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Unfortunately, they do, at least public colleges, and probably private ones as well.

“Illegal” is defined by the federal government, and if they pass a law that requires ALL people located in the country to be given access to college, there’s not much we can do about it other than vote out of office the people in Washington.

This is a sad truth about “illegal”, it only has meaning as the federal government determines it. For example, a state can’t pass a law punishing an employer for hiring illegals, because there is a federal law already that pre-empts state law. (So in Virginia, we are going to try to pass a law revoking business licenses instead). So if we want to punish employers, we need to petition the federal government to pass a law either doing so, or allowing states to do so.

In this case, I believe the FEDERAL law (or a judicial ruling) says that if you offer an illegal “in-state” tuition, you have to offer it to EVERY citizen of the country as well. The complaint here is that ALL attendees to community college are subsidized by the taxpayer, and allowing an illegal to attend gives them the subsidy.

The answer to that is to raise the tuition, adopt an in-state standard, and then charge the illegals the out-of-state tuition.

Almost NOBODY goes to another state’s community colleges, which is why they don’t tend to have in-state/out-of-state tuitions, I guess.

Anyway, some of that above is speculation, and some is my understanding of the current law as a non-lawyer, so consider it more of a discussion starter than the final word.

If I’m wrong, I apologize.