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As a pure revenue matter, in-state tuition for illegal aliens is probably sensible.

Illegal aliens pay taxes, and getting an education will mean they will have the resources to get higher paying jobs -- paying even higher taxes.

Many illegal aliens pay effectively higher taxes than a citizen in the same job would, because (due to fake SS numbers, etc.) their FICA goes into accounts which don't benefit them (and do benefit the rest of us, by extension), and they don't get to take all the deductions and credits which working poor people with families otherwise get.

I disagree, based on who becomes an illegal alien in the first place. It seems that the illegals are those who braved deserts, the INS, unscrupulous coyotes, thirst, and hardship to get here and to avoid legal means of entry. In other words, illegals tend to be those with nothing to loose, and tend not to be all that productive.

We see evidence of the costs imposed by illegal aliens in a number of ways. Illegal aliens are far more likely than legal residents of the US to be criminal (1/3 of the California prison population is made up of illegals, none of whom are in prison for the federal crime of immigration violations), ill with communicable diseases (~50% of ER residents and nurses developed positive TB tests over a 3-year period, in a recent study at the Los Angeles Harbor County Hospital, compared to only a few percent who developed positive TB tests at hospitals not overrun by illegals), and on welfare (don't have a statistic for this, but I have worked with a lot of people on welfare, and my personal experience is that illegals are greatly overrepresented in this group).

At the same time, illegals tend to have lower-paying jobs. Particularly in California, with it's progressive tax structure, that means that the illegals pay far less in taxes than the average.

I'm all for education, and I think that the states have the right to determine thier own policies regarding people within thier borders, and to ignore federal law in most instances (federal law is for the feds to enforce). I think that there is a reasonable argument to be made in favor of educating everyone, illegal or not. I just don't think the argument you made is the one.

For my part, I would point out that educating illegals might make it harder for the state to educate people who are even more likely to stay and get good jobs, i.e. native born. Rescources are always limited, and spending those rescources on people who are more likely to wind up in prison, or moving to another country, seems like a bad idea.

Illegal aliens pay taxes, and getting an education will mean they will have the resources to get higher paying jobs -- paying even higher taxes.

I apologize in advance if I offend you but you've just continued an urban legend.

The facts are readily available, published in a study by the National Science Foundation. These are the facts:

California has been educating, at the taxpayers expense, unregulated immigrants and their anchor babies for 40 years in grades K through 12 and through community colleges and the state college system on thru graduate degrees. This study demonstrates:

In the totality of their lifetimes, unregulated immigrants and their anchor babies, including all levels of education, consume approximately 30% more in tax dollars than they pay in taxes. The higher the educational level, the greater the tax deficit they create

This apparent anomoly is caused by the fact that the higher the educational level, the statistically greater the likelyhood that they are employed in public sector jobs.