"Brown signs California Dream Act"

[Xicano]

Los Angeles Times:

New law covers private funding; governor signals he may also favor expanding public Cal Grants eligibility.

Following through on a campaign promise, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Monday easing access to privately funded financial aid for undocumented college students. He also signaled that he was likely to back a more controversial measure allowing those students to seek state-funded tuition aid in the future.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), author of the private financial aid measure, described it as an important but incremental step toward expanding opportunities for deserving students who were brought to the U.S. illegally through no choice of their own. Cedillo is pressing ahead with a more expansive measure that would make certain undocumented students eligible for the state's Cal Grants and other forms of state tuition aid.

Brown said he was "positively inclined" to back that bill but would not make a decision until it crosses his desk.

"I'm committed to expanding opportunity wherever I can find it, and certainly these kinds of bills promote a goal of a more inclusive California and a more educated California," Brown told reporters after the bill-signing ceremony Monday.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-brown-dream-act-20110726,0,3203216.story

[pampango]

1. "You're going to see red states go more the Arizona approach and blue states the California Dream

Act approach," said John Skrentny, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California, San Diego.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/26/us-usa-california-dream-idUSTRE76O6FV20110726

Twelve other states also grant in-state tuition eligibility to illegal immigrants based on attendance and graduation from a state high school, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina and Indiana have laws barring illegal immigrants from in-state tuition benefits.

Passage of legislation in California and Maryland to extend private scholarships to illegal immigrants comes as a number of states, led by Arizona, have taken steps to crack down on the undocumented.

South Carolina has actually gone further than the other republican states mentioned. In SC undocumented students are not allowed to attend college period.