Hard Lessons in Immigration Law

Undocumented Students Put College Hopes in Va. Tuition Bill

Lidia Pereyra's future may depend on a bill in the Virginia legislature. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

Lidia Pereyra knows there are plenty of people who think that taxpayers shouldn't pay any part of her tuition -- and that families such as hers should have stayed out of the United States.

But if she couldn't finish college . . .

She stopped and briefly closed her brown eyes, rimmed with green shadow.

"I don't know," she said.

She knows full well that her future without a college degree would be like the least of her present. More hours working as a receptionist at a car dealership and as a store clerk. No more anatomy classes. No career as a nurse practitioner.

"I don't want the thought," she said.

Pereyra assumed she would be a legal, permanent resident by the time she got to college. Now, at 20, the oldest child in a family that came to a farm in Winchester from Mexico about a decade ago, she is caught up in a debate over illegal immigration that has grown in intensity across the country and recently become acute in Virginia.

Some Virginia lawmakers have pushed bills to keep illegal immigrants out of state colleges entirely -- so far, unsuccessfully. Pereyra had pinned her hopes to a bill -- which reflected a real shift in the political climate and was passed overwhelmingly by the state Senate -- that would help students like her. It would allow some undocumented students with long-standing ties to Virginia to pay in-state tuition.

But an informal opinion from a deputy attorney general froze that possibility for this year.

A much-debated federal law bans states from giving benefits to students who are not here legally if the benefits aren't available to U.S. citizens. The opinion warned legislators that the bill would force schools to open up the in-state rate to students throughout the country.

Hearing that, a House subcommittee voted to carry the bill over. But the lawmakers didn't kill it.

"We've not seen the end of it, that's for sure," said Del. Thomas Davis Rust (R-Fairfax), chairman of the higher education subcommittee.