A New Strategy
Reyna Montoya during an event at the Arizona State Capitol in January 2020 attended by nearly 3,000 Dreamers, who asked state senators and representatives to grant them access to lower in-state university tuition. Photo by Beatriz Limón.
To reverse a recent history of anti-immigrant laws, tireless Dreamers take a new, strategic dive into Arizona politics, fighting one battle at a time
Editor’s note: Click here to read the story in Spanish.
There is very little art in the home of Reyna Montoya. Instead, the walls are covered with bulletin boards that display policy agendas, analytical diagrams and inspiring quotes aimed at immigrants in the United States. Besides being her home, the space is also the office of an activist who has achieved a key victory for Dreamers in Arizona.
A tireless advocate for undocumented immigrants, Montoya is the founder and CEO of the non-profit Aliento in Arizona. Through the grassroots organization, Dreamers developed a strategy to certify a ballot measure that would allow undocumented students to pay the same tuition rate as Arizona residents.
Montoya lobbied for the resolution in the Arizona State Legislature, which has long been a Republican Party stronghold, in hopes of letting voters decide if part of Arizona’s Proposition 300 should be revoked.
Proposition 300 went into effect in December 2006 as part of a wave of anti-immigration laws in Arizona. It found support in voters who were fearful of the state’s changing demographics. Its passage left thousands of undocumented high school graduates ineligible for certain public benefits. It forced them to pay university tuition and fees at triple the amount of other Arizona students. The law also denied adults without legal status access to state-funded literacy programs like English classes and high school diploma preparation, and child-care benefits.
Montoya and José Patiño, her life partner and ally in the fight, led hundreds of young people from the state’s high schools, community colleges and universities to raise their voices for their own cause.
Montoya, who was recognized as one of Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs in 2018, described to palabra a strategy set in motion in 2019 to bring Dreamers closer to receiving benefits achieved in Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington.
In those states, Dreamers have access to scholarships, funds for higher education and other financial aid regardless of immigration status.
Montoya, with José Patiño, her life partner and ally in the fight, led hundreds of young people from the state’s high schools, community colleges and universities to raise their voices for their own cause.
To start, the Mexican-born Montoya channeled her knowledge and energy into organizing young recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who are temporarily shielded from deportation.
Reyna Montoya and her partner José Patiño organized many DACA recipients. Their testimony convinced convervative lawmakers to revoke part of Proposition 300. Photo by Beatriz Limón.
These young Dreamers made multiple trips to the Arizona State Capitol and were key to convincing lawmakers of the benefits of supporting higher education.
In her search for allies, Montoya focused not just on students, but on politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, who have ties to education.
“We targeted legislators who were teachers, who were active in school districts and who led education commissions,” she said through a smile.
Montoya also got more than 130 business, faith and civic leaders to sign an open letter to the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Rusty Bowers, asking him to hold a vote on SCR 1044 “as soon as possible” so that it could appear on the ballot in November 2022.
That is how they convinced Republican State Sen. Paul Boyer to introduce the legislation in February in 2021. The bill was co-sponsored by Republican State Representative Michell Udall.
“Wow, so we did it,” Boyer said at a press conference. “It’s a rarity when you can say you passed a piece of legislation that truly changes lives, and this bill changes about 2,000 lives every single year. We are standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Around 2,000 undocumented students graduate every year from Arizona high schools and face limited options for affordable higher education, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Arizona State Representative Joel John was among the Republican lawmakers who joined forces with Boyer to support the Dreamers, declaring that “an educated workforce is essential to the future of our state. It is a win for our economy when we create another college graduate.”
“We have to be really realistic and say, ‘Look, immigration reform is something I want to fight for, but that path is blocked, so let’s make progress on another front or lose everything.”
Montoya, 30, who was born in Tijuana, in Mexico’s Baja California state and emigrated with her parents to Arizona in 2003, recalls that the movement’s first Republican ally was former State Senator Heather Carter, chair of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee in 2019.
In 2019, and with bipartisan support, Carter introduced a bill that proposed directing the state’s public colleges and universities to create a special tuition rate for students who graduated from Arizona high schools but did not qualify as in-state residents, a group that would have included Dreamers.
But Carter lost her re-election campaign, a setback that erased much of the progress the movement had made.
“Losing her support meant starting from scratch,” Montoya said.
Finally, Democratic legislators, with the support of three Republicans — Boyer, Tyler Pace and T.J. Shope — moved resolution SCR 1044 forward.
Reyna Montoya embraces Darían Benítez after the passage of SCR 1044 on May 10, 2021. Photo courtesy of Aliento.
One battle at a time
The victory arose from a singular battle focused on equal college tuition for undocumented students in Arizona.
“We had some bumps in the road, but the in-state tuition is the first step. We can’t keep saying all or nothing, because then we’re always going to end up with nothing,” says Montoya.
That sentiment is shared by analyst Carmen Cornejo, who was an early supporter of the DREAM Act, the federal legislation that would have created a path to citizenship for youth like Montoya.
“That was the big mistake 10 years ago. The Dreamers chose to fight for imigration reform, when it was almost a reality that the DREAM Act would have passed. We advised them to fight for Dreamers as a first step, that the rest would come later,” Cornejo told palabra.
Montoya recalls feeling the same way.
“Imagine if the DREAM Act had passed in 2010. Right now I’d be a citizen and I would have been able to petition my parents. Imagine how many people would have benefited. Sometimes we shouldn’t cling stubbornly to one path,” she said. “We have to be really honest and say, ‘Look, immigration reform is something I want to fight for, but that path is blocked, so let’s make progress on another front or lose everything.’”
That’s how after 10 years in the fight, Montoya came to understand that they had to focus on a single objective and cast aside feelings of guilt over not including other benefits “that we’ll consider in future efforts.”
Aliento organizers take a break after giving a press conference on the passage of SCR 1044 in 2021. Photo courtesy of Aliento.
Debates over the path forward
But that approach disappointed activists and Democrats like State Senator Martín Quezada, who voted in favor of SCR 1044, albeit with some reservations.
"I did disagree in part with it, because it only repealed part of Proposition 300, it didn't repeal all of it," he told palabra. "There were other parts of that proposition that really hurt immigrant families and immigrant people here in Arizona."
The senator believes asking for so little keeps the community down. He’s convinced that the movement would have gained more by demanding more. He said the same is true at the national level, and he’s unequivocal about the need to pursue comprehensive immigration reform.
“It’s what our community deserves,” he says. “If we ask for more, we’ll get more.”
Although Montoya agrees with Quezada, she questions the consequences and effectiveness of his approach.
“At the end of the day, the question we have to ask is about those of us who are being affected by these policies. Do we want this, or do we want nothing?,” she says.
“It’s a measure that could be successful, but it carries risks, because if the voters support it, the result becomes part of the Constitution and there’s no way to change it.”
Montoya realizes that the next step is swaying voters, and with the support of several organizations she’s building the “Become Arizona” campaign to educate citizens about the importance of the measure that will appear on the ballot.
“We’re taking the first steps towards building a larger coalition of leaders in Arizona. There is a lot to educate people about as far as policy goes, but we want to be very specific and only focus on the vote for in-state university tuition,” she said.
The strategy worries Cornejo, who considers it “risky” to put the decision in the hands of voters.
“It’s a measure that could be successful, but it carries risks, because if the voters support it, the result becomes part of the Constitution and there’s no way to change it,” she said.
About 86% of Arizonans support a path to citizenship for DACA recipients.
The most recent poll commissioned by Aliento and completed by OH Predictive Insights in March 2020, showed that three out of four Arizona voters support in-state tuition for Dreamers.
The favorable results led Flavio Bravo, a political analyst and director of the AZ Democracy Collaborative, to tell palabra that this is the “right moment” for this measure to appear on the ballot.
According to the 2020 Gallup Arizona Survey, by the Center for the Future of Arizona, 86% of Arizonans say they favor a path to citizenship for DACA recipients.
Key seats such as the governorship, along with state and congressional candidates, will be on the ballot for the 2022 midterm election, which Bravo believes favors higher voter turnout.
“In 10 years, perspectives in the state have changed. The public knows the stories of Dreamers who grew up here with their families. They are aware that [Dreamers] pay taxes and that they are enrolled in the public school system until they get to college,” he said.
New challenge for Dreamers
A recent ruling by a federal judge in Texas that declared DACA illegal and blocked new applicants to the program. It’s the latest challenge for the Dreamers. President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. Department of Justice will appeal the decision.
Daniela Chavira at the Arizona State Capitol on January 16, 2020. Photo courtesy of Daniela Chavira.
Daniela Chavira, a new DACA applicant who arrived in Arizona from Hermosillo in the northern Mexican state of Sonora when she was six months old, said she is “devastated” by the decision.
“When I was finally able to apply to the program, (former President Donald) Trump suspended it, and when I tried again in January of this year, I had been waiting for eight months and then they stopped it again. I’ve never known DACA,” the 19-year-old told palabra.
Chavira had to pay for her mechanical engineering degree at a private university where she paid nearly $17,000 per semester, which was much more than what her siblings born in the U.S. had to spend.
Montoya takes a break from all the planning to spend time with her dog Zoe. Photo by Beatriz Limón.
Chavira’s fear and desperation are the same feelings Reyna Montoya has experienced for years.
When Arizona’s SB 1070 went into effect in 2010, allowing police departments to question the legal status of anyone they stopped if they had “reasonable suspicion” that the individual was in the country illegally, she knew she had to take action.
The need to protect her parents and siblings from deportation motivated her to become the strategist who got a seemingly impossible measure on the ballot.
It also propelled her to become the first person in her family to attend college. She earned two degrees and completed an executive education program at Harvard University.
“Sometimes we think that we only have one chance, but what I’ve learned from being involved in this struggle for years is that instead of feeling defeated, the blows gives us more strength to be fighting for our rights,” Montoya said, looking through a planner jam-packed with meetings that keep her busy working towards more victories for Dreamers.
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Beatriz Limón is an independent journalist who served as a correspondent in Arizona and New Mexico for the international news agency EFE. She has a bachelor’s degree in communication science, is a professional photographer and a columnist for the newspaper El Imparcial.