A Growing Number of States are Letting Illegal Aliens Receive Cheaper Tuition than American Citizens

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Feb 23, 2021

According to a report by Angela Morabito of the Campus Reform, elected officials in Georgia and Arizona are introducing bills that would let illegal alien students pay in-state tuition at state schools. However, American citizens from other states would still be subject to paying out-of-state tuition rates. 

In the meantime, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that would grant illegal aliens access to state financial aid and school-based aid, despite already paying in-state tuition at the moment.

According to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, any individual “not lawfully present” in the United States will not be eligible for “any postsecondary education benefit,” unless citizens are eligible for the same benefits.

Currently, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, deems DACA students to be legally present in the U.S. However, DACA only applies to individuals who are eligible and were brought to the U.S. before June 15, 2012. Per the National Council of State Legislatures, backers of these kinds of pro-illegal alien bills will try to circumvent the IIRIRA by having in-state tuition be based on residency, not citizenship.

Georgia Republican State Representative Kasey Carpenter put forward a bill, HB 120, that would permit the Board of Regents to grant illegal alien students in-state tuition, provided that they are not attempting to attend a research university. In an interview Campus Reform, Carpenter explained that “any US citizen can move to Georgia for a year and pay our taxpayer rate for education. This bill would allow DACA students who are or will be tax payer [sic] pay that same rate.” 

In essence, the bill does not mandate DACA status for an illegal alien student to potentially gain access to in-state tuition. Morabito outlined what this program would like in Georgia:

Tuition and fees at Kennesaw State University, Georgia’s largest non-research university, are roughly three times as expensive for out-of-state students than in-state students, and soon, possibly DACA students and illegal immigrant students.

Recently, the Arizona State Education Committee voted in favor of a bill that would repeal the state’s current law that bars illegal alien students from having access to in-state tuition. Due to how the existing law bans non-citizens from receiving “state or local public benefits,” this legislation would scrap in-state tuition from that category.

Carpenter noted that “Out-of-state tuition and fees for this school year are more than double the cost of attendance for in-state students.”

At the moment, Arizona taxpayers already subsidize tuition for DACA students. In 2019, the state’s Board of Regents unanimously voted to adjust school tuition rates for these students at 150% of the in-state rate. In other words, non-citizen students who graduated from high schools in Arizona will pay less for college than an American citizen from another state.

The Virginia General Assembly recently passed a bill that would allow illegal alien students to receive state financial aid. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is expected to sign this bill into law.

In 2020, the Virginia state government approved taxpayer-subsidized in-state tuition.

This goes to show how embedded cultural radicalism is in the educracy and in numerous state legislatures nationwide. Republicans need to make defunding higher education along with stopping mass migration the two biggest issues heading into the 2022 midterms.

Leftist institutions must be punished for their misbehavior.

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