Florida is one of 18 states that allow the children of undocumented immigrants to receive a lower tuition rate on state colleges. That law is under attack by Randy Fine, a state legislator who is running for Congress. Fine is an ardent supporter of Trump.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — For a decade, children brought into the country illegally by their undocumented parents could enroll in a state college or university for the same fee as in-state residents, if they attended a Florida high school for three years.

But now, State Sen. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who plans to resign mid-session to run for Congress, wants to repeal that law and end the educational benefit designed to help young immigrants known as “dreamers.”

Fine wants to end “sweetheart deals for college degrees to those who should not even be here,” he said in an email put out by his senate aide. “President Trump has made clear it is time to close the border and stop giving illegal immigrants rewards for breaking the law.”

His bill revives an effort to squelch the dreamers’ benefit that Gov. Ron DeSantis and some other Republicans tried — and failed — to make part of an immigration reform package in 2023.

Fine claimed the state spent $45 million to provide out-of-state tuition waivers to undocumented college and university students in 2021, but his staff did not respond to questions about the source of that figure.

Fine, a combative conservative who calls himself the “Hebrew Hammer,” filed a bill Monday that would repeal the waiver, which was signed into law in 2014 — two years before he was elected to the Legislature. The law was sponsored by Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez when she was a state senator. It was approved with bipartisan support and signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the junior GOP senator from Florida.

Under the law, undocumented students who attended a Florida high school for three years and enrolled in a state college or university within 24 months of graduation would pay in-state tuition rates. But they are not eligible for state financial aid.

Without that waiver, they would pay out-of-state rates that are three to four times more. At the University of Central Florida, for example, the in-state rate is about $6,300 while out-of-state tuition is over $22,000…

More than 43,000 undocumented students are currently enrolled in Florida’s public colleges or universities, according to the American Immigration Council and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. They make up just a sliver of the more than 1 million enrolled.

The state university system said it issued 2,005 nonresident tuition waivers last year but does not track how many of them went to undocumented students. The state also doesn’t track of the number of undocumented students enrolled in its universities.

Florida has already invested millions of dollars into the K-12 education of these students, and the 2014 law was seen as an incentive to get them to stay in Florida and complete their postsecondary education, said Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

The result is a “a higher educated population and individuals who can pursue a career while working on their immigration status,” Bozzetto said.

Florida’s undocumented workers contribute $1 billion in spending power and $113 million in state and local taxes, according to the American Immigration Council….

“It’s a publicity stunt,” Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, said of Fine’s new bill. “I’d be surprised if my Republican colleagues in the Senate even give it a hearing. It’s a mean-spirited and petty attack on immigrants that really defines the MAGA base.”

All in-state residents pay a tuition rate lower than the cost of their education, so state taxpayers are subsidizing all of them, and there is not a limit on the number of students who can receive in-state tuition, he said.

“They are paying tuition like every other student ,” Smith said. “They are not taking something away from other Floridians.”