The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday filed lawsuits against laws in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont that require colleges and universities to provide illegal immigrants who establish residency there with in-state tuition. The DOJ has sued 17 states in total, and it has already won permanent injunctions against similar policies in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Illinois, according to a DOJ press release.

“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” insisted Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”

Each lawsuit cites 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a), which states that, “notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

The DOJ argued that the laws “unconstitutionally discriminate against U.S. citizens who are not afforded the same reduced tuition rates or scholarships, create incentives for illegal immigration, and reward illegal aliens with benefits that U.S. citizens are not eligible for.”

The controversy hinges on basic notions of justice. States that provide in-state tuition to illegal immigrants believe that doing so is a basic function of justice. They seek to treat all persons within their jurisdiction as equal by providing them with equal benefits. They not only reject any distinction based upon national origin but extend the principle of absolute equality to the point of rejecting federal immigration law. Since these laws, in their judgment, are unjust, then neither states nor immigrants are bound to follow them.

This liberal conclusion is reinforced by a far more radical, Marxist strain of thinking. Americans live in a wealthy country with high literacy and stable institutions, which provides the conditions necessary for many excellent institutions of higher learning to flourish. Many foreigners long to attend America’s high-quality universities, and many do so.

Marxism overlays these facts with the matrix of critical theory, which divides all people up by their group identities as advantaged or disadvantaged, oppressor or oppressed. It further contends that justice involves taking advantages away from those who have them and giving them to others to create an equal playing field. Ever since the initial call for the “workers of the world” to unite, Marxist thought denies that national boundaries should act as boundaries to the playing field. It denies that citizens should have any inherent advantage over non-citizens, or even those who broke the law to get here. This ideological foundation provides the background context for why some states provide in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.

The problem is, this policy actually results in a miscarriage of justice, as the DOJ has pointed out. If progressive states really wanted to level the playing field, they would get rid of in-state tuition altogether. But, of course, it would then be financially impossible for states to sustain the low prices of in-state tuition. These states have attempted to subsidize illegal immigration to their states, at the expense of their own taxpaying citizenry, and to the disadvantage of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens in other states.

There are multiple good reasons for in-state tuition. It provides an affordable option for residents in a state to obtain a college degree without shouldering massive debt. It gives residents in a state a reason to “stay local” for college, thus preventing “brain drain” and keeping the state competitive with other states. Furthermore, it gives benefits back to the residents of a state, who support publicly-funded universities through their tax dollars.

None of these reasons for in-state tuition has anything to do with Marxist notions of universal equality without borders. In fact, the very system of in-state tuition reinforces U.S. states as distinct entities with their own sovereign governments and unique characters.

It turns out that even the most progressive activists cannot twist a mechanism of decentralization into a mechanism of globalization without committing a gross miscarriage of justice. The situation’s irony only grows heavier in that the federal government has now stepped in to force states to keep pro-local policies true to their intended purpose. America remains a complex, multi-layered political entity with plenty of regional diversity, and illegal subsidies for illegal immigrants should not undermine that fact.