Legislation that would allow colleges and universities to charge in-state tuition and fees to certain foreign-born residents of Arkansas narrowly escaped the Arkansas Senate on Wednesday.
Without any debate, the Senate voted 18-7 to approve an amended version of House Bill 1684 by Rep. Dan Douglas, R-Bentonville, sending it back to the House to consider a Senate-approved amendment.
Eighteen votes are required for approval of bills in the 35-member Senate. Nine Republicans and nine Democrats voted for the bill, while seven Republicans voted against it. Nine Republicans didn't vote, and Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, voted present.
"I want to be clear these are not kids who are here illegally," Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, said in presenting the bill and before answering senators' questions about the legislation.
The bill would allow a state-supported higher-education institution to classify a student as in-state for the purpose of tuition and fees applicable to all programs of study if the student meets one of the following requirements:
• The student has verified that he is a resident legally present in Arkansas and has emigrated from the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Migrants from the Marshall Islands can travel freely in the United States on just a passport and are not required to have visas or employment credentials. Marshallese children born in the United States automatically are citizens.
[RELATED: Complete Democrat-Gazette coverage of the Arkansas Legislature]
• The student's request for an exemption under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) has been approved by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the exemption "shall not be expired or shall have been renewed."
DACA is a federal policy that allows certain immigrants who were brought illegally to this country as young children to apply for deferral from deportation and for work permits. It does not provide a pathway to citizenship.
• The student personally holds or is the child of a person who holds a federal form I-766 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service-issued Employment Authorization Document, known as a work permit.
Under federal law, public school systems must provide educations for these classes of migrants, but Arkansas colleges and universities have been required to charge them out-of-state tuition.
Under this bill, a student also would be required to have resided in Arkansas for at least three years at the time the student applies for admission to a public college or university and either graduated from a public or private high school or received a high school equivalency diploma in Arkansas.
HB1864 would require the state Department of Higher Education to file proposed rules to implement the bill with the Legislative Council in advance of Jan. 1 so the Legislative Council can consider the rules before then.
Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, who voted against the bill, questioned Hendren before the vote about the difference between in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition levels.
Hendren said that varies from institution to institution.
Garner said the out-of-state-tuition and fees is about $25,000 versus $8,000 to $9,000 for in-state students at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
"What is the cost to the institution and the people of Arkansas when we start adjusting this rate, and how many people actually would apply to this thing?"
"I don't know," Hendren responded.
Garner said he worries that there will be a cost to having hundreds of these students.
"You are asking a mathematical question that is unsolvable because we don't know what the number is going to be," either of the number of likely students or how many institutions take advantage of the bill's provisions, Hendren said.
"That seems to be a very simple analysis to figure out," Garner said.
Sen. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, said out-of-state tuition at UA is about $1,000 higher if the student is from a border state.
Hendren said that "we are allowing kids from Texas and Oklahoma to get better deals than the kids who we spent all this money educating in our state."
A Section on 04/04/2019