Once it is conceded - as the Court does - that illegal aliens are not a suspect class, and that education is not a fundamental right, our inquiry should focus on and be limited to whether the legislative classification at issue bears a rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose.
The State contends primarily that 21.031 serves to prevent undue depletion of its limited revenues available for education, and to preserve the fiscal integrity of the State's school-financing system against an ever-increasing flood of illegal aliens - aliens over whose entry or continued presence it has no control. Of course such fiscal concerns alone could not justify discrimination against a suspect class or an arbitrary and irrational denial of benefits to a particular group of persons. Yet I assume no Member of this Court would argue that prudent conservation of finite state revenues is per se an illegitimate goal. Indeed, the numerous classifications this Court has sustained in social welfare legislation were invariably related to the limited amount of revenues available to spend on any given program or set of programs. See, e. g., Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 U.S., at 549 -551; Dandridge v. Williams, supra, at 487. The significant question here is whether the requirement of tuition from illegal aliens who attend the public schools - as well as from residents of other states, for example - is a rational and reasonable means of furthering the State's legitimate fiscal ends. 10 [457 U.S. 202, 250]
Without laboring what will undoubtedly seem obvious to many, it simply is not "irrational" for a state to conclude that it does not have the same responsibility to provide benefits for persons whose very presence in the state and this country is illegal as it does to provide for persons lawfully present. By definition, illegal aliens have no right whatever to be here, and the state may reasonably, and constitutionally, elect not to provide them with governmental services at the expense of those who are lawfully in the state. 11 In De Canas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351, 357 (1976), we held that a State may protect its "fiscal interests and lawfully resident labor force from the deleterious effects on its economy resulting from the employment of illegal aliens." And only recently this Court made clear that a State has a legitimate interest in protecting and preserving the quality of its schools and "the right of its own bona fide residents to attend such institutions on a preferential tuition basis." Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441, 453 (1973) (emphasis added). See also Elkins v. Moreno, 435 U.S. 647, 663 -668 (1978). The Court has failed to offer even a plausible explanation why illegality of residence [457 U.S. 202, 251] in this country is not a factor that may legitimately bear upon the bona fides of state residence and entitlement to the benefits of lawful residence.
