<p>GMTplus7 --</p>
<p>If you’re still a citizen, GMTplus7, you’re probably entitled to in-state rates from the state that you ex-patriated from, particularly if you’re paying state income tax. But it’s possible that you’re not paying state income tax on account of relinquishing your state citizenship (at the advice of a tax preparer, perhaps, who said you can avoid state income tax liability by signing a simple form). Above, you said that you’re paying property tax – but that makes you a tax-payer. It does not make you a citizen or – more to the point – a resident. These laws and these private programs are directed at residents. You and others here are framing this as though programs that have a direct benefit to other people are diversions of your funds, as if your taxes don’t already come back to you many times over in terms of services and benefits that your profit from. Your property taxes, for instance, go towards things like improving schools and roads and bridges. And while your children are attending school elsewhere, the school system adds value to your home. As do the roads and bridges that allow people to get to your home and for your tenants to use your home as a place for them to take their children to those schools and get to their jobs using those roads and bridges. You skip right past all of that and see someone else getting something and think that they’re using your money as if you’re getting nothing out of it.</p>
<p>In some states (and, as I said expressly before, probably not border states), there may be a direct beneficial impact for the state to provide accessibility to post-secondary education for all of its residents. This benefit works for everyone because it is an investment that will increase the tax base, reduce crime and promote an overall higher quality of life. Those positives get reduced to zero. And the people from the border states who are shouldering a disproportionate burden of immigration – legal or illegal because the federal laws don’t allocate the distribution of immigrants across the country – should be glad for these kinds of programs in other states. While it’s conceivable that people who are currently abroad may be attracted by such programs, those people are coming in to the country and not moving into a border state, PLUS it is more likely to attract people who have already crossed the border and are within the U.S., thereby drawing down immigrants from border states. Instead, the resentment of people who don’t have federal paperwork in order runs so high, they can’t see past the benefits that inure to them and just want to see an environment as hostile as possible across the country.</p>
<p>Immigration laws – the complicated paperwork-driven laws that are used to decide whether a person is in the U.S. lawfully or not – are not some moral code. They are more arbitrary than anything. They’re also entirely the domain of the federal government, not the state government. From setting limits, dictating the paperwork requirements, and failing to enforce the laws or tighten the borders. The states, for their part, have to deal with the hand they’re dealt. If someone is a productive member of their community, the state need not make it their business to do the enforcement work that the federal government refuses to do. And the state has a choice to make the community hostile to immigrants or make the community welcoming – particularly to the kinds of immigrants who place a premium on having their children attend college, as those people are often pretty good people to have in a community. Since the distribution of immigrants, legal and illegal, is not evenly distributed and the ability of some states to absorb immigrants is better than others, different states can have different approaches to this. It’s really absurd to think that Arizona’s approach should be the same as New York’s and that they should be the same as Iowa. State lawmakers have a job to do and it’s to make their states better places to live, work and play for their citizens. All of them. And THEIR citizens are not the same as the federal government citizens since they don’t have control or a say as to who is in this country or why.</p>
<p>Frankly, it makes more sense to refuse in-state tuition benefits to families who have bad driving records. Driving too fast or without taillights is a criminal offense. And it endangers others. It creates a cost for the state in terms of enforcement and other programs needed to ameliorate the negative outcomes. It’s something that people usually know they are doing and that they’re doing it to the potential detriment of others around them. They are far more worthy of the pejorative “illegal” than people who don’t have all their immigration paperwork lined up in order. Nobody seems to be concerned about the fact that bad drivers – and children of bad drivers – get in-state tuition…because, I submit, that might impact them or people they know and like. But as long as people are coming up with reasons to disqualify residents of a state from in-state tuition, why does the conversation begin (and end) with whether their federal paperwork is in order? I’d like to see the laundry list of disqualification grounds fully fleshed out.</p>