To the editor:

State Republican leaders want to toughen Kansas’ in-state tuition law to exclude children of some undocumented immigrants (Journal-World, Jan. 5).

The current law allows in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants’ children who have been Kansas residents for three years, graduated from a Kansas high school, and seek or promise to seek legal status.

A Republican senator says the 243 students in Kansas colleges under those provisions are part of “the foreign invasion that undermines our national security.”

Perhaps state Republican leaders, and their party’s national leaders who have chosen to make immigration an issue in this election year, should moderate their rhetoric. Many recent Iraqi and Afghani immigrants, some undocumented, are here seeking refuge from the chaos of war in their own countries. Some of those immigrants’ lives were endangered by their cooperation with U.S. military forces in their home countries.

It seems national and state Republican leaders should make humanitarian provision for such immigrants.

In simple fairness, Republican leaders should probably be a bit lenient at least toward immigrants from countries where recent Republican presidents have ordered U.S. military action.

Maybe El Salvadorans, Libyans, Lebanese, Grenadans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Iraqis, Somalis, Afghanis, Yemenis and Pakistanis have a special claim to safe refuge in America. Certainly they and other immigrants, legal or undocumented, deserve fair immigration policy. More to the point, American citizens deserve serious and thoughtful discussion of immigration, rather than hysterical partisan posturing.

Steve Hicks,

Lawrence