PHOENIX — President Barack Obama’s decision last year to allow young people living in the U.S. illegally to stay and work marked the biggest shift in immigration policy in decades, hailed as a landmark step toward the American dream for a generation of immigrants.
But months later, many immigrants are having vastly different reactions to the change depending on where they live, and they aren’t flocking to the program at the levels the government originally expected.
A handful of Republican-led states are blocking basic benefits for those in the program, denying beneficiaries identification cards, driver’s licenses, health care, in-state tuition, student financial aid, college admission or other privileges typically afforded to legal residents.
Others have set out welcome signs for the immigrants, including 12 that grant resident tuition for immigrants who graduated from local high schools.
The number of immigrants who signed up for the program has been smaller than envisioned.
In the first eight months of the program, about 450,000 applications have been accepted. The government originally estimated that 1 million would enroll in the first year. Experts say the numbers have been surprisingly low in states with large immigrant populations like Florida, New Jersey and Arizona, where about 16,000 people have taken advantage of the program.
Enrolling in a college or a university a cornerstone of the new policy hasn’t been easy either. With many states refusing to grant in-state tuition, immigrants who largely come from working-class families have to shell out upward of $40,000 a year to go to school with no financial aid.
