Court rules for students of immigrants

Anyone who graduates from a New Jersey high school should be eligible for in-state tuition and aide, regardless of their, or their parents’, immigration status.

The state has a different view, which was countered in part today — by an appellate court.

In today’s ruling, as reported by NJ.com, the American-born daughter of undocumented parents is entitled to “financial assistance for tuition at a state college” as a state resident and her parents’ immigration status is irrelevant.

The three appellate judges found that after years of adhering to laws governing tuition aid grants, the state authority in 2005 inappropriately began linking students’ residency to their parents’ immigration status.

“In 2005, the agency reversed course without any substantive explanation — instead, inaccurately representing that this significant change was merely a clarification,” Judge Mitchell Ostrer wrote in the 19-page decision on behalf of the three-member panel, which included Judges Francine Axelrad and Paulette Sapp-Peterson.

The case involved a student who was denied aide last year, despite being American-born and a New Jersey resident for 14 years.

The state, through the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, said she did not meet residency requirements (students are eligible if they live in New Jersey for a year) and that the aide goes to the parents — in this case, a single, undocumented woman from Guatemala.

The court, rightly, disagreed. It said that

regardless of the immigration status of A.Z.’s mother, her daughter had been a resident of New Jersey well beyond the 12-month requirement. In addition, the judges said the tuition aid grants, although based on the income of the parents, belong to the child.

In this case, the student was born in New York, which allowed the court to do the right thing. But there are many who came here in infancy and early childhood who know nothing but the United States as home that can’t be helped by the ruling. That is going to take legislation — both state and federal — to fix.

In the short term, however, this will make it easier for the hundreds in A.Z.’s position to go to school.