As a founder of the University Leadership Initiative, an advocacy group for undocumented students in Texas, Julieta Garibay sorts through the numerous e-mails her organization receives daily.
Before the economic downturn, most of the e-mails were from students in the state. Now, because Texas is a rare exception in allowing undocumented college students to receive state financial aid, Garibay fields requests from undocumented students across the country inquiring whether they too would be eligible for aid in Texas.
She has to tell them they are not.
“Every time you hear a new story, it’s just as bad as the last one,” Garibay says of the desperate pleas of undocumented students struggling to pay tuition. Lacking U.S. citizenship, they often have to pay the much higher tuition charged to international students.
