“Illegal Immigrants Spend Millions Extra On Tuition”

Amazing! A state law banning illegal immigrants from in-state tuition actually seems to work!

In 2006 over 70% of Arizona voters passed Prop. 300, “rendering undocumented Arizona students ineligible for in-state tuition rates or state scholarships.” Now comes the Arizona Republic with a report documenting that the new law is working as intended, to the dismay of those who opposed it, and, it appears, the author of the Republic’s report. (HatTip to Inside Higher Ed) Note, for example, that “Extra” in the Republic’s headline. Doesn’t that imply “more than they should be paying”? But whether “Extra” or not, they are paying more than would be if they were treated the same as legal state residents.

More than 3,400 community college students and nearly 300 university students paid nonresident tuition because they couldn’t prove they were in the country legally. Thousands more university students never had their immigration status checked because they didn’t seek in-state tuition or state-funded financial aid.

Because nonresident students pay more than the actual cost of providing their education, Arizona’s colleges and universities actually profited from illegal immigrant students.

Advocates for illegal immigrants are not pleased.

Connie Anderson, who advocates for immigrants for the Valley Interfaith Project, said out-of-state tuition is prohibitively expensive for most immigrants, leaving eager high school graduates with nothing to do. Many of them were brought to Arizona as children and don’t know any other home.

“We’re sidelining the best of our kids and wasting human talent,” Anderson said.

Her organization is promoting federal legislation that would grant legal residency to some people who were brought illegally to the United States as children.

It would seem hard to deny, however, that the law is in fact accomplishing what those who voted for it intended.

The millions of dollars in savings has freed up money for programs for legal residents, said State Treasurer Dean Martin, who as a state senator in 2006 sponsored the legislation referring Proposition 300 to the ballot.

“The state was literally subsidizing illegal behavior,” Martin said….

Martin said the state subsidizes education because college graduates earn more money and eventually pay back the state with their higher income taxes. But illegal immigrants cannot legally work in the United States so they can’t pay back the state’s investment.

“When we’re talking about college students, we’re not talking about children anymore,” Martin said. “At this point, you are responsible for following the law yourself.”

In addition, since societies tend to get more of what they subsidize, subsidizing the higher education of illegal immigrants is one factor that encourages more illegals to come.

We are now facing this same issue in the debate over healthcare health insurance reform, since the House Energy and Commerce Committee rejected, by a margin of one vote, a Republican amendment that would have required states to bar Medicaid services to illegals.