Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sets up $40M scholarship program for illegals to attend state universities

01/13/2023 / By Arsenio Toledo

Newly-inaugurated Democratic governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, has proposed providing a $40 million scholarship program for illegal immigrants to attend state universities and colleges.

In her inaugural address, Hobbs promised to expand the Arizona Promise Scholarship Program, a program that helps talented low-income students pay tuition fees to attend universities in the state. She also promised to create a separate scholarship program specifically meant to benefit illegal immigrants, known as the “Promise for DREAMers Scholarship Program” that will cover all students, regardless of immigration status, who attend a public university.

The new governor noted that this proposal was “in line with the will of Arizona’s voters in passing Proposition 308 this past November.”

Proposition 308 was a legislatively-referred ballot measure that repeals a previous proposition that barred “non-citizen students” from receiving in-state college tuition.

This means Arizona students, regardless of immigration status, will now be eligible for taxpayer-funded financial aid at state universities and community colleges “and in-state tuition if they graduated from and attended a public or private high school, or home school equivalent, for two years in Arizona.” (Related: Infrared camera catches small army of migrants illegally entering U.S. as Republicans consider impeaching DHS chief.)

Scholarship program for illegals taking taxpayer money to fill up college slots

Arizona is home to nearly 275,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. What Proposition 308 and Hobbs’ new scholarship program mean is that $40 million worth of taxpayer money will be funneled away from essential services and into a program that will grant illegal immigrants privileged access to limited spots at state universities and colleges.

An estimated 2,000 students in Arizona who are not citizens stand to benefit from this program that could just as easily have provided 2,000 citizen students of Arizona similar fully funded spots at state universities and community colleges.

For citizen students looking to further their education in Arizona, the cost to attend college is prohibitively expensive. Average in-state tuition is about $4,554 per semester, with this figure going up to more than $20,000 when taking into account the cost of room and board, textbooks and other supplies.

Graduate degree programs cost even more for American students, with in-state costs per semester being nearly $12,000 and rising to over $27,000 when taking into account room and board, textbooks and other supplies.

This means that the taxpayer dollars being funneled into the scholarship program for illegals could be used to fully fund the four-year college education of approximately 250 Arizonan citizens.

Meanwhile, university systems across the U.S. rely on billions of dollars of money paid to them directly by foreign students, including several thousand illegal immigrants currently attending higher educational institutions in the country. These university systems generate about $9 billion of revenue annually via tuition and fees from these non-citizen students.

Roughly 182,000 of the more than 400,000 illegals enrolled in American universities and colleges are eligible or enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They make up a significant portion of the revenue earned by university systems across the country.

Learn more about illegal immigrants in the U.S. and the policies affecting them at Migrants.news.

Watch this clip from Next News Network discussing how illegals are finding new ways to sneak into America – and it’s not by crossing the southern border.

This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.