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San Antonio (USA).- Texas asked public universities to identify undocumented students favored by reduced tuition granted to state residents so that they are required to pay in full, as required by a court ruling earlier this month.
Wynn Rosser, commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, has requested that universities "reclassify" as non-residents their students without legal status, in a missive cited by The Texas Tribune.
"They will be charged non-resident tuition for the fall 2025 semester," Rosser specifies in the letter.
The order is given after the ruling of a federal judge who invalidated a law that allowed university students in Texas to pay their tuition at these institutions with the same rate as state residents ('in-state tuition'), in response to an appeal filed by the Department of Justice for considering that the state was "unconstitutionally discriminating" against U.S. citizens for the "benefit" of foreigners.
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It is estimated that about 73,000 students from Texas public universities will be affected, almost a fifth of the 408,000 with this status nationwide, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal organization. The program, established in 2001 with the approval of a law known as the Texas Dream Act, allowed certain young people who are not U.S. citizens, but who live in Texas and graduated from high school in the state, to pay the same university tuition as legal residents. In the United States, out-of-state students must pay a much higher tuition ('out-of-state tuition') when they go to a university in another region, but this law gave young people without immigration status living in Texas the opportunity to access higher education at the local rate, which is cheaper.
