WASHINGTON—Opponents of the newly passed Maryland DREAM Act to provide in-state college tuition to undocumented students Friday circulated petitions to launching a campaign to put a referendum repealing the law on the 2012 ballot.
Gov. Martin O’Malley was expected to sign the bill, recently passed by the General Assembly, on April 25, but the bill signing probably will be postponed due to the death of Gov. William Schaefer.
Brad Botwin, director of Help Save Maryland, said his group, which opposes illegal immigration, wants to overturn the bill so priority isn’t given to students who could be deported. That, he said, would be a wasted investment.
But Jonathan, an undocumented student at a Maryland community college, said education is always an investment worth making and that undocumented students would receive no special benefits under the act.
“It doesn’t make them eligible for financial aid and it doesn’t give them scholarships,” said Jonathan, who asked that his last name not be used because he is not a legal resident. “It just makes them eligible for in-state tuition, which in some cases means they’ll be able to go to college or not.”
At the left-leaning Brookings Institution on Wednesday, a panel of experts debated the state and federal DREAM Acts.
Jena McNeill, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a graduate of the University of Maryland.
McNeill, a staunch opponent to the bill, asked what undocumented students are supposed to do after they graduate and cannot work legally in the country.
Another panelist, Princeton sociology and public affairs professor Marta Tienda, said that state legislation is a temporary solution for the undocumented students who want affordable college education becauseof Congress’ failed attempts to pass a federal DREAM Act.
“By default we are doing piecemeal [legislation] because states are passing their own versions of the DREAM Act,” Tienda said, “And they are doing so because they understand they have already invested in youth.”
Tienda argued that not to capitalize on these students by helping them get to college wastes the money already invested in them if they went to U.S. elementary and secondary schools and is a poor use of resources.
For Botwin, the federal DREAM Act is even worse than the state legislationbecause it is an amnesty bill disguised as an education bill. In Maryland undocumented immigrants cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars a year, he said.
But Jonathan said that because the legislation would build a more educated workforce, it would enhance income tax collection through higher paying jobs.
“There is a misconception that undocumented students don’t pay taxes,” Jonathan said, “which is not true at all.”
According to a study by the Immigration Policy Center, families headed by undocumented immigrants in Maryland paid approximately $275 million in taxes in 2010.
Botwin’s group and others have until July 1 to collect the approximately 55,000 signatures needed for a referendum to make it onto the ballot in the 2012 elections.