Attitudinal Policy Feedback: The Secondary Impact of Offering in-State Tuition to Dreamers on Feelings Toward Undocumented Immigrants

Background and purpose: Every year, an estimated 65,000 undocumented immigrant youth graduate from U.S. high schools, a population known as DREAMers (Mendoza, 2009).  Without legal documentation authorizing their presence in the U.S., the challenges DREAMers face in obtaining gainful employment and pursuing higher education are often insurmountable, placing them in a holding pattern upon high school graduation (Martinez, 2014).  DREAMers have historically needed to pay non-resident tuition rates at public universities (NCSL, 2015), an out-of-reach expense for many given the high rate of poverty (Mendoza, 2009).  However, in 2001, states began passing legislation extending in-state tuition to DREAMers and, to date, in-state tuition is offered to the population in 20 states (NCSL, 2015).  In addition to the direct benefit of reduced tuition rates, DREAMers may indirectly benefit from these policies.  By favorably casting undocumented immigrants as a college-bound population, a policy feedback impact on broader public sentiment toward undocumented immigrants may be observed (Kreitzer et al., 2014).  This study examines how state-level policies extending in-state tuition to DREAMers influence attitudes toward the population.  

Method: Pooled cross-sectional data from the 1988, 1992, 1994, 2004, and 2008 American Nation Election Studies surveys (n = 9,854) were used to employ a differences-in-differences model with fixed effects.  This empirical technique compares the change in an outcome from pre- to post-policy intervention in a treatment group (i.e., states that extended in-state tuition) to the change in a comparison group (i.e., states that did not offer in-state tuition; Card & Krueger, 1994).  It offers a less biased estimate of the causal impact of extending in-state tuition to DREAMers on feelings toward the population.  State and year fixed effects were included in the model to account for unobserved determinants of feelings toward undocumented immigrants, further ensuring an unbiased estimate of the policy intervention effect.

Results: The majority of participants were female (55.0%) white (70.1%), and the mean age was 46.26 (SD = 17.58).  Politically, the sample was slightly left leaning (M = 53.52, SD = 20.26, where 100 = most democratic).  Findings suggest feelings toward undocumented immigrants in states that passed in-state tuition policies improved by 4.54 units on a 100 point scale post-policy enactment above and beyond that which occurred in the comparison group (β = 4.54, SE = 1.42, p <.01).  This difference was observed after controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, income percentile, employment status, level of education, political affiliation, religiosity, parents’ nativity, and unobserved time variant and invariant factors (i.e., fixed effects).  

Conclusion and implications:  Findings suggest policies supportive of DREAMers benefit the population not just directly, but through a secondary and added positive influence on public opinion.  This indirect benefit for undocumented youth is particularly important, as increasingly anti-Latino immigrant attitudes have been witnessed throughout the U.S. in recent years (Lopez et al., 2015).  This study supports the importance of social work policy advocacy that sensitizes the public and policymakers to the needs of DREAMers, promoting responsive state legislation and leading to more favorable public sentiment.