What killed Alabama’s bill to open public colleges to some undocumented residents?

Rep. Reed Ingram, R-Pike Road, sits on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on April 25, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

A bill to allow undocumented students to attend some of Alabama’s public institutions of higher education died in the final days of the 2024 session amid attempts to limit the scope of the bill. 

HB 210, sponsored by Rep. Reed Ingram, R-Pike Road, would have allowed undocumented students to attend public colleges and universities as long as they met certain requirements, including making an application for legal status.

“If somebody comes over the border illegally, or are not wanting to contribute to society, then I don’t have any use for them going to college, but as long as they really want to work and get a job and and give back to the community — it’s those people that we were targeting,” Ingram said on Monday. 

Alabama’s HB 56, a 2011 law that attempted to criminalize the lives of undocumented immigrants in the state, barred immigrants without legal status from attending public colleges and universities. Federal courts gutted the law, but the higher education bar remained.

Ingram’s bill would have required a qualifying student to have attended high school in the state for three years and graduated from high school, earned a GED or completed another equivalent.

Ingram said that an amendment from Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, the chair of the Senate Education Policy committee, slowed the bill down.

Chesteen said Monday that it would have set a specific timeframe for a student to apply for status.

A copy of the proposed amendment provided to the Reflector by the Higher Education Partnership Monday said that a qualifying student had to have “applied for lawful presence in the United States before or during the ninth grade of high school or three years prior to enrolling in a public post-secondary education institution.” 

“We just thought that that pathway would show their intent to go ahead and try to obtain legal status earlier, rather than at the completion of school and right into college,” Chesteen said Monday.

The senator said “post-secondary and higher ed wanted that amendment” on the bill.

Boone Kinard, executive director of external affairs with the Alabama Community College System, said that they supported the amendment only as a way to get the broader legislation passed.

“We were not pushing for the amendment, but certainly in working with the lieutenant governor (and) our stakeholders, we were amenable to adding that amendment to the bill,” he said.

Kinard said that the bill would have also allowed high school students to participate in dual enrollment. He said that, currently, some students are crossing state lines to do so.

“It is an issue that several of our community colleges that border other states have dealt with,” he said.

Gordon Stone, executive director of the Higher Education Partnership of Alabama, was also part of the discussions. He said that they also supported the amendment as a way to help the bill pass.

“This bill that Representative Ingram had initially sponsored was great for us, because it just created more access points, and that’s what we’ve always been about, accessibility for Alabamians across the board,” he said.

Kinard and Stone said they were in conversations with Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth during the process; Kinard said that Ainsworth had “issues” with the bill. Stone said that Ainsworth “represented a voice” and that the amendment was a change that legislative leaders wanted.

An email was sent to Jesse Skaggs, Ainsworth’s chief of staff, Monday afternoon.

Both Ingram and co-sponsor Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, said they expect to file the bill earlier. Chesteen said the bill could pass with the amendment.

“We’re providing education for kindergarten through 12th grade, and to limit it after that, so that they can’t move up into our workforce, which we have workforce needs, almost seems foolish, so I was hopeful that it was going to get through even the first year, but there are lots of things that don’t get through the first year,” Collins said.

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