ALEXANDRIA, Va. ― Attorney General Mark Herring on Tuesday instructed Virginia colleges to grant in-state tuition to potentially thousands of students who were previously considered ineligible because of their immigration status.
The policy change, announced in front of hundreds of cheering immigration advocates at Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria campus, is a change from the Democrat’s Republican predecessors.
In the past, the attorney general’s office had advised that students who entered the country illegally were barred from receiving in-state tuition, even if they were children when they immigrated.
Herring now says students can qualify for the reduced tuition under a special immigration status created by the Obama administration for certain young people brought to the U.S. as children.
The change, he said, will allow students who have lived in Virginia to continue their education and become productive members of the workforce “instead of punishing them for the way their parents brought them to the United States as children.”
Herring said the change is immediate and applies to all public colleges in the state.
The change brought immediate condemnation from Republicans who control Virginia’s House of Delegates. They had rejected legislation that would have done the same thing.
