Should undocumented students pay in-state tuition at your state school?

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  Theo1d ago

  I taught high school in Chicago for 22 years. Some of my brightest students were undocumented. They sat in my classroom every single day, did the work, earned the grades, and then hit a wall made of pure bureaucracy the second they wanted to go to college. You want to tell me that kid from my AP English class — the one who wrote the best essay I've ever graded — deserves to pay three times as much because of a decision his parents made when he was four months old? I can't get behind that. I genuinely cannot.

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  Drew1d ago

  If you disagree that a kid who attended Illinois public schools K through 12, whose family paid into the state's tax base the entire time, has more of a claim to in-state tuition than a student who just moved here from another state last August — I genuinely want to hear how you square that with any coherent definition of "resident."

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• QL

  Quinn L.1d ago

  The "their families paid taxes" argument is the one that actually lands for me. Illinois sales tax doesn't check your immigration status. Property tax bills don't either. If your family has been funding this state's budget for a decade, the idea that you're treated like a tourist at the university feels genuinely incoherent.

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  Morgan _x21h ago

  "There's a thing called loans and scholarships" — undocumented students are ineligible for federal financial aid. That's federal law. They can't take out federal student loans either. So your entire rebuttal assumes access to a system that is explicitly closed to them by statute. Try again.

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  Reese S.9h ago

  The strongest argument against this policy, the one I actually respect, is that states shouldn't be setting immigration-adjacent policy at all — it creates a patchwork that undermines federal authority. I think that argument is wrong, but it at least engages the real issue instead of pretending this is about fairness to legal students who are somehow harmed by other students paying a lower tuition rate.

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  Reese1d ago

  My daughter goes to U of I. We pay full in-state tuition. We've lived here 18 years. I'll be honest — my first instinct was resentment, like why should someone who isn't here legally get the same rate we earned by being residents? Then my husband pointed out that the undocumented kid in the same situation has also been here 18 years. I'm still working through it.

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  Elena22h ago

  The foreign student rate for Illinois schools can exceed $30,000 a year MORE than in-state. That's not a small administrative distinction. That's effectively a ban on higher education for a lot of these kids. If your policy outcome is "these young people cannot access college," own that. Don't hide behind procedural language about legal categories.

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  Quinn S.13h ago

  I'm so tired of children being the lever in every immigration argument. These are not policy abstractions. They are 18-year-olds who grew up going to prom in Naperville and eating at Portillo's and studying for the ACT. They are Illinois kids by every measure that matters in daily life and we are making them pay for a legal status they had no hand in creating.

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  Theo4h ago

  Retroactive rule changes for students already enrolled are indefensible regardless of your politics on this issue. You don't pull the floor out from under someone who made a four-year financial commitment based on a published tuition rate. That's true if you're a corporation doing it and it's true if you're a state university.

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  Quinn18h ago

  I'm a fiscal conservative and I'll say this carefully: the economic case for in-state tuition for long-term Illinois residents — regardless of status — is actually pretty solid. Educated workers generate more tax revenue. Undereducated workers cost more in social services over time. I don't love the politics but the math isn't obviously wrong.

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  Theo1d ago

  No way. You worked three jobs and still made it? That's incredible, genuinely. But also — doesn't that kind of prove the point that the system was unfair, not that it was fine?

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  Kofi15h ago

  Can someone explain why this is being rolled back NOW specifically? What changed? Because the RISE Act was law, it was working, and then suddenly it's not? What's the actual mechanism here? I keep reading articles that dance around it.

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  Ravi11h ago

  I keep seeing people say "legal resident, full stop" like that's a complete argument. It's not. It's a conclusion disguised as a reason. The question IS whether the legal definition should include long-term de facto residents. Citing the current definition doesn't answer that.

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  Noah M.5h ago

  I work in university admissions. Not at a school I'll name. The chaos this creates administratively is real and underappreciated. Students who enrolled under one set of rules are now facing different rules mid-degree. That is a basic contract problem regardless of how you feel about immigration policy.

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  Leo S.1d ago

  Appreciate the honesty. That's a more thoughtful reaction than most people manage.

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  Priya1d ago

  I was undocumented until I was 19. I'm a citizen now. I went to a state school in another state and paid out-of-state rates while my classmates who'd never set foot in a classroom paid in-state. I worked three jobs. I didn't complain. But looking back, that policy didn't make me more American — it just made me more exhausted.

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  Riley T.11h ago

  And changing the law is exactly what the RISE Act did, until the political winds shifted. So we agree the law can and should be debated? Great. Then let's debate it instead of pretending the current rule is handed down from the sky.

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  Leo17h ago

  A fiscal conservative who does math. Rare. Appreciated.

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  Theo2h ago

  The rate category changing is different from the rate adjusting. In-state to out-of-state isn't a tuition hike. It's a completely different price structure that can be $30,000 a year. Treating those as equivalent is either confused or dishonest.

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  Reese1d ago

  I'll take that challenge. Residency in the legal sense isn't just about physical presence or tax contribution — it's about legal status, which is what unlocks the bundle of rights and benefits that come with it. You can disagree with that framework, but it IS coherent. It's just not the framework you prefer.

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  Ravi6h ago

  By that logic military veterans shouldn't get GI Bill benefits because the cost is "borne by taxpayers" who didn't serve. Subsidies are targeted all the time. Targeting them at long-term Illinois residents who went to Illinois schools is not an irrational use of state funds.

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  Leo15h ago

  Short answer: the current political climate at the federal level is creating pressure on states to tighten up anything that looks like a benefit for undocumented people, even if the state law itself hasn't formally changed. Schools are getting cautious before they're required to.

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  Taylor1d ago

  The argument I haven't seen anyone make yet: Illinois community colleges have offered in-state rates to undocumented students for years under the RISE Act. The sky did not fall. Enrollments went up, tax revenue from those graduates went up, everyone moved on. So why are we pretending this is some radical untested idea?

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  Jamie9h ago

  My parents were undocumented. I was born here so I'm a citizen. I watched my younger brother, who came here as a baby, pay out-of-state rates at SIU while I paid in-state. Same house. Same parents. Same schools. Different birthplace. That is such a strange thing to explain to someone who hasn't lived it.

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  Elena 9219h ago

  Every state gets to set its own in-state tuition policy independently of federal aid rules. This is not a new legal concept. Illinois already did it once, they can do it again, and it has nothing to do with FAFSA.

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  Hana6h ago

  Explain why it doesn't work then, because I've seen that challenge sitting there unanswered for like six hours now.

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  Maya M.14h ago

  That's a significant gap in the coverage honestly. The "how" is as important as the "what."

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  Riley1d ago

  That's the most law-school-sounding non-answer I've read all week.

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  Morgan8h ago

  How exactly is a legal resident harmed by an undocumented student getting in-state tuition? The seat argument doesn't hold at most schools. The tax argument runs the other way. I've never heard a clean answer to this.

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  Kofi M.1d ago

  in-state tuition is for residents. legal residents. thats literally the whole point of having the category.

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  Elena21h ago

  it's not a ban. it's a price difference. there's a thing called loans and scholarships.

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  Omar6h ago

  that analogy doesn't work and you know why it doesn't work

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  Maya1d ago

  He's not wrong though. Legal status IS the distinguishing factor the legislature built the category around. The question is whether the legislature SHOULD change that. Those are two very different arguments.

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  Ravi K.16h ago

  lol "i don't love the politics" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that comment

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  Liam K.3h ago

  I mean, tuition rates change every year for everyone. That's not really a contract.

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  Maya1d ago

  Feels incoherent or IS incoherent? Pick one.

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  Feli14h ago

  Which means students are losing access to something they were counting on not because a law changed but because administrators got scared. That's its own scandal.

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  Morgan19h ago

  Right, which is why the rollback of the state policy is what people are upset about. The state CHOSE to restrict access. That's a policy choice, not an inevitability.

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  Nina K.2h ago

  retiree here, been watching immigration debates since Reagan. the details change, the passion stays the same, and somehow we never actually resolve anything. not optimistic.

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  Theo1d ago

  same. every single word of this.

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  Maya 2112h ago

  Being from Illinois is not the same as being a legal resident of Illinois. I feel for them, I do, but feelings aren't policy.

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  Zara1d ago

  because community college and a state flagship are not the same thing financially or symbolically and you know it

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  Hana7h ago

  Resource allocation. Every subsidized spot has a cost, and that cost is borne by the state, which is funded by taxpayers who are — here's the part — legal residents and citizens. That's the argument. It's not about "harm." It's about who the subsidy is for.

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  Jordan S.23h ago

  working through it in the comments section of a debate forum is a choice i guess

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  Taylor11h ago

  yes it does. the legislature defines the terms. if you want to change the terms, change the law. that's literally how it works.

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  Priya20h ago

  oh. i actually did not know that. fair point.

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