Gov. Deval Patrick chided lawmakers Monday for failing to advance proposals to extend Massachusetts tuition rates to undocumented immigrants.
“We keep putting off hard issues,” Patrick told reporters on his way into a meeting with House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray. “I credit the Legislature for taking a number of the hard votes we’ve asked them to. But in many of those cases even, the right thing to do has been waiting for decades. So let’s get on with it.”
The proposal has been portrayed by backers as a revenue generator and a way to help immigrants become productive, taxpaying citizens, but has been derided by critics as an unfair advantage for state resident who have broken the law. Under the proposal, an illegal immigrant would pay the same tuition rate as a Massachusetts citizen to go to public colleges in the Bay State.
“It’s good for revenue but it’s most especially good for those young people. It’s fair, it meets them where they are, and it’s about opportunity,” Patrick told reporters. Asked whether the situation had become more urgent with a number of undocumented Haitian immigrants now in the United States as a result of last month’s earthquake, Patrick said, “It’s been a pressing issue all along.”
Bills on the issue had a public hearing last week, more than a year after they were filed and with six months left for formal sessions. Few opponents turned out to lodge their objections. The proposal failed in the House in 2006 on a 57-97 vote. Opponents argued that no one who violates the law should receive a lower tuition rate than a legal citizen who happens to be from out of state, and they contended that those students would drain public resources and fill classroom space meant for law-abiding citizens.
Patrick has spoken in favor of in-state tuition legislation when asked by reporters but has not filed a proposal of his own and has shown little interest in expending political capital on the proposal.
While the bills await a recommendation from the Legislature’s Higher Education Committee, Speaker DeLeo was quoted Monday in the Boston Globe saying the proposals were likely “dead” this year, expected to be a difficult election season for Democrats.
Patrick on Thursday signed an executive order permitting executive branch employees to donate earned vacation and personal leave time to colleagues with relatives in Haiti. The move, supported by Haitian state lawmakers Linda Forry and Marie St. Fleur, as well as the Haitian consul general to Boston, follows a commitment by the Patrick administration to have ready any available personnel, equipment and supplies for assist rescue efforts in Haiti, should the U.S. government request them.
