Tennessee Senate committee kills bill promising in-state tuition for undocumented students

NASHVILLE — Children who immigrated to Tennessee illegally must still pay higher prices to attend local colleges, as a controversial measure proposing in-state tuition for undocumented students died Wednesday in the Senate.

Supported by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the bill failed to advance out of the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, effectively killing it.

The bill aimed at helping students, known as Dreamers, who have received temporary legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

More: Controversial bill that would ban undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state tuition fails in committee

The DACA program, created by then-President Barack Obama in 2012, is set to expire this year. President Donald Trump has asked Congress to address the program.

"At the very least, we had hoped our elected officials could have shown courage and moral leadership by bringing this bill to a vote. Instead, they prioritized careers over courage, fear over fairness, and politics over principle," said Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, policy director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

"They've shown they are as ineffective and out of step with Tennesseans as Congress. The vast majority of voters believe Dreamers belong here and should have the opportunity to go to college."

Gov. Bill Haslam supports providing in-state tuition to students who came to the U.S. illegally as children, posing recently for a photo with students who would qualify under the measure.

“We’ve said that we were in favor of the bill last year, and we’ll be in favor of it this year," Haslam has said.

But House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, and other Republicans running to replace Haslam do not support the measure.

Bill sponsor Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, blamed their reticence, misinformation from his GOP colleagues in the House and an increasingly political process for the demise of the bill.

"The House leadership in the last five years has consistently not wanted this bill to move forward. There's people on what I would call the Roy Moore faction of the Republican party, have put out a tremendous amount of misinformation about what this bill does and what it doesn't do," Gardenhire said before the committee meeting.

"When you have all four Republican governor candidates coming out against this concept (without speaking with him) you have to wonder what their motives are."

Moore is a controversial Alabama political figure who railed against immigrants in a failed bid for the U.S. Senate. He was also accused of sexual misconduct involving juvenile women in the 1970s and 1980s.

More: In-state tuition bill re-filed as federal DACA decision is debated

Gardenhire said the Senate decided not to take action on the bill because they perceived no path to viability for the legislation in the House.

In mid-March, the subcommittee of the House Education Administration And Planning Committee recommended the bill for passage. As of Wednesday, the committee had not scheduled the bill for discussion.

Last year, the legislation failed in the same House committee by a 7-6 vote. In 2015 after the Senate had passed the bill, the bill failed by one vote in the House.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.