I would hope that all serious candidates would be against states setting rules to give in state tuition to illegals.
Plus, the Texas law signed by Perry violates a federal law intended to prevent illegal from receiving preferential treatment over American citizens.
Federal Law Title 8, Chapter 14, Sec. 1623 states:
“an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State... for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit.”
Thanks for this information. It merits further investigation as to context and applicability, but if it is as it appears, then it's going to bite Perry big-time if his opponents choose to use it, not to mention leaving the state of Texas wide-open to law suits.
Legal and political considerations aside, the law reflects and codifies the inherent moral and ethical hypocrisy of the Texas law.
Charles, your post #112 really pegged the sophistry alert meter hard to the right. Your pretzel-logic efforts at misdirection are usually more clever and plausible. You're slipping a bit.
Someone should ask Mark Levin this question — he’d be able to explan the law and the consequences.
I remember this discussion came up when California was doing this. And I believe the state laws don’t violate the federal law, because they don’t grant in-state tuition based on RESIDENCE.
Instead, they grant in-state tuition on the basis of attending and completing X number of years of high school within the state.
Now, anybody COULD attend high school in a state without living in the state, if they were willing to pay money. And since the college benefit wouldn’t have anything to do with residence, the US code would not apply.
i’m not justifying the laws, I oppose in-state tuition for illegals, but the laws, if written as I stated above, would not violate the federal statute.
Here is a writeup from the California Supreme Court ruling that California’s law was OK. The Supreme Court refused to review this decision, which means it is the law of the land. This is all from a court report, not my words:
“The California Supreme Court reversed that decision, ruling that the state law did not confer a benefit on illegal immigrants based on their residence in California.”
“The state law based the preferential tuition award on criteria other than the student’s state of residence, the state high court said. The in-state tuition is granted on the basis of attendance at and graduation from a California high school. Although most graduates from California schools do, in fact, reside in California, the high court reasoned that not all graduates are residents.”
“Minor children of out-of-state parents who attend boarding schools in California qualify for resident tuition rates. So do students who live in an adjoining state or country and attend high school in California.”
“The state supreme court said if Congress intended to impose a ban on illegal immigrants receiving in-state tuition it could have done so. Instead, Congress restricted only the use of residence as a criterion, the court said, but it did not bar states from identifying other criteria to award the in-state discounts.”