Undocumented college studentsTexas pushes undocumented college students to become legal

Texas lawmakers recently amendeda law to encourage undocumented immigrants, who have been allowed to attend college and pay in-state tuition rates, to seek legal immigration status.

The law’s change by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will not affect immigrants’ abilities to qualify for lower tuition, but it mandates that schools send annual reminders encouraging students to contact federal authorities in an effort to push them towards gaining legal status.

Immigration advocates criticized the new provision arguing that it was unnecessary to encourage students to seek legal status and that pushing them could inadvertently place some in jeopardy of deportation if they contact federal authorities without first seeking legal counsel.

Beginning in 2001, young undocumented students who attended high school in Texas for at least three years qualified for in-state tuition rates at public universities in exchange for signing an affidavit stating that they will seek legal status.

Under the new rule, schools will be required to keep the affidavits on file and send reminders to students every year until they graduate, but students are not required to respond.

The program came under scrutiny during Rick Perry’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, but Texas lawmakers insist that the latest changes had nothing to do with the criticism the program received.

Dominic Chavez, a spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, admitted that the issue became “white hot” during Perry’s failed presidential campaign, but lawmakers had considered changing the law last summer and that the issue had been raised several times since the law’s initial passage in 2001.

In 2009, the latest year statistics are available, more than 16,000 Texas undocumented students qualified for in-state tuition.