The Department of Justice has made strides in enforcing immigration law against states who privilege illegal immigrants for tuition breaks over out-of-state American residents, but more can be done, according to experts with the Heritage Foundation.
President Donald Trump and the DOJ have so far sued Texas, Kentucky, and Minnesota for giving tuition breaks to in-state illegal immigrants while charging higher rates to Americans from other states. However, Hans von Spakovsky, a former DOJ attorney, and Cully Stimson, a legal expert at the Heritage Foundation, said more can be done.
“While the recent lawsuits against Minnesota and Kentucky are a great start, other states are also actively violating federal law by offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens while not offering the same to out-of-state students,” the two Heritage Foundation experts wrote in The Daily Signal. “The scofflaws are Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nebraska, New Mexico, Kansas, Illinois, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.”
The pair of legal experts picked three of these states specifically that should be high priority targets: Maryland, Illinois, and Colorado and explained the issue at play:
The statute does not prohibit universities from offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens. If a state wants to do that at its public colleges and universities, it is free to do so. Section 505 only mandates that when billing for tuition, states treat out-of-state U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents the same as illegal aliens.
States that offer in-state tuition (or make financial aid or scholarships available) to illegal aliens take finite resources away from other students, both in-state and out-of-state. That forces the state’s taxpayers—and the parents of U.S. citizen students from other states—to cover the difference.
“Every family who has sent a child to college knows what it feels like to pay for tuition,” they wrote. “As costs go up and up, seemingly for no reason, families are understandably frustrated. And when the reason is that they’re subsidizing the college education of illegal aliens, this goes from frustrating to infuriating.”
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Senate Judiciary Committee