A federal judge in Phoenix ruled on Tuesday that DREAMers are entitled to in-state tuition at Arizona schools:
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Arthur Anderson ruled the federal government determines who is in the United States legally, rejecting arguments from the state Attorney General’s Office that those accepted into the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are in the country illegally.
Anderson ruled states don’t get to decide who is and is not in the country legally — something Arizona has tried to do for a number of years. President Obama in 2012 ordered the Department of Homeland Security not to deport certain undocumented youths who came to the United States as children and expanded the program last November. The program allows these undocumented youths to apply for work permits but does not grant them a path to citizenship.
“The state cannot establish subcategories of ‘lawful presence,’ picking and choosing when it will consider DACA recipients lawfully present and when it will not,” Anderson wrote, adding employment authorization documents, which permit dreamers to work, are an “appropriate documentation of lawful presence.”
The ruling stems from a case involving the Maricopa Community College system in the Phoenix area, which began offering in-state tuition to dreamers shortly after Obama issued his executive order. Attorney General Tom Horne challenged the Maricopa Community College system based on a 2006 voter-enacted law, known as Proposition 300, which requires students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents and do not have lawful immigration status to pay nonresident tuition.
