In one of my several stints on the other side of the news-opinion divide, I wrote about another such lawsuit.
Key grafs:
Kris Kobach, hired by Tully’s group to represent the plaintiffs, says the law violates a 1996 federal law that specifically bars states from giving educational benefits to undocumented immigrants.
He also argues Kansas is undermining the enforcement of immigration law — an area the Constitution grants to the federal government.
In-state tuition laws are plain-and-simply illegal, at least until the open-borders crowd gets the DREAM Act passed. The act would not only legitimize in-state tuition for illegal-immigrant college students, but would offer them legal status. It’s sure to come up again under a McCain or Obama administration.
You can read the Wikipedia page on the DREAM Act here, but take it with a grain of salt. For example, this sentence:
First, the bill was mischaracterized as requiring states to give in-state tuition to the beneficiaries of the DREAM Act when it only removed ambiguity in a state’s right to offer in-state to undocumented students.
It’s true the bill wouldn’t require in-state tuition, but there was no such ambiguity as to whether states were already allowed to offer it. Here’s the text of the 1996 law:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.