Students who receive scholarships from SUU received a letter last week asking them to fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid form to verify citizenship, in compliance with Utah Senate Bill 81 “Illegal Immigration.”
While the bill addresses more than just higher education, it requires that as agencies of the state, universities and colleges “verify the lawful presence in the United States” of individuals who have applied for “a state or local public benefit … or a federal public benefit.”
Director of Financial Aid & Scholarships Jan Carey-McDonald said that scholarship housing, as a benefit that is applied for, is included in the requirement, while some athletic scholarships that are granted during recruiting instead of through an application are not.
Public benefits include not only grants, scholarships and fee waivers, but also public certificates and licensures that can be applied for at a university, such as teaching certificates or accounting licenses.
She said while she and her office sent the letter to all of the above who did not complete a FAFSA application for the 2009-2010 school year, a FAFSA application on file for any year would satisfy the verification requirement.
The law not only dictates that verification must be made, it also specifies that it can be made through a new program, the “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program (SAVE) … operated by the United States Department of Homeland Security.”
To implement the new law and address the ways the bill affects higher education, the Utah System of Higher Education assembled a task force adopted “variations” which “clearly improve the efficiency of or reduce delay in the verification process.”
Associate Director of Admissions Christine Proctor represented SUU on the task force.
She said that with legal advice from the Attorney General, the task force substituted FAFSA as the primary method.
“We will do it in the most efficient way possible which is the FAFSA,” she said.
According to the bill, if FAFSA or SAVE forms fail to verify citizenship, students can use other documents, including a birth certificate or password.
Proctor added that not only is compliance with the law an obligation for the university, there is another benefit to using FAFSA to verify citizenship.
“There may be students who are eligible for a Pell grant who may not have applied,” she said. “If we can help other students through this, then we will.”
Proctor added that while no illegal residents have ever been found to have applied for and accepted public benefits at SUU, the same is not true of some other Utah campuses.
There has been such an uproar about people taking jobs, taking benefits,” she said. “I would think they would be glad we are taking an extra step.”
The task force was chaired by Assistant Commissioner for Planning and Administration Cameron Martin, who said the FAFSA will only be used as the primary method until the SAVE program is “fully functional.”
Martin said that he thought there are more efficient ways of verifying citizenship.
“If they would have asked the colleges — which they didn’t — the colleges and universities would say ‘We already verify this. By enacting this legislation, you’re actually asking us to duplicated that which we already do and spend more money in that effort,’” he said.
However, Martin said it was his understanding the authors of the bill wanted the verification to go through a national database to counter fabricated documents and identify illegal residents who apply for public benefits.
Carey-McDonald said she encourages students to use the FAFSA form for verification.
Martin said while his office had developed the implementation plan and the campuses are ultimately accountable for their decisions, each campus has ultimate authority to make decisions regarding individual cases.
“Our default is ‘What can we do to help our students?’” Martin said.
Carey-McDonald said in speaking with Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Stephen Allen and Vice President for Student Services Donna Eddleman, they wanted the Financial Aid & Scholarships office to encourage the FAFSA or the SAVE in order to be as compliant as possible.
“If there is any way we can be flexible and make exceptions, I’m all about that,” she said.
Carey-McDonald said she has been recommending to students and parents who do not like the law that they contact their state legislators and representatives.
Martin said legislators “basically copied a bill from Oklahoma.”
While not an exact verbatim match to the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, Utah Senate Bill 81, “Illegal Immigration” does follow suit in requiring verification to receive public benefits and require that verification be made through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE Program.
However, some students say this was not a good bill to follow.
Taylor Bentley, a senior English major from Lindon, said he thought there would be several ways of verifying citizenship that were easier than filling out a FAFSA application.
“It seems like a bureaucratic solution for something that shouldn’t be that difficult,” Bentley said.
But Carey-McDonald said the law is something students have to work with.
“I’m not a fan of it,” Carey-McDonald said. “While it may seem unnecessarily bureaucratic, it is a law we must comply with.”
Carey-McDonald said she is in the process of finding students with FAFSAs from previous years and waiving the requirement for them.
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