An advocacy group has called on New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine to create a statewide office on immigrant affairs and to push a bill allowing immigrant children to be eligible for in-state tuition at state colleges and universities.
The New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, a coalition of more than 70 civil rights, community and social services organizations, recently presented Corzine with an issue paper, asking him to take action within his first 100 days in office.
On January 30, Corzine spokesman said that the new governor was reviewing the suggestions.
“Based on what he has done in the past, I’m very hopeful he’ll put words into action,” said network executive director Partha Banerjee.
The network wants Corzine to appoint an advisory committee to explore establishing a statewide office to coordinate services to New Jersey’s immigrant communities. State Senator Ronald Rice, D-Essex County, said his office is drafting a bill to that effect to be introduced in a few weeks.
Census Bureau figures from 2005 indicate that New Jersey has 1.5 million foreign-born citizens and legal residents – 19 percent of the state’s total population.
Banerjee said an average of 50,000 new legal immigrants move to New Jersey each year.
Nationally, that figure is 35 million people, or 12 percent of the United State’s population.
Undocumented immigration is harder to tabulate, but the Pew Hispanic Center estimates the figure is about 350,000 in New Jersey and 10.3 million nationally.
The Immigration Policy Network is promoting a bill, introduced by Sen. Rice, that would extend in-state tuition to undocumented young people who were brought to the United States by their parents or guardians. In-state tuition – about half the cost of out-of-state fees – would be extended to students who have attended a New Jersey high school for at least three years and graduated.
A similar bill languished in the Senate Education Committee last year, because state Senator Shirley Turner, D-Mercer County, said she feared it would put New Jersey in conflict with federal law.
As a U.S. senator, Corzine co-sponsored similar federal legislation called the DREAM Act, said spokesman Anthony Coley. [The Development, Relief and Education Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, if passed, will allow children of undocumented immigrant parents to get in-state tuition and apply for U.S. legal status.]
“These children have built their lives in this country, and we must not hold them in a Catch-22 that is not of their own making,” Coley said.
Among those who oppose the idea is Assemblyman Christopher Connors. The Ocean County Republican has reintroduced a bill to prohibit the state from granting any license, contract, loan or tax abatement to New Jerseyans who cannot prove they are legal residents.
“Our state’s citizens ought not to be in competition for seats in our colleges and university’s with individuals who are here under illegal means,” Connors said.
If an immigrant affairs office were to be created, he said, he hoped it would work with federal officials to locate and deport undocumented immigrants.
Last week’s beating deaths of two boys in their Stafford Township home by an illegal immigrant from Mexico underscored Connors’ fears.
“People who come here without regard to the law, we can only expect they’re not going to abide by all the other laws once they get here,” Connors said. “They’re here under the radar screen to begin with.”
