TODAY, Mon. April 19, at 1:00 PM, the Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee will take up House Bill No. 3, the higher education budget bill, which mandates that public universities and colleges charge undocumented (including those with DACA) Missouri students international student tuition rates - nearly 3 times what other MO residents would pay. We stand in solidarity with undocumented organizers in the state and reject this harmful practice. We need you to contact members of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ask them to remove this xenophobic language from the budget!
Undocumented Missourians are not international students! All individuals, regardless of immigration status, should have access to an affordable education. Currently, twenty-six states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas, all have in-state tuition policies for undocumented students. But the Missouri legislature has used this immoral budget practice for nearly a decade! For some of our elected officials, this is just another tool to further their racist, supremacist, and anti-immigrant agenda. Please click here for materials put together by #StudentsOfMissouri, the League of Student Advocates, and the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, including sample scripts, contact information and more. We've included some details here so you can take action immediately:
Numbers to call: Phone numbers for the Appropriations Committee
Sample Script: Hello, my name is _____ and I am calling to ask Senator _________ to remove language related to immigration from the higher education budget. Over twenty states have “tuition equity” laws or policies that make going to college easier for all students, regardless of their immigration status. Despite having grown up in the United States and attending and graduating from K-12 Missouri schools, Missouri students are being charged an unfairly inflated rate of tuition at public institutions of higher education in their home state of Missouri.
You can read the full text of the bill here, but the language we are fighting to remove currently states: "No funds shall be expended at public institutions of higher education that offer a tuition rate to any student with an unlawful immigration status in the United States that is less than the tuition rate charged to international students." It goes on to say that "No scholarship funds shall be expended on behalf of students with an unlawful immigration status in the United States." We know this kind of law does not represent our vision for community!
Please take a moment to contact the committee members and urge them to stand up for all Missourians' right to an accessible college education!