Austin, Texas (AP) -een thousands of US college students without legal residents lose access to tuition fees in the context of President Donald Trump’s approach to immigration.
The Ministry of Justice has sued states to end tuition fees for students without legal residence residence, starting with Texas in June. It also submitted complaints in Kentucky, Minnesota and most recently in Oklahoma. Last year Florida ended his tuition fees for students who live illegally there.
“The Federal Law prohibits aliens not to be legally present in the United States, to maintain the services in the states that are refused to the US citizens outside the state,” argued the Ministry of Justice this month in a lawsuit in Oklahoma. “There are no exceptions.”
The tuition fees once had broad support for two parties, but have increasingly been criticized by the Republicans in recent years.
Here is what you need to know about the tuition fees:
Texas’ program was first blocked
The teaching policy in Texas was initially adopted with comprehensive cross -party majorities in the legislature and signed by the GOV at the time. Rick Perry, a Republican, to open the access to university education for students without already living legal stays in the state. Boards and now say that the state’s economy increased by creating a better trained and better prepared workforce.
The law allowed the students to qualify for tuition fees in the state without legal residents if they had lived in Texas for three years before completing the high school and a year before the college registered. They also had to sign an affidavit that promised to apply for legal status as soon as possible.
According to the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a non -partisan non -partisan group of university leaders who focus on immigration policy, around 57,000 qualification students have enrolled in Texas. The state has a total of around 690,000 students at its public universities.
The difference in tuition fees is significant.
For example, a state resident will pay a campus of the University of Texas Rio, Rio Grande, a campus with 34,000 layers along the border to Mexico, for a minimum full -time plan for full -time classes in the coming school year. A non -resident student pays $ 19,000.
Political setback and a quick end
The law of Texas was largely undisputed for years, but was under fire when the debates about illegal immigration increased. In the Republican presidential code of 2012, Perry apologized after he said that critics of the law had “no heart”.
The law raised several cancellation efforts in the legislation dominated by Republicans. During the legislative session, which ended on June 2, a termination law did not even get a vote.
But the ax fell quickly. After the Trump administration had filed a lawsuit in which the law became unconstitutional, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a key -trump ally, decided not to defend the law in court and instead submitted an application to be agreed that it should not be enforced.
General Prosecutor Gentner Drummond, also Republican, submitted a similar application in Oklahoma.
“The reward of foreigners that are illegally in our country with lower tuition fees that are not only made available to American citizens outside the state is not only false-it is discriminatory and illegal,” said Drummond in a statement.
Campus nationwide feel the effect
At least 21 states and the University of Michigan’s University of Michigan have laws or guidelines that, according to the National Immigration Law Center, who favors them, are approved for the students of the migration background. These states include democratically annoying such as California and New York, but also GOP systems such as Kansas and Nebraska.
According to the center, at least 16 countries allow students to receive the migration background, scholarships or other facilitate for college.
Immigration lawyers and educational lawyers said they assess whether there are legal options for questioning the decisions.
