Editorial: In-state tuition law crushed Dreamers' dreams

In a just and sane world, Florida news would have been dominated, over the past few weeks, by the unspeakable sight of state lawmakers savagely betraying a group of hard-working high school and college students fighting to embody the classic American dream.They were the children studying behind the counters of their parents’ restaurants or the back rooms of nursing homes where their parents were often paid under the table.

The teenagers who worked hard to perfect their English while learning math, science, literature and the history of the nation they considered to be their home.

The ones who presented a bright promise as future skilled employees, entrepreneurs, civil servants and community leaders.

Their stories — the effort it took them to arrive in this country with nothing, and transform themselves in the space of just a few years into scholars, leaders and dreamers — should have been told, and told again until Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislative leaders knew them as the best kind of immigrants, who had done nothing wrong but were willing to risk everything for nothing more than an opportunity. Until those leaders repented of their cruelty and acknowledged that it still made sense to give these young people — in this country through no fault of their own — a chance.

But today, they’ve been largely dropped from the headlines, stripped of any identity beyond that of “hunted.” They and their families are being targeted by a gaggle of braggadocious legislators and vainglorious sheriffs, so they can be forcibly expelled from this country.

From dreamers to first blood

In light of that, the way they were targeted as the first wave of this state’s unprecedented attack on undocumented immigrants seems almost dismissable — even in the larger context of the sprawling bill that included the in-state tuition ban. That legislation, the product of an ill-conceived bargain between state legislative leadership and DeSantis’ office, was for a brief time seen as a sign of hope. When DeSantis first commanded lawmakers back to Tallahassee for a special session featuring his anti-immigration initiatives, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez sternly rebuked the governor for overstepping his boundaries. They came into session, overturned one of the governor’s more disastrous budget vetoes and then adjourned.

But within hours, the pretense failed, as lawmakers fired up their own rushed proposal to target immigrants. A seemingly noble defense of Florida’s system of checks and balances dissolved into bickering over credit for a new wave of persecution that also included commandeering local sheriffs and jails into the dragnet DeSantis envisaged. In an apparent fit of rage, DeSantis vetoed that bill, stalling the effort to target immigrants. But a few weeks later (again, with almost no notice) the sparring leaders shook hands on a devil’s bargain that will allow the persecution to commence, right on schedule.

It’s important, at this point, to note that there was no reason at all for this unseemly haste to target people who were, for the most part, minding their own business and contributing billions of dollars in labor and spending to the state’s economy. Florida lawmakers were set to begin their regular session the first week in March, and had much bigger issues to confront. Among the real emergencies: A slowly collapsing property insurance market, an alarming spike in the number of reported cases of serious respiratory infections, and growing uncertainty over Floridians’ access to grocery staples such as eggs, wheat and vegetable oil.

Add to that the clouds of uncertainty coiling around President Donald Trump’s plans to effectively dismantle key functions of the federal government. It’s no wonder this small cadre of student dreamers have been forgotten.

They deserve better

But they are worth remembering. As recently as a decade ago, state GOP leaders saw these students — brought to this country as children, sometimes with nothing but the clothes they wore — for the bright promise they represented. That’s why, in 2014, Republican lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott granted them a small boon to help them reach that potential: Because they grew up here, because they all attended Florida high schools, because their families paid taxes and contributed to the state’s economy, they would be allowed to pay in-state tuition at state colleges, career academies and universities.

The act of stripping away that one small favor — the chance to pay less than full price for educational opportunities — was never a drain on the state’s budget, and lawmakers really didn’t waste much time pretending otherwise. The most generous estimates put the number of undocumented immigrant students using in-state tuition waivers at about 6,500. Collectively, they were paying about $12 million in tuition, a little less than half the cost of out-of-state tuition. But the state can’t claim that $26 million as a savings, because without the in-state tuition most of these students would not have been able to afford post-high-school education at all.

As a last-ditch prayer, some lawmakers tried to amend the tuition portion of the sprawling anti-immigration package that was passed in a hastily called special session earlier in February. They pleaded to at least allow the students who were already enrolled to complete their degrees. The answer was an immediate “no.” For thousands of students, this semester will probably be their last.

What will become of them — and the children who follow them, as young as 3 or 4 years old? Will Florida someday see a time when children of undocumented immigrants are banned from attending public schools at all?

Lawmakers who supported the new, dream-crushing law tried to shift the blame for their cruelty onto the parents of these students. The reality is starkly different: Those parents were willing to risk everything, leave everything behind to give their children a shot at the American dream. And once upon a time, state Republicans were willing to acknowledge that Florida stood to benefit greatly from the risks these families took.

Someday, when sanity returns, we hope to see DeSantis, Albritton and Perez offer humble apologies to these child sacrifices whose mangled dreams were held up as the first casualties of ambition-fueled hatred. That dream is a distant one, but in times like these, it’s all Floridians have.

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The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com