Classnotes Podcast (April 29, 2024) Anti-immigrant rhetoric has real consequences on students’ lives. Since IDRA’s earliest days, we have been at the forefront of protecting the rights of immigrant students to attend public school. Their access to college was under threat recently in a case brought forth by the Young Conservatives of Texas that was a thinly veiled anti-immigrant attack on the Texas Dream Act.
When the lower court in 2022 barred the University of North Texas (UNT) from collecting nonresident tuition from out-of-state students, IDRA filed an amicus brief on behalf of 12 student, business and higher education organizations urging the Fifth Circuit to reverse the erroneous decision.
Thankfully the next year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court sided with the university by reversing anti-immigrant tuition challenge.
While the Young Conservatives of Texas v. Neal Smatresk et al., case was pending IDRA Chief Legal Analyst, Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., talked with two UNT students and a faculty member about how such legal challenges affect them and their campus environment. They describe YCT’s “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game” on campus and ways students and faculty came together to support undocumented students in such a climate.
At the time of this recording, Daniel Diaz-Alcaraz was a UNT doctoral student and a founder of MUEVE. Edith Campa graduated from UNT in 2022. Mariela Nuñez-Janes, Ph.D., is a UNT professor of anthropology.
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