When Missael, a young man from Hidalgo, Mexico, first set eyes on a college campus, he could barely contain himself.
"There was so much excitement," he said Wednesday, recalling the moment two years ago when he took a tour of the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus and sat in on a couple of classes in large, imposing lecture halls. "I said to myself, 'I want to be a part of this one day. I want to go through this experience.'"
Missael, who lives in East Baltimore, is one of thousands of students set to benefit from a bill approved this week by the Maryland General Assembly that extends them discounted rates at the state's colleges. Like other students interviewed for this article, he asked that his last name not be published because of his immigration status.
"Thanks to this law, I will have a chance," said Missael, who turns 21 next month and whose path to higher education was uncertain even without the challenge of paying for it. He said he had made some bad choices in his personal life, including getting involved in a street fight that left him badly injured. "I had bad friends — all the things you go through. We didn't have people around us who could say, 'You can do much better than this.'"
Despite his personal difficulties, Missael was in the top five of his graduating class at the Baltimore public high school he attended. Last fall, he enrolled in a community college but could afford to pay for only one class, and did so by selling candy in the Inner Harbor and working as a food runner in a restaurant, a job he still holds. He hopes to study business administration.
Other students, many of whom had urged passage of the bill in sessions of the General Assembly and at gatherings elsewhere, were equally enthusiastic. "Everybody is so glad, so happy about it," said Sarita, 19, a native of Cajamarca, Peru, who graduated with a 4.0 grade-point average from Digital Harbor High School in Baltimore and was a vocal advocate of the proposed law. "It just affects a lot of people. Everybody's so excited that they can go to school, or go back to school."
With scholarships, Sarita was able to attend a community college full time for two semesters, beginning in 2009. "It was all paid for," she said, but then the scholarships dried up and she was asked to come up with about $3,000 for the next semester. "It was too much. I'm still in school, but I'm only taking one class, and that's more than $500. It's heartbreaking to see so many students not be able to go to college because they can't afford it. I know a lot of people who got a job instead of going to college, when they had so much potential."
Sarita, the only child of two college graduates who brought her to the United States eight years ago specifically so that she could "get an education," she said, intends to major in business administration. But after her interview with The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday, she learned that the new law does not apply to students who entered community college before 2010, as she did, so that as it is currently written it will not benefit her. She did not return a telephone call seeking her reaction.
An official at CASA de Maryland, the state's largest immigrant-rights organization, gave Sarita the news and said she was "very sad."
CASA's executive director, Gustavo Torres, said in a statement issued by his office that passage of the tuition law represented a victory "many years in the making," a reference to the bill's tortuous path through the legislature. First introduced in 2002, the law was approved in 2003 and then vetoed by Republican Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., who was the governor at the time. In 2007, a similar bill passed the Maryland House, only to stall in the Senate.
"Each year we waited, we were losing the talents of our next heart surgeons, social workers and teachers — skills and commitment that no state can afford to waste," Torres said. "But even more importantly, this passage illustrates that in Maryland we are committed to confronting the failed federal action on immigration and its accompanying civil rights crisis humanely, recognizing the basic dignity of immigrant families."
Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has said that he will sign the bill, which is more limited than previous versions. Students must attend three years of high school, their parents must pay state income taxes, and they must start at a community college. After two years, they can apply to one of the state's four-year universities.
Maryland is the 11th state to extend in-state college tuition breaks to illegal immigrants. It would save qualifying students up to $6,000 a year at a community college, according to a legislative analysis. At current rates, they would pay about $15,000 less than out-of-state students to attend the University of Maryland, College Park.
After the law's passage on Monday night, opponents remained committed to its undoing. "I don't think Americans should have to compete with an illegal immigrants for a job," Del. Herbert H. McMillan, an Anne Arundel Republican, said Wednesday. "And I don't think we should be offering enticements for people to come here illegally. If you build it, they will come."
McMillan said it was bad enough that Maryland had offered driver's licenses to illegal immigrants for several years, a practice that ended in 2009. Two years earlier, he said, "about 260,000 illegal immigrants applied for those licenses," almost overwhelming the Motor Vehicle Administration's ability to cope. Now, he said, an "underfunded" educational system could find itself in similar straits as a result of the tuition law.
"I tell people, 'Your intentions may be good, you may just want to help people, but there's a cost and a consequence to this,'" McMillan said. "I feel for people who want to come here and work, but charity begins at home."
Despite vigorous opposition, the campaign to prompt passage of the tuition law drew supporters far and wide, including a large network of students and activists for immigrants, civil rights groups, religious organizations, labor leaders and educational institutions. On March 7, more than 1,000 people went to Annapolis for Immigrant Action Night, which featured students and others giving voice to their support for the bill. Some students also testified before legislators at hearings dedicated to the measure.
"The whole community was united in a single cause, and it was an achievement of the community," Jesus, 19, one of the students to testify, recalled Wednesday. "Now the future will benefit everyone, and not just economically. People will be able to study to be doctors, nurses, lawyers."
Jesus, who moved to Baltimore from Puebla, Mexico, with his family when he was 5 years old, said he wants to be a social worker, and also has a keen interest in journalism and other facets of communication. "My first dream is to have work so that I can help my mother," said Jesus, the eldest of four children. "My second dream is to see if the immigration issue can be resolved."
Those who oppose illegal immigrants and any efforts to help them, Jesus said, "should not judge according to what they see or they hear," but rather "go deeper and learn more" about the culture of other nations.
"The Hispanics don't come to take work away from people here: I would say it's work that others don't want to do, like cleaning bathrooms," he said. "If they join with us and work with us, this country can move forward."
For Missael, the young man who marveled at the bustling Hopkins campus, such a place had always seemed far beyond his wallet — or his dreams. "I'd never really planned to go to college when I was young," he said. "I'd never really thought about it."
But it took being beaten with a baseball bat two years ago, he said, for a revelation. After a week in a hospital, and a conversation with some Hopkins students at an after-school mentoring program, Missael decided college might be the answer.
"They encouraged me to change my life, and they took me to the campus," said Missael, who moved to Baltimore nine years ago and had never been to Hopkins or anywhere like it. "I met some cool people. They opened their arms, and they showed me around. I sat in a few classes — it was amazing."