Denying in-state tuition to the undocumented is short-sighted

? 2023 By Loren C.Steffy

Much of our immigration system is broken, but that doesn’t mean that anti-immigrant groups won’t attack the few parts that still work.?

The latest example comes from a case in which a student group sued the University of North Texas for charging out-of-state residents higher tuition than undocumented immigrants living in the state.

A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ruling in July, and the young conservatives asked the court to reconsider. The full court denied their request 15 to 1. The lone dissenter, Circuit Court Judge James Ho said he disagreed with his colleagues because “treating U.S. citizens less favorably than illegal aliens when it comes to postsecondary education benefits” undercuts federal border control efforts, Reuters reported.

It’s another example of how ripples from our broken immigration system permeate all levels of our society — in this case, education. Ho sees offering in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants in Texas as a “discount” that out-of-state students don’t have.

But his opinion ignores a key word: resident. In-state residents pay lower tuition because their tax dollars help support public universities.

All residents pay those taxes, directly or indirectly, regardless of their immigration status.?

“Kids raised in New York or Connecticut, even though they’re American citizens, their parents are not paying a single penny of taxes in the state of Texas,” said Houston immigration attorney Charles Foster, who was not involved in the UNT case.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan coalition of university presidents and chancellors—including 23 from Texas—noted that the system distinguishing between resident and non-residents has been common nationwide for more than a century.?

“Non-residents pay more,” the group said in its filing. “The extra money non-resident tuition generates is a crucial part of the blend of revenues that allow education.”

The law around in-state tuition for the undocumented is well established, and the appeals court once again affirmed that. But Ho’s dissent shows “there is still an effort to challenge state policies that extend in-state tuition and financial aid to undocumented students,” the group’s executive director, Miriam Feldblum, told me.

Twenty-four states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students. Some are even looking at expanding in-state tuition programs “because it makes educational sense and economic sense,” Feldblum said.

Regardless of their legal status, immigrants contribute to our economy, and the more educated they are, the more they can contribute. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized that value in a landmark 1982 ruling that established the right for undocumented children to attend public school.

“We want to have the return on investment, and we need these skilled workers across all different areas,” Feldblum said. “The majority of undocumented students in higher education came to the U.S. as young people.”

In Texas, former Gov. Rick Perry spearheaded the Texas Dream Act in 2001, which provided a path for undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition and financial aid.

The reason is simple: we all benefit from a more educated society. It’s easy to forget that when identity politics are driving book bans, political vendettas against university professors, and voucher schemes attempt to funnel education tax dollars into the hands of the elites.

Our immigration disputes frequently ignore the economic consequences of intransigence. The longer we allow our broken system to keep millions of residents in the shadows, the greater and more long-term the economic consequences.

Some who oppose in-state tuition for the undocumented seem to believe that a “discount” on college will be some sort of migration magnet. But we know that education lessens individuals’ economic burden on society.

“We don't want this large swath of kids growing up without any education,” Foster said. “It's in the economic interests of the state to educate them.”

The U.S. is already falling behind other countries. On average, developed nations have increased their college-degree attainment by 20 percentage points since 2000, and 11 of those countries now have better-educated labor forces than we do, according to the New York Times Magazine. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former chief economist for George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the Times that the decline in college graduates could cost the U.S. $1.2 trillion in lost economic output by the end of the decade.?

In my book Deconstructed, I cited a 2009 study by the National Law Review that is still relevant today. It found that 57 percent of households with children under eighteen that were headed by at least one immigrant parent—legal or illegal—used at least one welfare program, compared with 39 percent for households led by native-born residents. In other words, creating barriers to keep immigrant children from accessing taxpayer-funded education significantly increases the chances that dependency will extend to a second generation. That, in turn, raises the poverty rate and demand for even more welfare programs.

In his dissent, Ho argued that “United States citizenship is one of the greatest privileges this world has ever known. And the ability to obtain a quality education here is one of the most treasured components of the American dream.”

Few can argue with that, but it’s based on an assumption that we have a functioning immigration system. We don’t. Instead, we have a process in which we rely on undocumented immigrants to fill jobs that keep our economy afloat, even as Congress refuses to modernize the laws for addressing those economic needs. And the longer Congress dawdles, dithers, and distracts, the most costly the failure of the system becomes.

The result is a system that looks the other way when we want the undocumented to build our homes but throws up roadblocks when they want to build their own minds.

Loren Steffy is the co-author of Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades and executive producer of the Rational Middle Immigration series.