Well, truth is stranger than fiction after all
I have a great idea for a fictional story.
Illegal immigrants to the United States decide to attend a state university and manage to get the state government to pay for it. A state law allows these illegal students get tuition subsidies that make their costs less than the costs of U.S. citizens.
These U.S. citizens decide to file a lawsuit. These students claim that the state’s tuition law makes them each pay at least $10,000 more during their college career than those wily illegal immigrants. The lawsuit is based on Federal law – 8 U.S.C. 1623(a) – which states that illegal aliens can not receive “any postsecondary education benefit” that a U.S. citizen can not receive “in no less an amount, duration, and scope” regardless of the citizen’s state residence.
So, this state law violates federal law by giving illegal aliens a taxpayer tuition subsidy that is denied to legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. Foreigners are once again rewarded for avoiding the legal immigration and alien process, breaking federal laws that have such penalties as detainment, deportment, and a 10-year bar on reapplication for legal admission to the United States.
Let’s introduce another player in the story. Let’s say that this state’s Attorney General recognizes the illegality of the state tuition law and refuses to defend the state against the citizen students’ lawsuit. I’ll have this Attorney General recuse himself and assign the defense to other state attorneys.
I don’t think I have enough drama yet. So I think I’ll have similar bills to grant in-state tuition subsidies to illegal immigrants in 23 other states. And I’ll have those bills pass into law in California, Texas, New York, Utah, Washington, Illinois, and Oklahoma.
Ok, I think I am set to write my story. I’m sure it will be a best-seller, or maybe a movie-of-the-week!
Oh, damn! It looks like Kansas has ruined my chance to offer this plot-line as fiction!