Florida In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

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<p>Actually the cost to attend UF from out of state is even higher! Our primary residence is MS (although we also pay FL taxes for several things), so our daughter attends UF as an OOS student. We pay almost $1000/credit hour! (OOS tuition is in-state plus about $23k per year!) </p>

<p>We pay this rate EVEN for courses she is forced to take online (because the live class sections are full before her assigned registration time each semester)! ICYDK, every UF student is assigned a time to register online and underclassmen get pretty late times; classes are often full before freshmen and sophomores even get to start making their schedules. </p>

<p>And now I’m reading that people who are breaking this country’s immigration laws can attend for about 10-20% of what we’re paying. This does not seem fair to me! </p>

<p>Mississippi residents can get in-state tuition by attending Mississippi state universities. Mississippi residents can get Florida in-state tuition by moving to Florida for a year and declaring Florida as resident state after living in Florida one year. Undocumented immigrants will be able to get Florida in-state tuition at Florida public colleges after attending Florida high schools for three years.</p>

<p>Over 90% of the Univ. of Florida’s new freshmen are Florida residents and 99% of the 90%+ get Fl. Bright Futures merit scholarships funded mostly by Florida’s state operated lottery.</p>

<p>@msmom94‌ </p>

<p>Even with in-state tuition, only a small number of undocumented immigrants can afford to attend UF. They don’t qualify for aid, so have to come up with the full $19K COA (tuition, room and board, books, etc.). Most will attend a CC and then a local university (to avoid room and board cost). If UF was based in Miami or Orlando, then more could attend, but it’s in Gainesville.</p>

<p>It is true that UF spends much of it’s “Financial Aid” funding on need-based aid and not merit based aid, but these students can’t claim either.</p>

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I agree with you that illegals shouldn’t get in-state tuition, but UF is a “premiere” university? I’d never heard that, and it’s ranked #49 for national universities, and #14 for public universities. To me, the premiere public universities are UNC-CH, UVA, UMichigan, UC-Berkeley and UCLA. Maybe those are worth OOS rates for some students, IMO. </p>

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So you’re paying the steep OOS rates for this? How many online courses is she forced to take/semester? </p>

<p>"Over 90% of the Univ. of Florida’s new freshmen are Florida residents and 99% of the 90%+ get Fl. Bright Futures merit scholarships funded mostly by Florida’s state operated lottery. "</p>

<p>Where can this information be confirmed? I don’t think it is accurate. The Bright Futures requirements have changed in the last 2 years and it is now very difficult to get.</p>

<p>I think Florida’s decision to do this is an excellent one. It won’t help that many kids but it’s a start. My home state of Maryland does something similar. Again, there are so many restrictions that not enough are helped, but better than nothing. </p>

<p>2, You’re right, Florida tightened Bright Futures…only about 75% of UF’s freshmen entering this coming fall/summer cohort will be eligible for Bright Futures according to projection done by USF last year. 25% of UF’s new freshmen probably didn’t meet 1170 SAT or 26 ACT bar needed to qualify for BFscholarship. Year before last, almost all UF freshmen qualified. </p>

<p><a href=“Highlands Today”>Highlands Today;

<p>@CTTC That’s really based on your definition of a “premiere” public university. Only those in the top 5 seems a bit restrictive. Should one pay OOS tuition is a complicated issue, based on your finances, preferences, field of study and comparable alternatives (in msmom94’s case, that would include in-state schools in Mississippi). </p>

<p>@twoinanddone In 2012, 88% was in-state, 6% OOS and 5% foreign countries. Based on UF’s admissions requirements, most would claim Bright Futures. In the link below(College Navigator), you’ll find that 96% of all incoming freshman receive a state grant/scholarships (which would be Bright Futures).</p>

<p><a href=“College Navigator - University of Florida”>College Navigator - University of Florida;

<p>@CTTC‌ wrote:

Ok, so maybe I played a little fast and loose with my description of UF, </p>

<p>I was using the CC App on my iPhone, and my entire post disappeared when I clicked Post Comment, so I reproduced it (in part) here: </p>

<p>@CTTC‌ wrote:

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<p>Ok, so maybe I played a little fast and loose with my description of UF, but for some majors it is premiere.<br>
For instance, if you’re in engineering, Florida is ranked:</p>

<h1>1 in the state of Florida,. #2 in the South, and # 4 in the USA (ref: best-engineering-colleges dot com, or something like that)… I just did a quick search to find one example of UF’s academic excellence. I know there are many! (And as @GATOR88NE pointed out, I’m comparing it to schools where we’d pay in-state tuition - Mississippi schools plus a few neighboring schools, like USA in Mobile, AL). My undergrad Alma Mater is Mississippi State, and hubby’s is Texas A&M, both of which are very decent engineering schools, but DD had her heart set on Florida.</h1>

<p>Florida’s sports teams are consistently outstanding, making for a campus culture of pride and school spirit, which my DD loves. They won SEC championships in 8 different sports this year, and had 8 out of their 14 sports teams ranked in the top 5 nationally. In early March, Florida had 5 teams ranked #1 in the nation! So I guess depending on your major and interests, Florida can reasonably be considered premiere, right?</p>

<p>So yes, I gripe and complain about some of UF’s policies, but at the end of the day, DD is ecstatically happy there (she arrived knowing not one single person, and she’s now president-elect of her Christian sorority). And I feel as if her diploma will be valuable in a couple of years when she hits the job market. So I continue to write those OOS checks. ;)</p>

<p>Recent, Florida survey results:</p>

<p>Floridians remain conflicted on immigration; oppose eligibility for federal education grants</p>

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<p><a href=“http://news.ufl.edu/2014/05/19/florida-survey-on-immigration/”>http://news.ufl.edu/2014/05/19/florida-survey-on-immigration/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.piecenter.com/immigration/”>http://www.piecenter.com/immigration/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The complete survey:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.piecenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Immigration_Year2_ReportFINAL1.pdf”>http://www.piecenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Immigration_Year2_ReportFINAL1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Page 25 has the results around college benefits for children of undocumented immigrants.</p>

<p><a href=“"Children Immigrants" An Impending Issue For Miami-Dade Schools - CBS Miami”>http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/06/18/children-immigrants-an-impending-issue-for-miami-dade-schools/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Just think, in a few more years the generous Florida taxpayers can pay for all these deserving kids to go to colleges. </p>

<p>Nothing new for Miami…Miami area has been dealing with refugees for decades. Most people in Miami speak Spanish.</p>

<p>Perhaps we should put some people at the border to keep these kids from walking into our country? We told our kids to ‘Just Say No’ to drugs … How about closing the border and saying NO to illegal immigration!</p>

<p>A lot of the kids coming up illegally from Mexico and Central America are refugees trying to escape violence associated with illegal drug trafficking in the kids’ home countries. US needs to curb demand in US for the illegal drugs and do a better job stopping the illegal drugs coming into US over our border.</p>

<p>Yes, Lizard, that is definitely a problem … But how are we going to be able to deal with a problem so large when we can’t even keep people from walking across the border!</p>

<p>Some US officials think drug cartels are behind the recent surge of kids crossing US border now…US border police are now preoccupied with dealing with the illegals and so drug smugglers are having easier time getting illegal drugs in US because border police are tied up with so many border jumpers.</p>

<p>Scenario: If kid from Honduras is standing right at our US border with a drug thug pointing gun at kid telling kid to enter US and on other side of kid a US border cop has gun pointed at kid telling him not to enter…who blinks first drug thug or US border cop?</p>

<p>The problem is not that we can’t stop this, at all. The problem is simply that we don’t want to enforce this particular law for sleazy political reasons and the word is out. Escaping violence; lol. Suddenly violence has escalated dramatically to the point where hundreds of thousands of families are sending their kids and pregnant relatives off to the US unaccompanied. No, not believable by a long shot. They are coming because they think they have been invited and will be allowed to stay and they could be right. It’s petty simple, really. And it’s intentional.</p>

<p>Are Miami and Florida any better prepared to handle this latest problem with refugee children any more than they were prepared for the sudden and mass exodus from Mariel, Cuba 34 years ago? I attended a national public policy forum at the time wherein representatives from the municipal leadership of Miami were in a near panic about how to handle it. Crowds of refugees were sleeping under elevated highways and straining public relief services.</p>

<p>No. But, agree or disagree at least those were refugees. This is just a policy that encourages illegal immigration of children, no less. It’s anything but humanitarian. </p>