Sociology Students, have you heard that.... The University of South Florida Student Senate is going to vote on a resolution to ask Board of Trustees to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students? Student Senate Vote Tuesday November 12th at 6:00 p.m. USF Tampa Campus. Tampa, FL – Immigration Reform is the hot topic right now in Congress and fixing our broken immigration system in America entails many aspects with many different points of view on how to the address the problems we face. Yet, for some in the millennial generation, Congress moves too slowly on issues of social justice these days. Students at the University of South Florida are moving forward with a resolution to ask the USF Board of Trustees to offer in-state tuition prices to undocumented students. Some 65,000 students graduate from American high schools each year that do not have a legal immigration status. Many of these are children were brought to this country through no fault of their own. Since June of 2012, the Obama Administration has granted prosecutorial discretion towards those individuals who entered the country as children prior to 2011 and meet certain criteria such as having graduated from high school or having been honorably discharged from the military. This program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been viewed as a patch to our broken immigration system in America while Congress debates the issue of immigration reform. One significant piece of immigration reform legislation that Congress failed to pass is the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act or DREAM Act which would offer conditional permanent residency to many of those who qualify under DACA. Many states have not been content to wait around for Congress to fix our immigration system and have passed similar legislation locally. Currently sixteen states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students. The Florida Legislature had similar legislation on the table last year which it failed to pass. Earlier this year, Florida International University (FIU) became the first public university in Florida to offer in-state tuition to some students who have yet to achieve full legal status. “This issue is more than a business decision for the university, it is a humanitarian issue. Do we want the University of South Florida to seem unfriendly to immigrants or do we offer relief to thousands of students who are just as American as we are, graduated from the same high schools we did, and live in the same community as us?” said Christopher Cano, a Senator for the College of Arts & Sciences and co-sponsor of the resolution. The resolution asks the Student Trustee, Mark Lombardi-Nelson, USF St. Petersburg Student Body President, to advocate for a policy of offering in-state tuition to any student who graduates from a Florida high school or has been enrolled at least part-time at USF for 12 consecutive months. Should the Board of Trustees take up the issue and adopt this policy, the University of South Florida would become the 2nd university in the state to adopt such a program. Anyone interest in being there to witness history in the making is encouraged to attend. The vote will be held at the next USF Student Senate Meeting on the USF Tampa Campus from 6:00pm on Tuesday November 12th, 2013 in the Marshall Center in Room 4200.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 21:51:48 +0000
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