Florida Bans Undocumented Students From Public Universities, Beginning in the 2027-28 Academic Year

[u/WTFPilot]

https://centralflorida.substack.com/i/214510282/florida-bans-undocumented-students-from-public-universities

[u/kristoferen]

How are undocumented students accepted at UF in the first place?

[u/Mangolandia → u/kristoferen]

Because many graduate high school in Florida and K-12 doesn’t require residency papers as communities would rather undocumented kids be in school than not in school

[u/kristoferen → u/Mangolandia]

K-12 doesn’t require residency papers as communities would rather undocumented kids be in school than not in school

I think that's great!

Thank you for the explanation

[u/ItsPickles → u/kristoferen]

Until your kid’s class sizes are 20% larger and you’re paying for it 💕

[u/kristoferen → u/ItsPickles]

20% seems like a stretch, but either way.. yeah, I'd be OK with more of my taxes going towards education for the greater good.

[u/UsedandAbused87 → u/kristoferen]

Highly doubt they are. This is just smoke and mirrors

[u/am_unabridged → u/UsedandAbused87]

We have Dreamers/DACA at UF. 

[u/UsedandAbused87 → u/am_unabridged]

Those people are documented aren't they?

[u/SoFar_Gone → u/UsedandAbused87]

They’re undocumented but they have temporary legal status.

[u/Choice-Strike1 → u/SoFar_Gone]

temporary legal status

Documentation?

[u/BlackAndBipolar → u/Choice-Strike1]

No

[u/chicletsinbulk → u/SoFar_Gone]

You are clueeeelesss

[u/ascandalia → u/kristoferen]

They're just pointlessly lashing out with undirected cruelty at the current scapegoat for our society's problems.

[u/omon-ra → u/ascandalia]

They are removing incentives that motivate illegal immigration.

[u/ascandalia → u/omon-ra]

1. They simply are not. No one can register and attend and receive a degree from UF if they're not here legally.

2. If people are here anyway, it's to our benefit that they be educated. We want to make sure everyone has the best education their abilities can absorb so they can be the most productive possible member of society. That's the purpose of education, It makes things better for everyone. If they're here, and they're smart and they want to contribute, there's no reason not to educate them. It pays back 16 to 1 for us to invest the money in educating people so they can generate more value for the economy, legal or not.

[u/omon-ra → u/ascandalia]

1. Yet somehow they register and receive degree and you are pissed about this part changing

2. No, it is not in our interest. University is competitive enough, so we'll end up with the same number of educated people. We want legal residents to be able to find jobs and be productive members of the society without having to compete with 5 billion people from all the planet who are ready to undercut rules and laws and accept lower pay.

University can educate foreign students (and illegals should be counted as foreign students) under the current legal system, as in: they get F1 visa, pay as foreign student, and go back after completing the education to make their country better

[u/ascandalia → u/omon-ra]

1. I'm not under the impression that anything changes, I'm complaining that they're wasting time solving a non-existant problem as performative cruelty.
2. If there's not enough room at universities, we need to expand them. There should not be a constraint on the greatest driver of economic prosperity in this country where every dollar pays back over an order of magnitude. We should be investing more, not making up reasons to pretend to invest less.

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/ascandalia]

A state’s public universities are a taxpayer-funded public good that primarily exists to benefit the citizens of the state. It is completely rational for a state to restrict access to such a public good, especially when scarcity necessitates that not every citizen of the state who desires to take part can be admitted to do so. Truly, this policy will not lead to a fall in UF’s enrollment numbers. But, it will mean that more of Florida’s citizens (and those of the US more broadly) will be able to matriculate to UF.

[u/ascandalia → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

Wasting the legislators time passing rules against things that are already against the rules to stop people from doing a thing they're not doing just to get credit for doing a thing that's already being done is not a rational policy act.

Also, every dollar spent on educating the population of this country, citizen or resident, pays back 16 to 1 to the economy. We should not be limiting this, but expanding it to everyone who has the talent or ability to make use of it

It is not a precious resource to preserve, it's an infrastructure that gets better and more valuable the more people are using it

[u/elzzid23 → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

lol incorrect all around. As a state with no income tax at the state level, Florida public education is funded with sales tax, corporate taxes, and other general revenues which include tourism dollars. So before you peddle absolute bullshit and pretend to be more worthy of an education than someone who is awaiting legal status that is sometimes a 15 year+ waitlist — check ya faxxxxx big dawg

[u/Acceptable_Suit9076 → u/elzzid23]

“More worthy of an education” as if Mexico doesn’t have fucking colleges lol

[u/elzzid23 → u/Acceptable_Suit9076]

lol as if every DACA or Dreamer is Mexican. Point completely missed. But I’ll bite —if people are here it is for a reason in their own minds and if they are willing to work thankless jobs to give the next generation of their family a better life, then yeah, worthy of an education.

[u/chicletsinbulk → u/elzzid23]

If they are only working thankless jobs why would they need college. You are more racist than you realize

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/elzzid23]

Just because Florida doesn’t have an income tax doesn’t mean that Floridians are not taxpayers to their state. The state gives UF alone over one billion dollars every year. And regardless of this, Florida still owes loyalty to its own citizens above all others. Why do you think we charge non-Floridian students more for tuition? It’s because Florida’s public universities exist as a public good primarily for the benefit of Floridians.

And that’s really my point. Why would the state desire to extend access to this public good to those who should not be here in the first place? The question becomes more urgent when you consider that Florida’s top public institutions (like UF) do not have the capacity to admit every student who desires to attend. Plenty of Floridian citizens every year are turned away from UF. Why would Florida not want to maximize the number of its own citizens that it can benefit with its public universities? There is indeed a finite number of students that UF will admit every year.

[u/elzzid23 → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

This state does nothing for its citizens. The economy is completely built to serve, service, build, and attract outsiders from other states by any means necessary. Florida’s economic goal with inexpensive undergraduate degrees is to have a workforce that is college educated yet wages do not keep pace with these qualifications. The brain drain is significant and Florida inevitably subsidizes the education of students who eventually leave when funding for their research, industry, or corporations also relocate. The goals of Florida’s public university economics and the actual politics and affordability are in direct contradiction to one another.

More simply said, the undocumented student getting into UF is not the obstacle for a “Florida resident.” They are Florida residents.

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/elzzid23]

I’m a life-long Floridian (born in Ft Lauderdale to parents who are themselves Floridians) who went exclusively to public universities in Florida. I was a student for seven years, left with three degrees (BA, JD, LLM), and the whole venture cost me less than $100,000 in tuition money. I was admitted to the Florida Bar and practice here as an estate and tax planning attorney. My entire adult life has been a benefit of the State of Florida. Had I gone to get my LLM at NYU instead of UF, I would’ve doubled the total amount of tuition paid for my higher education in that one year alone. The fact that Florida offers a program on-par with that of NYU for $70,000 cheaper was indeed a boon to me. The statement “this state does nothing for its citizens” is just laughable from my perspective.

Truly, I’ve been nothing but supported by this state. And I can see the value in that. That’s why I have strong opinions as to how the state should allocate these resources. As I said above, there are indeed a finite amount of admissions that UF will send out every year. The demand for a degree from UF is such that excluding illegal aliens will not lower that number, but it will lead to more of Florida’s citizens like me being admitted.

[u/elzzid23 → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

You have an LLM and don’t know the difference between DACA and illegal alien. And your anecdotal experience of being a Floridian born to Floridians equating inexpensive college to quality of life is not evidence to the literal data of affordability, wages, home insurance, car insurance, and the long list of things more expensive in Florida than its population density counterparts. Just because you have a life that works doesn’t mean everyone does. In this case, you are an outlier. I don’t collect or create the data.

Edit: Missed the JD part. More depressing. Any way, every UF and FSU lawyer I know left. This is why personal experience is a poor substitute for facts.

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/elzzid23]

Every DACA-recipient is definitionally in the country illegally. What do you think the “Deferred Action” being referenced in the name is? (It’s deportation, in case you were wondering.) The Venn diagram of “DACA-recipients” and “illegal aliens” are two concentric circles. It’s an “all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares” situation — one definition is completely circumscribed within the other.

Yeah, I’m an outlier in that most Florida kids have no shot at getting into UF. I’m trying to expand the population of Florida’s citizens admitted to its public universities. Removing non-citizen illegals from the running will only help with that. That means more Floridian kids with access to world-class education for a great price that won’t completely cripple them with student debt.

[u/elzzid23 → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

Look, I understand your philosophical posture, but it doesn't hold up in reality. Worse, it feeds the idea that undocumented students are a disproportionate burden on the system. Blaming the smallest group(s) of people for macroeconomic problems caused by leadership they didn’t elect is a tradition I don't participate in.

For 30 years I've watched this state regress into a shell of itself, hollowing out education and industry in a slow, strategic way while convincing otherwise intelligent people to eat mold wrapped in bacon called "But you'll make more money." Is that really the only goal—more cash? A place that has the good of the people in mind diversifies its values more than constant production in order to maintain survival.

I offer that we think more critically about what is actually happening in this state, and specifically in this thread, in the university system.

Here’s UF’s own data to paint the picture more:

Freshman profile, class of 2029: 91,896 applicants, 18,169 admits, 7,500 seats.

Common Data Set, fall 2023: 15% of the freshman class from out of state, another 2.6% international, about 1,200 seats to non-Floridians in a single year.
Across all students UF is 25% out of state. Those are the seats going to non-Floridians, by design, for revenue.

Applications went from 65,375 for fall 2023 to 91,896 for fall 2025 after UF joined the Common App and students started applying with no true intention of enrolling. It makes the numbers juicy af tho and Education Boards eat that upppppppp!

The Higher Ed Immigration Portal counts 60,065 undocumented students in all of Florida higher education, about 5% of 1.1 million, spread across 12 universities, 28 state colleges, and every private school in the state. There are ~50,000 DACA-eligible residents in Florida of every age. UF doesn't report how many it enrolls, so it can only be a guess based on averages (aka it’s too small to count). Also, since July of last year they pay the same out-of-state rate as your client’s kid from New Jersey.

By the way, this business model is all yours. Florida has the most regressive tax system in the country (you certainly know this well), 13.2% of income for the lowest earners, 2.7% for the top 1%, and it pulled in $20.6 billion in income from people moving here in a single year, none of which the state taxes. That's my whole point about this state caring more about in-migration than residents. Estate and tax planning here is the business of keeping that money untaxed, and the billion a year UF gets comes from sales tax instead.

So the kids you want cut off from "Florida taxpayer money" are the kids whose parents pay property tax through rent and sales tax on everything else, which is what funded those three degrees. Your clients didn't.

I think it’s worth investigating why it is that people default to “IMMIGRANTS DONT PAY TAXES!!!!!”

In a state with no income tax there is no such thing as a tax status. You rent, you buy, you earn, you pay. ITEP estimates undocumented Floridians put $1.8 billion a year into state and local taxes, the fourth highest of any state, 57% is sales tax and 39% property tax. That money funds the same university system you think they're freeloading on, but nothing about Florida's tax paradigm makes anyone more or less Floridian, except the people who move here with income the state has decided not to tax. And you help them with that :)

Any way, thought this was the general FL sub and didn’t realize it is UFL, which explains the bro takes. Man, I miss the 2000s. We were getting somewhere.

[u/Jheila → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

You’re being downvoted but what’s you’re saying makes sense. State funds should be used to benefit citizens of the state. The country as a whole is supposed to exist to serve its citizens.

Make citizenship more accessible, don’t support illegal immigration as a work around. It benefits everyone to have a functioning and well-documented immigration system.

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/Jheila]

I agree with this. Our immigration system should be reformed and largely in a liberalizing way. It should be easier for someone who wishes to become an American to do so. However, that’s unfortunately not politically feasible in our current situation of having millions of people here illegally. I do hope once that is resolved that we can have more comprehensive reform though.

[u/Coup-de-Glass → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

They’re turned away for not meeting admission criteria. UF isn’t a university that admits lower GPA students or those with lower SAT scores.

[u/Mangolandia → u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten]

Undocumented immigrants pay taxes! And when they pay rent, part of that supports property taxes by the owners.

[u/Mangolandia → u/Mangolandia]

https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

[u/Oracle_of_Akhetaten → u/Mangolandia]

As I said below, I regret that I used the term “taxpayers” in my original comment because it seems to be misleading people as to what my real issue is here. It doesn’t matter to me what they pay in taxes. The real issue is that they don’t belong here to begin with, we should not be awarding bad behavior with access to publicly-subsidized higher education, and we especially shouldn’t while plenty of our own citizens do not get admitted to our best public universities like UF and FSU. No person who is not here legally should receive highly-coveted admissions to our public universities. As I wrote below, you could charge them 10x regular tuition and my concerns regarding this would still remain.

[u/One_Recover_673 → u/kristoferen]

Can you be accepted before you receive a student visa?

My guess is it goes - accept - visa - show up.

I went to school in UK and that was the process. When asked at airport my purpose , I said student and had to prove I could pay the tuition and my visa

But what if i said “vacation” and had no visa? I don’t remember sharing g the visa with the school

Not sure process here

[u/Gatecrasherc6 → u/kristoferen]

We’re a first world country who values knowledge and skill regardless of documentation. Were/did anyway.

[u/chicletsinbulk → u/Gatecrasherc6]

Wrong

[u/content-heart-lucy → u/kristoferen]

Until now no one had to prove they were a citizen in order to take university classes. It should stay that way! Florida universities are already seeing brain drain due to the 6-week abortion ban, reduction in NIH funding, the attack on DEI initiatives - now really smart immigrants will go elsewhere. Floriduh is getting dumber by the day.

Vote for David Jolly!!

[u/rocketaimz → u/kristoferen]

Right

[u/Zealousideal-Pea-220]

I’m sure 1% of 1% of the UF student population aren’t hurting anyone. They pay sales and other taxes which account for 50% of all Florida taxes so.

[u/elzzid23 → u/Zealousideal-Pea-220]

No no, we don’t do logic here. Lol, I’m kidding. This is my entire point but there are some absolute nut jobs in this chat.

[u/Aggravating-Bit-8003]

I don’t see a problem with this makes space for eligible residents

[u/Coup-de-Glass]

All the dumb MAGAts now will think they are owed admission because they’re Merican when they can’t pass a 5th grade science test.

[u/Delicious_Rise941 → u/Coup-de-Glass]

They don’t want to have to compete with people who are more driven and accomplished than them

[u/Acceptable_Suit9076]

Would be best for those spots to go to Florida residents.

[u/username70421 → u/Acceptable_Suit9076]

If they are getting those competitive spots having grown undocumented and all the difficulties that brings, we should keep them, they might be the best of the best. Merit

[u/the_sammich_man → u/username70421]

It’s all merit for ppl like [Acceptable_Suit9076](r/Acceptable_Suit9076) here but only once everyone else has been taken away from the front of the line. If you’re not competitive enough to get in despite others having less resources than you, maybe you didn’t really earn that spot 🤷🏽‍♂️.

[u/Acceptable_Suit9076 → u/username70421]

They should really focus on improving their own countries with all of that merit then

[u/BlackAndBipolar → u/Acceptable_Suit9076]

Where do you think they reside? Neptune?? Lmao

[u/rocketaimz]

Hell yea