Illinois governor signs college scholarship bill

CHICAGO — Illinois made it easier for illegal immigrants to pay for college when Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law Monday creating a privately funded college scholarship program.

"We say to all the people of our country and our state, we want everybody in and nobody left out," Quinn told a packed auditorium at a high school in a Latino neighborhood of Chicago. "Education is the key to opportunity in a democracy."

Called the Illinois Dream Act, the law creates a nine-member commission to establish scholarships for immigrant children with private donations, not taxpayer money. Quinn was quick to personally pledge $1,000 to the fund.

Immigrant children here legally and illegally can qualify if they attend an Illinois high school for at least three years and have at least one parent who immigrated to the United States.

Private scholarships are among the few ways that illegal immigrants can pay for college because they don't qualify for government financial aid.

The new law also lets anyone with a Social Security number or taxpayer identification number enroll in state-run college savings programs.

Illinois already offers in-state tuition rates to undocumented students at public universities.

Tania Unzueta, a 27-year-old graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago who says she's undocumented, was ecstatic about the new law.

"It's been so frustrating to know undocumented young people who don't graduate from high school because they don't think they can go to college," she said.

Unzueta said she is lucky to have gone to college and on to graduate school, something that more people will now be able to do because of increased access to private scholarships under the law.

But Unzueta, who has been in the United States since she was 10, said that still doesn't solve the problem of what undocumented students do after college because they are not legally allowed to work in this country.

"I have one more year to graduate and I don't know what I'm going to do next," she said.

Unzueta said there needs to be comprehensive immigration reform.

Proposed federal legislation with a name similar to Illinois' new law would give some illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Illinois' law has no impact on a person's immigration status.