Court: DACA Aliens Can't Sue Georgia for In-State Tuition

By David North on February 24, 2016

Those seeking to erase our borders have a number of tools in their kits. One of the more successful ones is the effort to give illegal alien students at state-funded colleges and universities the right to pay tuition at discounted in-state rates, just as if they were here legally. By the most recent count of the National Conference of State Legislatures, 20 states have adopted that policy.

The latest news is that a variant of the effort has been foiled by the courts in the state of Georgia.

That state's supreme court has ruled that the semi-illegal aliens (my term, not the court's) who are in the DACA (Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals) program cannot obtain in-state tuition rates.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, several DACA beneficiaries sued the board of regents of Georgia's state university system over this issue. They were turned down by the board, by the trial court, by the appeals court, and ultimately by the state's supreme court.

The supreme court said, unanimously, that the DACA beneficiaries could not sue the sovereign state of Georgia without its own consent, deciding the case on that issue, rather than on the legal status of the aliens.

According to the NCSL this is the current status of in-state tuition for illegals:

Twenty states offer in-state tuition to unauthorized immigrant students, 16 by state legislative action and four by state university systems. Sixteen state legislatures — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington — enacted laws to allow in-state tuition benefits for certain unauthorized immigrant students. These laws typically require attendance and graduation at state high schools, acceptance at a state college or university, and promising to apply for legal status as soon as eligible. At least four state university systems ... Hawaii ... Michigan ... Oklahoma ... and Rhode Island ... [have also] established policies to offer in-state tuition rates to unauthorized immigrant students.

The provision in many of these laws that the beneficiaries "promise to apply for legal status as soon as eligible" is strictly a fig leaf. Students potentially eligible for legal status would be highly likely to apply whether or not they had in-state tuition benefits. The provision may sound attractive to non-careful observers and that is why it is included in the legislation.