Access to post-secondary education isn’t a given for everyone. Across the U.S., different policies might restrict undocumented immigrants from attending college, and inconsistent policies can create confusion. Hannah Boyke is a Ph.D. student in the school of social work. On Wednesday, she presented on these barriers to education in coordination with dreaMSU.
Boyke said that she hoped that attendees would take those lessons away from her presentation, especially one surrounding the legal inconsistency. “If you’re a senior and you’re trying to apply to school and you’re undocumented, it’s going to be so difficult to really even assess what you can do because of how much variation is in the state policy,” Boyke said. “With the different court cases, you have some court cases affirming it, saying it’s OK and you have other ones saying it’s not OK.”
Boyke referred to these court cases regarding in-state tuition in her presentation, “Martinez v. Regents of University of California and Equal Access Education v. Merten .” The former rules that states are given the ability to determine residency based on the location of the student’s high school, therefore making in-state tuition available despite immigration status or citizenship, while the other rules students […]