When Christopher Heath saw an advertisement last spring seeking plaintiffs for a suit challenging a Kansas law that allows some undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition, he decided to make a phone call. Heath, a 22-year-old who transferred to the University of Kansas from a small school in Salinas, Calif., has lived in the state for two years and owns a home in Lawrence, but he has been denied Kansas residency on multiple occasions. Why, Heath thought, should illegal immigrants be given a better tuition rate than a citizen of the United States? Heath contacted the Federation for American Immigrant Reform (FAIR), the organization that ran the advertisement, got details on the case and signed on. He is now one of nine University of Kansas students who are suing the state for injunctive relief against Kansas House Bill 2145, which allows any student who attended a Kansas high school for at least three years, and who graduated from a Kansas high school or received a GED from the state, to pay in-state tuition at Kansas universities regardless of residency status. But, Heath said, his motivation for joining the suit was not based on a particular dislike for immigrants. Rather, Heath wanted to lower his own tuition bill. “To be honest, I thought that most of all it would be nice to get all of that tuition money back,” Heath said. “I don’t care too much about the immigrants getting in-state tuition. The kids who qualify have obviously lived here for a while — you can’t become fluent in English if you have only been here for three years. But don’t make me pay out of state. Make everyone pay the same.” That view somewhat conflicts with the ideology of the organization that spearheaded the suit. Unlike Heath, FAIR vocally denounces the prospect of allowing illegal immigrants to receive any benefits, no matter how long they have been in the United States. Susan Tully, FAIR’s Midwest field director, and one of the lead organizers of the lawsuit, said FAIR wanted to see the law overturned, and was not sympathetic to the plight of immigrant students who had been brought to the United States as children by their parents. “Just because their parents broke the law does not give them the right to think that they can stay here and continue to break the law,” Tully said. “They need to go back to their homeland and file the appropriate papers to come here legally, or they need to attend universities in their homeland, whatever that is — whether it’s China or Russia or Mexico, I don’t really care.” Melinda Lewis, the policy director of El Centro, a Kansas City, Kan., non-profit organization that played a significant role in drafting the Kansas law, said she believed many of the students joined the suit because they wanted education finance reform, not because they held anti-immigrant views. “I’ve read the stories of some of the plaintiffs who are working hard and who are struggling to pay for college,” Lewis said. “And I think that those things are very real, but I do not think that in any way they are the fault of immigrant students, who in many ways are struggling right along with the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs are, I believe, unwitting pawns in a larger goal of this extreme anti-immigrant group to try to create an environment of fairly radical immigrant views.” The case has received significant media attention since being filed July 19, largely because the attorney who brought the case on behalf of FAIR was Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor and Republican candidate for Kansas’ third district Congressional seat. Kobach has made immigration reform a priority in his campaign thus far, and has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, a Fox News Channel talk show, to discuss the issue. Kobach could not be reached for comment. On July 21, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline removed himself from defense of the case, saying that his belief in strong immigration law presented a conflict of interest.

Tully said she was waiting to hear from FAIR’s attorneys about the state’s response to the suit in the wake of Kline’s recusal.