In the Virginia State Senate, a bill aimed to deny student recipients of the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) in-state tuition was proposed by Senator Dick Black (R-Loudoun) and ultimately failed to pass in a vote with nineteen in favor and twenty opposed, with one senator abstaining to vote.

According to the Falls Church News Press, Senator Dick Saslaw (D-Springfield) said that out of more than 350,000 undergraduates attending higher centers of learning in Virginia only 81 are of DACA status. This statistic was used in opposition of enacting such a law that affects a distinct minority within the state of Virginia, making the case that actual revenue gained from the price of out-of-state tuition would be negligible when the affected total to less than one hundred.

Senator Tom Garrett (R-Lynchburg), who was in favor of the bill, said to Michael Melkonian of the Capital News Service, “Right now, in the interim, our duty is to look out for the commonwealth of Virginia and the budget of the commonwealth of Virginia.”

Garrett makes the argument that the bill is targeting the DACA status itself so as to make the point that it is harming citizens in that it circumspects actual reform of the immigration system. In essence, Garrett says that the federal government has abandoned the pursuance of assuring that responsibility for not ascribing to the process of naturalization.

All nineteen democrats were opposed to the bill and successfully stopped it from passing due to the vote of Senator John Watkins (R-Midlothian). According to Senator Barbara Favola (D-Arlington), “What this bill does is establish a class of citizens who do not have access to higher education. These are citizens who are lawfully present in our country and in the commonwealth, and these are citizens who have worked very, very hard.”

According to Saslaw, “Let me tell you, we don’t want to go on record as a state Senate putting a bill like this on the books.”