Of all the ways that open borders harm Americans, one of the most egregious, insulting and life-affecting is the college freebie illegals get while non-rich US citizens are forced to take out huge loans to attend.

According to a February report from CNBC, “the average student loan borrower has $37,172 in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago.” Seventy percent of today’s college students graduate with significant debt, and the average monthly loan payment for borrowers aged 20 to 30 in 2016 was $393. This indebtedness puts them years behind in important investments in a home or start-up business, even family formation.

Yet illegal alien college students get a big financial cushion from the taxpayers in nine states:

Naturally California was an early adopter of freebies for illegal alien moochers, where Gov Jerry Brown signed the California Dream Act into law in 2011, a measure that opened state financial aid at public universities and colleges to illegals. In 2013, 20,000 illegal alien college students applied for taxpayer-supplied state aid.

And the lawbreaker foreigner privilege continues today: the University of California regents voted in March to raise tuition for out-of-state students by nearly $1,000, but that increase did not apply to illegal alien students.

But back to New Jersey — the state’s largesse to foreign lawbreakers is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion annually. Wouldn’t taxpayers prefer that substantial cash be spent on legal citizens?

A Rutgers student recently discussed the unfairness of the system to him and other American citizens.

ED HENRY: This week New Jersey became the ninth state to allow illegal immigrants to apply for and receive financial aid at state colleges beginning this fall, but is this fair to American students who themselves are struggling to pay for college? We read about this, hear about this all the time. Our next guest says yes. Nick Knight is a CampusReform.org correspondent student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. So what is the deal with this? Give me an idea of your situation, without all the details or any personal information, how much are you struggling? And when you see that illegal immigrants now in New Jersey can get aid, what does that do? NICK KNIGHT: Sure, well it’s just absurd that we’re giving illegal immigrants more and more incentives to break the law. As a Rutgers student and as a college student who has loans and has taken out loans, I’m going to be paying for that debt after college, and it doesn’t make sense to me that we give the same benefits to people who come over here illegally as the people who come over here legally and follow the process.

Knight went on to explain that he was borrowing around $10,000 per year to attend Rutgers, while illegal aliens just get “free money” as Ed Henry put it — which is totally unfair.

A couple days later, Aviv Khavich, another student from CampusReform.org appeared on Fox News to discuss “a long series of Rutgers privileging illegal aliens over natural-born citizens and legal immigrants like myself.” He found the favoritism toward illegals to be “enforcing this lack of respect for the rule of law” and a worrying trend on campus generally.

Why would anyone immigrate legally to the United States? The incentives are all on the illegal side — no wonder you almost never hear the US called a “nation of laws” any more.