Forget, for a moment, the parents and whatever label you want to assign them - illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, illegals, lawbreakers - and think of their children whose only sin is a desire to attend college in the state in which they live and at the same cost their neighbors will pay.
They want to go to college, pay for college, and the only difference between them going and them not going is the difference between in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition.
The Tennessee House Education Administration & Planning Committee this week, by a single vote, defeated a bill that would have allowed students whose parents brought them to the country illegally to receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. The student would have to have been in the state for two years, graduated from a Tennessee high school and been duly registered to attend a "state institute of higher education."
A similar bill was passed by the state Senate in 2015 but failed by a single vote on the House floor.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, who sponsored the 2015 bill and this year's bill in the Senate, said the "Trump factor" - not wanting to be seen as weak on illegal immigration - kept conservative middle Tennessee legislators from supporting the bill.
"It's the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life," he said.
It's especially sad in light of comments by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week, who said in an interview "the administration is very supportive of states setting their direction [as to in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants]."
Out-of-state tuition can be nearly three times as much as in-state tuition. For most children of illegal immigrants, whose work may be seasonal and pay may be sporadic, the bar is just too high.
However, the payoff could have been higher wage-earning, higher tax-paying graduates instead of members of another generation who may have to exist like their parents, hiding from authorities, taking work where it's available and dreaming of what might have been.
Twenty other states already offer children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition. In a state where so many strides forward have been made in education, this is a step back.
Another Gardenhire-sponsored higher education bill failed to advance in the House Education Administration & Planning Committee Wednesday, but the 6-6 vote allows Rep John DeBerry Jr., D-Memphis, who was absent from the committee for the vote, to bring the bill back up when it returns to the calendar next week.
That bill would authorize the governing body of each public institute of higher education to determine the qualifications - previously determined by the Tennessee Board of Regents system or University of Tennessee system - that students must have to be eligible for payment of in-state tuition.
Gardenhire said DeBerry has previously said he favored the bill, which Gardenhire called "a business friendly situation" for the individual schools.