AP Photo/John Bazemore
- Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to repeal their access to in-state tuition rates for undocumented students.
- The immigration package is, according to The New York Times, one of the toughest in over a decade.
- At least 12,000 DACA recipients benefit from in-state tuition in Florida.
As part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's extensive immigration reform legislative package, undocumented students could lose access to in-state tuition rates.
The legislation would repeal a 2014 law that gave undocumented students and beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects those who came as children from deportation, access to in-state tuition rates. That law was enacted by DeSantis' predecessor Rick Scott, who is now a GOP Senator.
This immigration package would also make it a felony to shelter or transport an undocumented immigrant in the state, invalidate out-of-state driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, and also require hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status to report to the state, among other measures.
The legislation would be one of the toughest immigration measures proposed in over a decade and is expected to pass within weeks, The New York Times reported. The Florida governor first announced these sweeping proposals in February as a way to "fight Biden's Border Crisis."
"With this legislation, Florida is continuing to crack down on the smuggling of illegal aliens, stopping municipalities from issuing ID cards to people here illegally, and ensuring that employers are hiring American citizens or those here legally," DeSantis said in a February statement announcing the package.
"Florida is a law and order state, and we won't turn a blind eye to the dangers of Biden's Border Crisis. We will continue to take steps to protect Floridians from reckless federal open border policies."
Republicans have supermajorities in both the state House and Senate and the legislation could impact the 40,000 undocumented higher education students in Florida, of which a little over 12,000 are DACA-eligible, according to data from the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.
"We need to do everything in our power to protect the people of Florida from what's going on at the border and the border crisis," DeSantis said at a news conference in late February.
DeSantis' proposal has garnered pushback from business groups, who say the move is not only "unfair" but could hurt the workforce.
"At a time when we need thousands more educated and there are thousands of jobs vacant because there aren't enough people to take the jobs, here we have young people willing to serve the county —and now there's a proposal to deny them that opportunity," Eduardo Padrón, a former board chair of the Association of American Colleges and Universities said in a March statement from the American Business Immigration Coalition.