Arizona improves college access for undocumented students. Activists say it’s a ‘first step’

Andrea Vasquez, a social worker at a high school in Tucson, Arizona, was approached by a student in her senior year. She was asked how difficult it would be to attend college as an undocumented immigrant.

Vasquez, 29, immediately flashed back to a younger version of herself, studying at the school where she now works, Palo Verde Magnet high school, and remembering her own struggle to get to college while being undocumented.

More than a decade later, she has better news for the latest generation.

"Her dream is going to a four-year university," Vasquez said.

In last November's elections, voters in Arizona, who typically support anti-immigrant policies, narrowly approved ballot measure Proposition 308 to make undocumented immigrants eligible for the same fees and state financial aid at state universities and community colleges as local US citizens.

Previously, despite growing up in Arizona's state public school system, undocumented youth wouldn't have been able to apply for state aid for higher education and would be classed as out-of-state students, who pay much higher fees. This was the fate imposed on Vasquez when she was graduating high school.

Vasquez recalled that as a teen applying for college, the base out-of-state tuition at the time could exceed $16,000 annually at a state university. That made financial means rather than academic performance the gateway to higher education for people like her.

Vasquez, who was brought to the US from her native Mexico as a migrant at the age of two, said: "I was fourth in my graduating class, I played sports, did community service [but] I couldn't afford a four-year university."

She cleaned houses with her mother to pay for two years at Tucson's Pima Community College.

"I wish this Proposition [308] happened when I graduated high school," she said.

In 2011, when she was in high school, Arizona adopted the strictest anti-immigration state law in the country. It allowed local law enforcement to ask anyone suspected of being in the country unlawfully to present proof of legal immigration status during routine traffic stops. It made it an offense to be caught without those papers.

Arizona's large Hispanic communities effectively lived under siege, with the law championed by hard-right Republican governor Jan Brewer, notorious Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio and the late state senator, Russell Pearce.

Then, in 2012, US president Barack Obama turned Vasquez and other migrants brought to the US as minors into Dreamers - the scheme now under threat because of legislative inertia and legal fights that started during the Trump administration.

Dreamers became eligible for work permits and renewable protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. Nevertheless, higher education barriers persisted nationwide - especially in Arizona.

Until Proposition 308, Arizona was one of three states, alongside Georgia and Indiana, that barred undocumented immigrants from in-state tuition.

In her first State of the State speech last month, Katie Hobbs, the first Democratic governor elected in Arizona in 16 years, celebrated Proposition 308 and pledged to expand opportunities by allocating $40m to a new fund, the Promise for Dreamers Scholarship Program.

"It's unfair that many of the students who have been part of our education system, part of our communities, had to pay three times the in-state tuition," she added.

At her high school, Vasquez tells undocumented students about Proposition 308 but adds that they're still ineligible for federal aid. Every year, more than 3,600 undocumented students graduate high school in Arizona.

Meanwhile, another hurdle faces Fernando Contreras, 19, as he aspires to become a doctor. Arizona is struggling with critical healthcare staff shortages exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. But when he was still a senior at Mountain View high school in Mesa, he found out most medical internships that he would need on the way to getting licensed require a social security number. He doesn't have one: he arrived from Mexico at the age of 12 without documentation.

For now, Contreras is studying at Pima Community College and is enrolled at Grand Canyon University, a private Christian school where Proposition 308 doesn't apply, while working numerous jobs including babysitting.

"The biggest downside is knowing you have to work twice as hard as anybody else to achieve what you want," he said.

Since the ballot measure passed, fees have dipped at the community college and he's looking into whether it would be possible to transfer to Arizona State University.

But the bill never made it out of committee and died in the state legislature.

"It's unfortunate but there is very little understanding of the urgency of a bill like this one," Bravo said.

"Proposition 308 is the first step, but we have to keep fighting. We have learned from this country that nothing is going to be given to you."