents meeting, I tweeted the concerns that regent Laura Brod expressed with the U’s move to give in-state tuition rates to unauthorized immigrant students who live in Minnesota. The state Legislature had set that tuition change in motion this spring when it passed the so-called “Minnesota Read more →
Meredith Fergus, State Grant analyst at the state Office of Higher Education, told the Senate higher-education committee at a hearing late yesterday that the State Grant program can afford to take in the estimated 330 or so students who are living illegally in Minnesota and who would qualify for state financial aid. The estimated cost Read more →
Fellow Argo-network blogger Leslie Berestein Rojas writes in Multi-American that DREAM Act supporters aren’t giving up despite this weekend’s defeat: The Dream Act supporters in Los Angeles said they would keep pushing for the legislation in the future. Several different versions of the measure have been introduced since 2001, and while many said they were Read more →
A group of DREAM Act hunger strikers that MPR’s Sasha Aslanian wrote about earlier is driving cross country today to Washington, D.C., to make tomorrow’s Senate vote on debate on the DREAM Act. (You can see their video and a link here.) Now in its seventh day of fasting, the group of students — Latinos Read more →
Rita Bornstein, former president of Rollins College in Florida and writer on university leadership, tells the Boston Globe about the risk that college and university presidents are taking in speaking out for the DREAM Act: “You have to give them credit for a degree of bravery. The immigration issue is sufficiently controversial that everyone has Read more →
The hunger strike in support of the DREAM Act is into its sixth day at El Colegio Charter School in Minneapolis. Two days ago, MPR’s Sasha Aslanian counted five Minnesota students and two adults who have stopped eating, part of a national hunger strike to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass the DREAM Act. The Read more →
From NPR News: A measure that would have given grown children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship stalled and likely died Thursday in the Senate, after Majority Leader Harry Reid was unable to persuade enough Republicans to give the measure the 60 votes it needed to avoid a GOP filibuster. The DREAM Act, which Read more →
From The New York Times: A bill to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students passed the House of Representatives late Wednesday, giving President Obama an unexpected although largely symbolic victory in the final days of Democratic control of Congress on an issue he has called a top priority. The bill, Read more →
With a possible vote on the DREAM Act tomorrow, I suggest you check out this piece by an immigration reporter, Leslie Berestein Rojas, who’s part of the Argo blogger network that I’m in. Her blog, Multi-American, has this roundup of reports and estimates of what its financial impact would be if implemented.
Ruben Rosario of the Pioneer Press makes a good point in considering what Congress would waste if it rejected the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant eventual citizenship to certain college students who reside in the United States illegally: So, essentially, we invest up to 12 years educating these young men and women, and Read more →
Alex Friedrich