Colleges crack down on illegal immigrants

MCLEAN, Va., July 7 (UPI) -- Lawmakers in several U.S. states have taken actions making it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to go to college, officials say.

Since 2006, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma haven't given tuition benefits to people whose parents took them to the United States unlawfully, even if the students attended state schools their entire lives, USA Today reported Monday.

South Carolina is the only state to ban undocumented immigrants from attending public universities and colleges, the newspaper said.

"The new trend is to kick illegal aliens out of college altogether," William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, which is against taxpayer subsidies for illegal immigrants, told USA Today.

Critics say the college crackdown penalizes students for choices their parents made.

Providing support to immigrants is "the right thing to do even if it's unpopular," said North Carolina state Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Greensboro, who proposed a bill to stop state schools from inquiring about students' immigration status.