Imagine that an American citizen fresh out of high school in Ohio has dreams of attending UCLA. With a perfect 4.0 GPA, extensive extracurricular activities, and high test scores, they secure acceptance into the competitive school. However, the student realizes they will be charged astronomical out-of-state fees, which are triple the cost of in-state tuition. After mulling over the price and the amount of debt they would incur to attend the university of their dreams, they decide to stay in Ohio, putting that dream aside in favor of fiscal responsibility.
Meanwhile, someone who entered the United States illegally and graduated from a California high school can attend that same university at a significantly reduced, taxpayer-subsidized rate. Unfortunately, this scenario is not theoretical; it is reality in more than twenty states.
This obvious double standard represents a disconnect between state and federal immigration policy. According to Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, states are prohibited from offering a benefit like in-state tuition to illegal immigrants unless they extend those same benefits to all U.S. citizens, regardless of residency. Yet, many states cleverly avoid federal law by basing eligibility on high school attendance and graduation, instead of legal status.
Take California’s AB 540 law. Under AB 540, anyone, legal citizen or not, who attended a California high school for three years and graduated, can qualify for in-state tuition. Basically, the longer you are in the state illegally, the more you are rewarded. Similar laws exist in Illinois, Oregon, and New York. Consequently, illegal immigrants receive tuition breaks unavailable to American citizens from other states.
Are you angry yet?
But reduced tuition is just the tip of the iceberg. California’s Dream Act also grants illegal alien students eligibility for state-funded financial aid, which isn’t peanuts. Cal Grants alone can award over $12,000 annually, with additional university-specific scholarships and fee waivers available. The California Student Aid Commission openly states that Dream Act applicants, while ineligible for federal aid, still qualify for generous state-level benefits if only they meet residency and GPA criteria.
California is not alone. New Mexico, Oregon, and New York have similarly opened their financial aid coffers to undocumented students. New York’s Jose Peralta DREAM Act provides access to state-funded scholarships and tuition assistance. Altogether, nineteen states now offer taxpayer-funded financial aid to students in the country illegally.
Your tax dollars are used to reward those who broke our immigration laws.
Adding to the irony, students who come to the United States legally through international study abroad programs are required to pay full out-of-state or international tuition rates, which can exceed $50,000 per year at schools like UCLA. On top of this, international students must prove they have sufficient funds available to cover both educational and living expenses before they are even accepted into the program. For example, students admitted for Fall Quarter 2025 must show they have at least $80,000 available, with an additional $5,000 recommended for unforeseen costs.
Illegal aliens are not required to prove they meet such extreme conditions to be accepted. But these international students, who follow the proper visa process and bring valuable global perspectives, face arduous roadblocks, yet receive none of the tuition breaks or state-funded aid available to students who entered the country illegally. It is a backward system that punishes those who play by the rules and rewards those who do not.
Much of the legal muscle behind these policies favoring illegals comes from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a self-styled civil rights organization founded in 1968. While MALDEF claims to protect Latino rights, their primary agenda is securing and expanding taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants, especially in education. Recently, MALDEF entered a legal battle after Texas joined forces with the Department of Justice to challenge the 2001 Texas Dream Act, which offered in-state tuition to undocumented students.
According to its 2023 IRS Form 990, MALDEF generated over $7 million in revenue, funded by major Left-leaning grantmakers, including the Kellogg Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. MALDEF’s president, Thomas A. Saenz, was paid a princely $407,000 in compensation that year.
America’s largest teacher unions, the NEA and AFT, also have a history of donating to MALDEF. Although portrayed as a civil rights group, MALDEF more closely resembles a highly funded legal advocacy machine promoting open-border policies.
Ultimately, the cost of these policies falls squarely on American taxpayers and families paying full tuition. In the California UC system, where in-state tuition is extended to undocumented immigrants under AB 540, an out-of-state student from Arizona pays more than $50,000 a year to attend a California state college, while an undocumented student who graduated from a California high school pays roughly $15,000.
The hefty discount is granted regardless of legal status, while some U.S. citizen students, including children of military families not currently stationed in California or children with parents who just moved to the state for work, may still be charged full out-of-state rates.
Not all states accept this situation quietly. The Higher Ed Immigration Portal, run by the left-leaning Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, tracks which states hand out in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. According to their data, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina explicitly block in-state tuition for illegals. Missouri and North Carolina have no statewide policy, leaving the door open for universities to decide on their own. While the Alliance frames these restrictions as obstacles to “equity,” it is good to see that several states are pushing back.
No matter what the Left says, in-state tuition and financial aid for illegal immigrants are not “free.” These benefits are funded by taxpayers, including American families who pay full price and accumulate significant student debt. Until federal laws are uniformly enforced and blue state loopholes are closed, American taxpayers and students will continue footing this bill, whether you agree with it or not.
In a time when we constantly hear about “white privilege,” there is an argument to be made that illegal immigrant privilege is far more real, at least when it comes to attending college outside your home state (or even your home country) at a steep discount.
