Editorial: Tuition law makes sense

Lawmakers should reject Kris Kobach’s efforts to repeal laws that help young immigrants.

Kansas legislators should reject efforts to repeal a 2004 law that offers in-state tuition to students who meet residency requirements even if they aren’t U.S. citizens.

The law essentially makes people eligible to pay in-state tuition if they have attended an accredited Kansas high school for three or more years, have graduated from a Kansas high school or earned a GED certificate issued in Kansas and, in the case of people without legal immigration status, have filed affidavits stating that either they or their parents are seeking to legalize their immigration status.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is advocating repeal of the law, arguing that it violates a 1996 federal statute that restricts states from giving post-secondary education benefits to a person who is not lawfully present in the country unless it provides that same benefit on equal terms to U.S. citizens.

“It’s been 14 years now that Kansas has been giving in-state tuition to certain illegal aliens in our state,” he told the House Higher Education Budget Committee. “We were one of the first states to make this misstep, and it’s long overdue that we correct this.”

Kobach estimated that the law amounts to a subsidy of $12 million per year for the estimated 600 students.

But Kobach’s estimate, the difference between in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition for the students, makes the faulty assumption that the students would still enroll at the higher nonresident tuition rates.

Kobach previously filed a lawsuit challenging the law, arguing it was unfair to those forced to pay out-of-state tuition. A U.S. District judge dismissed the suit because the plaintiffs could not demonstrate how the law harmed them. The judge’s decision was upheld on appeal.

Kansas, like every other state in the country, counts among its residents immigrant children who had no say in their families’ decision to bring them to this country. When those students succeed in a Kansas high school, it is to the state’s benefit for them to continue their education at a Kansas college or university.

“Every year since I have served in office, I have witnessed the hateful anti-immigration bills that have come forward, especially directed toward the Kansas Dreamers,” said Rep. Ponka-We Victors, D-Wichita. “I have also seen that there has been no appetite for anti-immigration bills here in the Legislature.”

With an unemployment rate near 3 percent, Kansas’ agriculture-based economy continues to depend upon immigrant labor. Providing an affordable pathway to higher education for children from those immigrant families is sensible legislation. Lawmakers should follow the lead of the courts and reject Kobach’s call to repeal it.