WASHINGTON — Efforts to allow DACA recipients and students that are applying for permanent residency in the United States to qualify for in-state tuition were voted down along party lines in a Virginia Senate committee Thursday, but pieces of the proposals may survive.
One of two bills proposed by Fairfax Democratic Sen. Dave Marsden would have allowed students to qualify for in-state tuition with some stipulations. They or their parents would have to have filed Virginia income tax returns for at least a year, and have filed an affidavit certifying that they have applied for permanent residency or will do so as soon as they are eligible.
Republican Sen. Stephen Newman praised the idea, before the GOP-led committee voted down the bill 8-7, but encouraged Marsden to work with other senators to potentially fold the proposal into other bills.
A second Marsden bill, also voted down 8-7, would have permitted students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program who live in Virginia to qualify for in-state tuition like any other student.
“Without these bills, my future is in jeopardy,” George Mason University student Maria Ortiz told the Senate Committee on Education and Health. She is a Fairfax County Public Schools graduate.
A 2014 ruling from Attorney General Mark Herring allowed DACA recipients who live in Virginia to get in-state tuition, but it is not codified in state law.
“These are kids who were brought here as infants, brought here as young children, where they had no choice. This is the only country they know, perhaps English is the only language that they understand,” Marsden said.
Marsden said out of more than 12,000 DACA recipients in Virginia, an estimated 1,200 have enrolled in Virginia’s public colleges and universities since the 2014 attorney general’s opinion.
“Currently, many students are economically barred from access to higher education because they are not eligible for federal financial aid, as well as many scholarships,” he said. “We should not turn away talented, motivated students willing to work hard and succeed.”
The Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce supported the bill as a way to help train workers.
“These kids are going to be here … Let’s get them educated,” Marsden said.
Concerns about the future of people covered by the Obama administration’s DACA program, which President Trump plans to end in March, are a piece of the standoff that threatens a federal government shutdown Friday night.
“We have got to fix this problem at a federal level,” Newman said.
Marsden was not optimistic.
“These kind of federal issues tend to go on and on, and drag on, and we’re dropping people out of our education system and our economic system, and they’re not able to compete and they’re not able to contribute,” Marsden said.
Other bills and actions
The committee also voted down bills along party lines that would have eliminated or allowed a woman to waive a mandatory waiting period and other requirements before an abortion, as well as ended classifications of certain abortion facilities as hospitals.
Another bill killed would have banned “conversion therapy” for minors that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The committee unanimously supported a bill that would allow children in military families to remain in the same public school system through the end of the school year if a parent is ordered to relocate or deploy.
That bill would also allow students to enroll in a new school system where the family will reside up to 120 days before a service member parent completes an ordered relocation.
