Signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a bill Friday that would allow some students living in Mexico near the border to receive in-state tuition at some community colleges, his administration confirmed on its website.
The bill is one of several listed in a “legislative update” news release. “Governor Gavin Newsom took his final actions of the 2023 legislative season today,” the release said Friday. “The desk is clear.”
The bill, introduced by Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, affects low-income students who live within 45 minutes of the California border.
“There are students who may actually be US citizens but happen to live in the Baja region because of the cost of living,” Alvarez told The Los Angeles Times. “So there are some students who find themselves in that situation of being homeless in California because families can’t afford to live here.”
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Cars line up on the Mexican side of the border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry near San Diego County. (Guillermo Arias/AFP)
California’s bill took a note from a decades of Texas lawwhich allows students living near its border to waive non-resident tuition as well.
LIBERAL CALIFORNIA LAWMAKERS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR PROPOSING MEXICAN STUDENTS TO RECEIVE IN-STATE COLLEGE TUITION
“At some point, I stopped believing I could go to college,” Agustin Guzman, who attends Texas A&M International University, in Laredo, Texas, while living in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, told The Times. “But now, I tell people that I cross every day — that I do three hours on the bridge just to go to college.”
Under California law, 150 students at eight partner community colleges — all in San Diego and the Imperial Valley — will get a “nonresident fee exemption.”
Alvarez noted that “California tends to lead” the nation on many issues, but in this area Texas is ahead of the curve, having graduated more than 70,000 students through the program so far, reported of The Times.
“It was definitely a surprise,” he said of Texas signing the law long before California.
California’s pilot program will begin next year and run through 2029.
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State Sen. said. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said he agrees with the bill’s intentions but was one of five Republicans who voted against it for “fiscal reasons.”
