“When we adopted the policy, it really had nothing to do with illegal immigrants. We were conforming the university’s policies with state law,” she said.
The California State University system does not record how many of their students are using the law to save the $10,170 a year in out-of-state fees, says CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow.
“Part of the law is that this is confidential, so we don’t gather names, we don’t gather numbers,” she says.
To qualify for the in-state rate, students must have attended a California high school for at least three years, must graduate from a California high school and must sign an affidavit declaring that they will seek to become legal residents as soon as it is feasible.
Suzanne Kattija-Ari, 23, a UC-Davis veterinary student from Hawaii whose father immigrated from Thailand in the 1970s, says the fee break is unfair to those who follow the law but end up paying more than their illegal counterparts.
She says she has had to work several part-time jobs and take out student loans to pay her high out-of-state fees.
“It’s not so much that they got this benefit and we didn’t, it’s just the unfairness of it,” she continues. “They’re 18 now. They should do the right thing, apply for citizenship.”
The lawsuit was sparked when former Rep. Brian P. Bilbray, R-San Diego, discovered that his children would have to pay more than $2,000 to attend community college after attending private school in Virginia.n
— Associated Press
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