BENTONVILLE — A student loan and forgiveness program could defuse the political “hand grenade” of in-state tuition for students who cannot prove U.S. citizenship, a Northwest Arkansas senator said Saturday.
Senate Bill 915 by Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, would grant in-state tuition rates at Arkansas colleges and universities to students who grew up in Arkansas and graduated from an Arkansas high school, even if they cannot prove U.S. citizenship.
Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Gravette, compared voting for the bill to “jumping on a grenade” politically because of opposition to granting a benefit to people who aren’t in the country legally. The bill does “not have any chance of success” in its present form, he said at a legislative forum at NorthWest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.
“A lot of people are not going to vote for this if it’s not going to become a law,” Hendren said. “They’re not going to take the beating politically they are going to get for a bill that isn’t going to become a law.”
Still, there is a strong argument that people who were brought into this country while they were still children shouldn’t have to pay for the action of their parents, Hendren said. “We need to make a distinction between illegal immigrants and children who were brought here by their parents, and we need to do the right thing,” he said.
Hendren proposed the state provide a student loan that would “make up the difference” between in-state and out-of-state tuition to students who grew up in Arkansas but couldn’t verify U.S. citizenship. Repayment of the loan could be waived if the student becomes a citizen within five years.
Hendren is a freshman senator but also a former House Minority Leader for Republicans. He said the proposal would allow Arkansas residents to afford a college education while giving them incentive to get their citizenship status resolved, and recent developments in immigration reform in Congress makes the proposal more realistic.
No objections to the proposal were given during the forum from the audience or other lawmakers. Rep. Les Carnine, R-Rogers, is a House co-sponsor of the bill and was also in attendance at the forum.
In other issues, legislators’ reaction to the proposal to grant tax breaks and state-backed financing to the proposed Big River Steel project in northeast Arkansas ranged from openly expressed doubts to outright opposition at Saturday’s forum.
“I am a ‘no’ on this,” said Rep. Debra Hobbs, R-Rogers. The proposed steel mill would open up 30 miles north of an existing steel mill that wouldn’t enjoy the advantages being offered to investors in Big River, she said.
Carnine said the state would be risking more than $100 million in state-backed financing on the project. The state’s teacher’s retirement system is set to invest $60 million in the project if the state provides its backing. The risk to everyone involved is giving a lot of lawmakers pause as they look at the idea, he said.
The Big River decision isn’t being made in a vacuum, either, Carnine said. The economic and policy implications as the Legislature also wrestles with budget, tax and health issues makes the decision a complex one. “This is not just a case of ‘Oh, by the way, we need to vote on the steel plant,’” he said.
The Big River decision would be dauntingly complex even if it was a stand-alone question, Hendren said. “Most of us didn’t run for office to be investment bankers,” he said. “That’s exactly the type of decision we’re being asked to make here.”
Like it or not, making these types of finance decisions is why voters approved Amendment 82 to the state constitution, said Rep. Duncan Baird, R-Lowell. The amendment authorizes the Legislature to approve financing by tax-free bonds if the project is deemed important enough and passes certain thresholds in investment size and number of jobs created. Baird said he also had reservations about the project, but would give it thorough consideration.
Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville and Sen. Bart Hester, also R-Bentonville, said they too had objections in principle to the project. Both said they favored more evenly-distributed tax incentives to encourage investment to these case-by-case bundles to a specific company.