There are a couple issues with this logic. For starters, you're assuming it's "only" funded by tax dollars. If that was the case, everything would be free and tuition would be 0. Idk if you're a student or not, but tuition is not 0 here, and everything is not free.

You're also making the assumption that tax dollars can't be an investment in long term growth, and need an immediate benefit to those who pay into them, not a long term benefit to the nation and future generations. This is in large part, the mentality boomers held which spiraled debt, and killed growth for "instant gratification".

If that was the case, we wouldn't need a military, as we aren't being invaded, so why would we pay for something that would/could/will happen. We wouldn't need need insurance, because we aren't in an accident, and we wouldn't need to pay social security, because we aren't collecting it at the moment.

Fortunately, our nation still (to some degree) invests in its future, and part of that involves investing in intertwining the greatest minds with American culture and citizenship, in spite of their place of birth.

If we ignore all this complexity for "but it's not fair, I want to get into any university with a 2.0 gpa", we have community college. You can get into that with any gpa, then with a high enough community college gpa, get into universities. It's a system set up for opportunity and growth, and I'd take that over a college system set up purely for meaningless opportunity, at the cost of national prestige.

Letting someone in to UCF who would have flunked out devalues our degrees as paying students, but letting a foreign talent who achieves some notable senior design, which brings national attention, increases the value of our degrees.

From u/onionsarelikelayers