In November, Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, appeared on MSNBC and blasted the DREAM Act, proposed legislation that would grant a path to citizenship for undocumented youth who are qualified for college or military service, saying it would grant “lower tuition to illegals.” In a post published yesterday evening, PolitiFact Florida rated this claim “false.”
From the PolitiFact item:
[Mica is] talking about DREAM Act participants being able to qualify for in-state tuition, because they would be legal residents of a state just like other U.S. citizens. So, they’d be paying less in tuition than someone who attends an out-of-state university or a foreign national attending a U.S. university with a student visa, Mica claims.…
The legislation that passed the House on Dec. 7 does not mention in-state tuition, and no version ever considered would mandate or force states to offer DREAM Act participants in-state rates. That’s an opinion shared by Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, and by Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that opposes the DREAM Act.
…
The only real argument is that passing the DREAM Act could have the consequence of forcing them to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants as well. And we guess it could. But there’s no definitive evidence that it would, just conjecture and speculation. And it certainly isn’t expressed in the bill language.
So we rate this claim False.
