Prop. 308's win gives AZ 'Dreamers' in-state tuition. What does it mean for the national debate?
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Arizonans approved Prop. 308 in November, opening up in-state tuition to undocumented high school students for the first time in more than 15 years.
Now, as the DACA program hangs on by a thread in federal court, advocates wonder — what does this win mean for the rest of the country?
The victory was announced almost a week after the election. A few dozen people were together in Phoenix as that coveted check mark appeared on the screen confirming “Yes” on Prop. 308. They were undocumented students, families and DACA recipients like Jose Patiño.
“It was weird that you just felt joy. And that you wanted to smile, and that your cheeks would hurt after smiling. Those things, like, it’s not how an undocumented immigrant or DACA recipients goes through an election,” he said.
Patiño’s family came to Arizona from Mexico when he was a toddler. He’s in his 30s now. Growing up undocumented, he says education felt like hope.
“Once you have a degree, people start treating you differently, and society sees you in a different light. From an undocumented person named Jose, now to an mechanical engineer named Jose who’s still undocumented,” he said.
Today, Patiño holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in secondary education.
Getting both degrees was complicated thanks to Proposition 300. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure in 2006, and it barred undocumented people from accessing a host of publicly funded services — including in-state tuition and scholarships.
Almost overnight, undocumented students like Patiño were looking at a several thousand dollar increase in tuition to go to school in Arizona. He was a senior in high school back then.
“I remember, that’s how I got involved in the movement,” he said.
Six years later, the Obama administration created DACA and gave some undocumented immigrants temporary protection from deportation and a work permit. Around that time, Arizona was embracing hardline immigration policies like SB 1070 — which required police officers to ask for proof of citizenship during routine traffic stops.
Like other undocumented people, Patiño began attending protests, speaking with lawmakers and advocating for change — not just in Arizona, but also in Washington. There, Congress had just introduced a bill called the Dream Act to provide a pathway to citizenship for so-called "Dreamers," but it had been rejected.
Patiño says he hoped both Prop. 300 and the national bill would be addressed soon.
“I was in this room and I saw all these other people and they're talking about, and I'm like, ‘oh, they seem very smart.' You have attorneys, you have business leaders, they're gonna be able to figure it out. It's just a matter of time,” he said.
Instead, different versions of the Dream Act were introduced, then rejected, again and again. Reyna Montoya, another DACA recipient in Phoenix, says Republican support did exist. She even came out as undocumented at a GOP fundraiser in Arizona in 2010.
“But it was so interesting because they're like, I support you. Like how can we figure it out that you get your papers fixed? And they wanted to help me and there was that empathy,” she said. “But they were not courageous enough to, to say it out loud or to even like, ask or question their party about why they were not supporting the Dream Act.”
Montoya was still in high school when Prop. 300 was enacted. She sought out private scholarships and other funding and eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science and transborder studies, and a master’s degree in secondary education, both from Arizona universities.
She started the advocacy group, Aliento, to help other undocumented students do the same. Patiño now works as the organization's director of education and external affairs.
Year after year, they watched more students graduate from Arizona high schools and face the same Prop. 300 barriers that they once did.
In the absence of national solutions, she focused on the local. They started talking with politicians on both sides of the aisle, asking for support to restore local tuition rates. It would be 16 years before Prop. 308 finally made it to the ballot.
“We could have just easily given up, and then moved into the next thing, but I think the fact that we kept educating voters, we kept educating impacted folks and doing that regime over years,” she said. “It became personal, now people know who Dreamers are.”
It passed by a slim margin — getting about 51% of the votes. Tyler Montague is a Republican and headed the Yes on 308 campaign.
“And I think that over time people have come to regret being, you know, nasty to the Dreamers. It doesn't make sense. It literally doesn't cost us anything to let them go be productive,” he said.
Montague says he hopes it’s enough to spur change in Washington.
“I hope that our federal leadership sees that here in, you know, the heart of anti-immigrant sentiment, Arizona, that actually things have changed and, they should take courage from that, and act,” he said.
Lawmakers are mulling a potential deal to provide Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship during the lame duck session before the end of the year. But no bill has made it to the Senate floor yet.
As analysts stress, time is of the essence. An appeals court found DACA was illegally created earlier this year. The case could go back to the Supreme Court or the program could get canceled entirely, by 2023.
Montoya says, it’s hard not to think about what that would mean for her and hundreds of thousands of other DACA recipients around the U.S. But, for now, she and Patiño are looking forward to walking into the next Arizona high school, and having a different conversation.
“I'm so excited to see those faces of hope and seeing that, that I don't have to continue to bear all this bad news and having to train people to overcome this plethora of obstacles just to get an education,” she said.
