By all measures, Daniela Chavira was an outstanding high school student. She achieved a 4.5 GPA while running cross-country and track, serving on the student council, and volunteering over 700 hours of community service. She dreamed of going to one of the public universities in her home state of Arizona.

Then, during Daniela’s sophomore year of high school, her world turned upside down. That’s when she learned she was undocumented. She had lived in Arizona since she was 10 months old. She considered herself an Arizonan. And she had assumed she’d have access to the same opportunities as every other Arizona resident. Now, suddenly, her future was cast into doubt. Lacking the “nine digits” that make up a Social Security number meant she was ineligible for in-state college tuition and publicly funded financial aid in her home state. Overnight, affording college had become all but impossible.

Daniela’s experience is not unique. More than 2,000 students in Arizona find themselves in similar situations every year due to a ballot initiative that passed in 2006. Under current Arizona law, undocumented students—including Dreamers, DACA recipients, or students of any immigration status other than permanent residents or citizens—are not eligible for in-state college tuition or state-funded scholarships.

These students face a tuition bill that is triple the in-state rate at community colleges and 1.5-times the in-state rate at public universities, according to Aliento, a nonprofit in Phoenix with a mission to support people “impacted by the inequities of lacking an immigration status.”

For some, this means the university down the street is no longer an option and they’re forced to consider moving to a different state away from family and friends to pursue their dreams, or forgo college altogether.

Hope for Dreamers in Arizona

This election season, a coalition of organizations, including Teach For America Phoenix, the Immigration & Education Alliance at Teach For America, and Aliento, are working to educate voters about a new ballot measure to give students like Daniela the chance to follow their dreams.

If approved by voters this November, Proposition 308 would allow Arizona students, regardless of immigration status, to be eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid at state universities and community colleges if they graduated from and attended high school in Arizona for two years. 

That means that by 2030, up to 16,000 additional students could have increased access to higher education and economic mobility. The American Immigration Council estimates this change would boost the earnings of Arizona’s Dreamers by more than $28 million annually.

Daniela is now a junior at Grand Canyon University, where she is able to attend with the help of privately funded scholarships. She is studying to become an immigration attorney. Her hope is that legislation like Proposition 308 could help thousands of students whose dreams are deferred for want of that nine-digit number, so that they too can achieve their own ambitions and give back to their communities.