At a time when Utah’s taxpayer funded colleges and universities are cutting jobs, facing enrollment caps and failing to provide the courses students need for graduation, they continue to support in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
According to the Utah System of Higher Education, 590 illegal aliens were enrolled in Utah’s colleges and universities in the fall of 2009. The estimated annual cost of taxpayer subsidies for these students ranges from two million to four and a half million dollars per year.
An international student, who has followed all of the rules and is legally in the United States, pays an average of $7,800 more in tuition each year than does an illegal alien.
Illegal aliens attending Utah’s colleges and universities openly acknowledge that they have jobs and are working in order to cover their living expenses and tuition costs in spite of the fact that they cannot legally do so.
In order to obtain employment, the illegal alien students commit multiple felonies including document fraud, perjury on I-9 forms and under Utah law, identity fraud if the Social Security number or other identifying information they are using belongs to someone else, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
In addition, illegal aliens cannot legally work in the United States after they graduate and they cannot change their immigration status. Therefore, they have two choices. They can either remain in the United States and continue working illegally or they can legally get a job outside of the United States with an American or foreign employer.
If illegal aliens elect to stay in the United States after graduation, they will have chosen to lie to employers about their legal status and to commit multiple felonies in order to get low skilled and low paying jobs.
If they leave the United States in order to be able to use their degrees to obtain employment, they will not be able to legally return to the United States for at least ten years due to their previous illegal immigration status.
According to CitizensForTaxFairness.org, it is an improper use of taxpayer funds to provide taxpayer subsidized in-state tuition for individuals who may be committing multiple felonies and who cannot legally work in the United States once they obtain their degrees.
Despite the tax fairness and other serious issues associated with Utah’s in-state tuition program for illegal aliens, Utah’s higher education establishment continues to defend and support the program.
The President of the University of Utah expressed his willingness to divert scholarship funds away from American citizens and legal residents in order to ensure that illegal aliens are able to attend his university should the in-state tuition program be abolished.
In 2009, when an effort was made to limit in-state tuition to illegal aliens who would certify that they were not working illegally and were not committing job-related felonies, the University of Utah led the fight against the bill.
Appearing before a legislative committee, Jon Hayes, vice president of the Associated Students of the University of Utah, defended the right of illegal aliens to work illegally and to commit job-related felonies.
Higher education officials, who are currently facing significant budget shortfalls, told the public that unless taxes are raised, soft enrollment caps, staff layoffs and the elimination of courses required for graduation are very real possibilities.
Earlier in the year, higher education officials tried to reduce payments to Utah’s top students who had earned taxpayer funded, New Century scholarships while still maintaining the in-state tuition program for illegal aliens.
Jim Flohr, of the Citizens Council on Illegal Immigration of Washington County (Utah) says, “It makes no sense at all to provide millions of dollars in subsidized tuition for illegal aliens who may be committing job related felonies and who can’t even legally get a job in Utah once they graduate. The legislature should immediately terminate this unfair and misguided program.”
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