(C) Missouri Independent
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Student loan debt unfairly burdens immigrant families • Missouri Independent [1]
['More From Author', 'July', 'Subratha Araselvan']
Date: 2023-07-17
With all necessary information in-hand, the process of completing the FAFSA form may only take 20 minutes.
However, for us, the children of immigrants dealing with the federal student aid system for the first time, it took hours to understand the form’s questions and requirements. Our search histories were filled with seemingly stupid questions about IRS forms, loan interest rates, and income calculators.
Our situations are not unique.
Across the nation, millions of students struggle to navigate the student loan process and reap nothing but $1.78 trillion in total student debt.
On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan which, among other policies, would have canceled up to $20,000 of debt for 43 million eligible Americans — 20 million of those eligible students would have seen their debt completely eliminated.
The Missouri Attorney General, arguing on behalf of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), stated that Biden’s student debt relief plan would have caused a drop in revenue for the Authority, indirectly harming Missouri students who relied upon MOHELA for their student loans. The conservative majority agreed and ruled in favor of the attorney general.
However, the alleged harm facing Missouri students would have come in the form of debt reduction or elimination, as Biden’s plan would have halved or completely eliminated the debt burdens of over 300,000 borrowers in the state of Missouri. As students receiving financial aid at Washington University in St. Louis, an institution at which tuition has reached over $60,000, we would have seen these same results.
In fact, according to federal statistics, the average Missouri student will take on $35,397 in student debt and will take 27 years to pay it off. Under these conditions, students with higher loan burdens will be forced to move to states with more economic opportunity, states where the median income is higher than $30,662.
Debt, then, is not just “money that students owe.” It is something killing the future of our state.
Specifically, the burden of student loan debt disproportionately impacts immigrant communities and their children. Among other issues, lack of access to in-language resources looms as a large barrier for first and second-generation immigrants trying to take out or pay off student loans.
The current FAFSA form and the information of the FSA website are only provided in English and Spanish. They are not provided in Nepali or Tamil, which are the two languages that our families speak.
Additionally, the FAFSA is not provided in other common languages such as Mandarin, Vietnamese, Hindi or Arabic.
Filing a FAFSA form as an English speaker is hard enough, but doing so as a limited English proficiency family has been made close to impossible. Given that 28% of currently enrolled college students are either first or second-generation immigrants in the United States, this lack of resources signals a malicious apathy about our community that is negligent at best and malignant at worst.
In Missouri, the Asian population has increased 37% over the last decade. So the absence of language access for financial aid can be a barrier to enrollment and mislead students into taking on far more debt than intended. We are a substantial part of the American higher education system, yet there exist no systems in place in Missouri to support us or our communities.
Recognizing this issue, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng of New York introduced the FAFSA Translation Act in 2019, mandating that forms for federal student aid be translated into eleven additional languages. It did not pass in the House nor has it been reintroduced. Given the court’s recent ruling against students and President Biden’s stated commitment to alleviate the burden on students, the Department of Education must translate these forms into languages beyond Spanish.
The responsibility of supporting our communities should not only fall upon the government’s shoulders. Public and private universities should also commit to hiring more culturally and linguistically competent financial aid officers to assist new families.
While the Supreme Court ruling has already impacted the most vulnerable Americans, we must also acknowledge the impact of their decision on communities who may not have the words to speak out.
The Biden administration must, at bare minimum, ensure that Americans understand the full consequences of the loans that they are taking out. Education is our ticket to a better future, and in the face of this ruling, we must do what we can to guarantee that future for ourselves and our communities in Missouri.
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[1] Url:
https://missouriindependent.com/2023/07/17/student-loan-debt-unfairly-burdens-immigrant-families/
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