Bowing to heavy community pressure, the New York Legislature passed a bill to allow undocumented immigrants attending the state's two university systems to pay at the state resident tuition rate. Among the loudest voices speaking on the immigrants' behalf were their professors, counselors and fellow students at the City University of New York. Through the Professional Staff Congress, they have been mounting protests, lobbying and going on hunger strikes since the CUNY board of trustees announced in November 2001 that the affected students would have to pay out-of-state rates.

CUNY's rationale for hiking the tuition was that the university system needed to be in compliance with a federal law, the 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which stipulates that non-citizens should not receive benefits that U.S. citizens don't receive. The university system had reviewed all of its immigrant student policies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The State University of New York was several years ahead of CUNY, having decided to charge undocumented immigrants at the out-of-state tuition rate in 1998, to be in compliance with the same law. But CUNY's community was more severely affected by the change.

Thousands of CUNY students come from disadvantaged families that immigrated to the city years ago. In fact, some of the undocumented immigrants have spent their school-age lives in the city's public schools. Serving these students is a large part of the university's mission, the PSC stressed.

When the change was announced, the union rallied the community, religious groups and other unions through the Central Labor Council to raise hue and cry. They pointed to actions taken in other high-immigrant population states, such as California, Texas, Utah and Washington, to accommodate the residents and not be out of compliance with federal law.

At CUNY, the November policy more than doubled the tuition rates for immigrant students--from $1,600 per semester to $3,400. The university did, however, provide a "hardship deferral" for the spring 2002 semester. Through the strong actions of the union coalition, the Legislature was persuaded to move quickly to rescind the policy and, by the end of June, the governor had signed it into law.

"The PSC's work on this issue shows how socially committed trade unionism works," PSC president Barbara Bowen told the Clarion, the union's newspaper. "Yes, our members' jobs could be affected by a drop in enrollment. But the PSC was also in this fight because we believe in democratic access to education." [Barbara McKenna / AFT On Campus]

[September 10, 2002]