This article was co-authored by Greg Blackie. He is the deputy director of policy for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.
In November 2022, Arizona voters narrowly approved Prop. 308, making Arizona the 24th state in the nation to offer taxpayer-subsidized, in-state tuition rates to illegals. Its narrow passage on the ballot was preceded by its razor-thin passage at the state legislature. It slipped out because two former Republican legislators, who had since lost their seats to primary challengers, rolled their caucus and voted in lock step with Democrats to force it for a vote.
After making the ballot, the measure was bankrolled by a small but well financed cohort within the political class, business community and immigration activist organizations funded by George Soros. Even a handful of Republican elected officials and candidates jumped on board, including a few city council members and current candidate for the Republican nomination for Arizona Governor, Karrin Taylor Robson.
It was in part billed by proponents as only applying to “Dreamers”, or recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established under the Obama Administration. In reality, it allowed for anyone here illegally to get in-state tuition rates as long as they spent at least two years in an Arizona high school – signaling to the rest of the world that if you enter here illegally in time to go to an Arizona high school, American taxpayers will subsidize your tuition at our universities.
But they hid from the public one important fact – it unequivocally violates federal law.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton signed a bipartisan immigration bill, which included a provision explicitly prohibiting universities from providing lower tuition rates to illegals than they do to any other US Citizen, regardless of their residency. In other words, under this federal immigration law, a state like Arizona could give illegals in-state tuition rates, but only if they provide that same rate to every citizen of the country regardless of their residency status, ensuring illegals are not given a privilege and benefit not provided and extended to every lawful US citizen.
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This federal law is explicit and clear, but states have been ignoring it for years. When Hans Von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation wrote his report on it more than a decade ago, 12 states were in violation. Today, 24 states are still incentivizing illegal immigration by having every other taxpaying citizen subsidize their in-state tuition rate, some even providing scholarships, grants, and aid, further subsidizing their tuition.
In the 2011 report, Hans notes that in 2005, it was estimated that providing an in-state rate to illegals in California was costing taxpayers between $222.6 million and $289.3 million, and in Texas, between $80.2 million and $104.4 million. This is costly for taxpayers, fundamentally unfair, and incentivizes more people to enter our country and states illegally.
But these states, including Arizona, continue to flagrantly violate federal law because there is no private right of action, so anytime a US citizen who is charged more to attend a university than an illegal immigrant sues, the courts toss the case for lack of standing. It would take the federal government enforcing its own laws to stop it, and since its passage in the 1990s, no executive has done so.
Until now.
Earlier this year President Trump signed an executive order to, for the first time, do just that, directing the Department of Justice to investigate states violating the law.
Just think about it. A US citizen who is a resident of another state will be charged $34,014 to attend Arizona State University this year, up from $26,470 just 10 years ago. An international student, someone who is not a US citizen but is lawfully here temporarily to pursue higher education, will be charged $37,202. But a noncitizen who entered this country illegally? They will be charged $11,822, less than a third of out-of-state US citizens and international students who followed the law. Those students and every taxpayer pick up the tab to subsidize the tuition of illegal immigrants.
It was bad policy then, when the border was wide open. It’s bad policy now. It was illegal then, and it is illegal today. It’s time for the Trump Administration to shut it down.
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