Among the issues dividing U.S. Senate Candidates Blake Masters and Mark Kelly: taxpayer funding for illegal aliens. Kelly supports subsidizing their college tuition, while Masters opposes it. | Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons
Among the issues dividing U.S. Senate Candidates Blake Masters and Mark Kelly: taxpayer funding for illegal aliens. Kelly supports subsidizing their college tuition, while Masters opposes it. | Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons
Arizonans are already paying to house, feed, for health care and K-12 schooling for illegal aliens living in the state.
Under Arizona Proposition 308, they would also be required to fund their college education.
The proposition seeks to reverse a 2006 ballot measure that explicitly barred state subsidies for illegal aliens. It passed with an overwhelming majority of 72-28 percent.
Arizona Democrats, including Democrat Gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and are pushing the measure this year because they believe political sentiment in the state has since changed, as more liberal-minded voters have moved into the state from the east coast, Illinois and California.
Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Blake Masters, a Tucson native, disagrees.
“Senator Mark Kelly supports giving your tax dollars to illegal aliens. I do not. Pretty clear difference,” he said on Twitter.
To be eligible for state taxpayer subsidies under Proposition 308, the illegal alien student would have to have lived in the state for two years and earned a high school diploma.
According to a report issued in August by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 4.9 million illegal aliens have crossed U.S. borders since President Biden took office in Jan. 2021.
Arizona border crossings are up 403 percent since 2014, and 1.2 million illegal aliens have been apprehended in state, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP).
Arizona State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita said Proposition 308 is meant to distract from the larger border issue.
“They are illegal immigrants and when you come into this country illegally, there are ramifications. So I don’t know why we should be offering an advantage and a discounted tuition rate,” Ugenti-Rita said.
In July, three Republican members of congress from Colorado, U.S. Reps. Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn and Lauren Boebert, introduced the “No Federal Tax Dollars for Illegal Aliens Health Insurance Act,” in an effort to stop the Biden Administration from using federal funds to subsidize illegals’ health care.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has blocked action on the bill.
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