America First: Trump shuts door on taxpayer-funded tuition for illegal immigrants

By Jayden Jelso | Daily Wire

The move was part of the White House's broader effort to restrict taxpayer-funded services to citizens.

The Department of Education is ending a Clinton-era rule allowing illegal aliens access to federally funded tuition programs.

According to The Daily Caller, the Trump administration argues that the policy, which funds career, technical, and adult education programs, violates the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The Education Department notified postsecondary education programs that the rule would no longer apply and declared that providers have “obligations to verify the eligibility of participants.”

This was one of several such moves the White House announced today. The Department of Health and Human Services “is restricting illegal aliens from 13 additional public programs, including Head Start,” while the Labor Department “is barring illegal aliens from accessing federal workforce development resources and grants.”

According to a White House fact sheet, the cuts save “roughly $40 billion in benefits for American citizens, overturns decades of bureaucratic defiance and builds on President Trump’s executive order directing an END to the subsidization of open borders.”

“Past presidents sat by and allowed illegal aliens to steal public benefits at the expense of hardworking American taxpayers — that ends now,” White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told The Daily Wire. “Under President Trump, it’s America first always.”

PRWORA previously exclusively allocated the use of federal funds to American citizens, permanent residents, and a small category of “qualified aliens” (e.g., refugees, asylees). However, the Clinton administration exempted postsecondary programs from the rule. The Trump Education Department stated that the exemption “mischaracterized the law by creating artificial distinctions between federal benefit programs based upon the method of assistance.”

In line with PRWORA, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said if the federal government is going to fund postsecondary education programs, it “should benefit American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

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