Dissenting Regent Ward Connerly [Townhall.com columnist] said the result is "just flat wrong: Every citizen living legally in the other 49 states will be charged a higher tuition rate in California than illegal immigrants who happen to be in California."
California universities now make a student from Arizona pay nearly four times as much as an illegal alien.
At California's state universities, in-state students and undocumented aliens pay an annual tuition of
$1,839, out-of-state students pay $7,380; at the University of California Berkeley, in-state residents and undocumented aliens pay $3,859, out-of-state students pay $15,000.
The difference is subsidized by the highly taxed citizens of California and the highly taxed citizens from the 49 other states who provide all kinds of federal student benefits but whose own children are discriminated against.
The advocates of this discrimination claim they want undocumented aliens to get a college education so they can become productive residents. But undocumented aliens cannot legally hold a job in the United States.
Qualifying for in-state tuition is only the start of unintended consequences. Given the economic status of most undocumented aliens, many qualify for federal or state financial aid. Texas allows this.
Connerly asked, "Why would any legal foreign student pay out-of-state tuition at a UC campus when by becoming illegal he or she can get a huge annual tuition cut of about $11,000?" Connerly pointed out that U.S. citizens already provide undocumented aliens with billions of dollars of taxpayer-paid benefits at public schools and hospitals.
State universities in New York tried to comply with the federal law last year, but a state law that approves in-state tuition for undocumented aliens overruled them.
Utah followed suit with a similar law, and legislation is currently being considered in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia and Washington.
On the other hand, Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum, a Republican, vetoed a provision to violate the law. Public officials in Virginia may be on guard because seven of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, held Virginia driver's licenses. Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, a Republican, issued a memo stating that undocumented aliens are not eligible for in-state tuition.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, are trying to repeal the federal law. Their bill is elegantly titled the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors).
U.S. taxpayers should wake up and see how they are being ripped off by the high costs of tolerating undocumented aliens in our midst.