The Kansas Senate on Wednesday approved a bill banning immigrants living in the United States illegally from receiving most state or local benefits, including in-state tuition at higher education institutions.
The Senate voted 30-9 to approve the bill, which would end a program the Legislature created in 2004 to give in-state tuition for students in the United States illegally who graduated from a Kansas high school and pledged to become citizens.
The bill, supported by Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, now goes to the House for consideration.
“This bill punishes young people in our state as well as our universities, the Kansas economy and our communities by instilling more barriers to higher education,” said Democratic state Sen. Cindy Holscher, a candidate for governor.
“Additionally, this reduces the number of skilled graduates entering the workforce in our state,” the Overland Park senator said during the final action vote Wednesday.
“Denying in-state tuition to children who have grown up attending our Kansas schools is extremely shortsighted and offensive,” she said.
During the floor debate Tuesday, Republican state Sen. Virgil Peck of Havana said he believed that Kansans opposed the in-state tuition policy for immigrants who are not here legally.
“Our constituents, our voters, they’re not happy with this provision,” Peck said.
“I have been pushed many, many times by many, many individuals from across this state to eliminate this benefit for illegal aliens,” Peck said.
“This is an issue that Kansas citizens have…questioned and questioned and questioned: ‘Why on Earth are you, Kansas Legislature, providing a benefit to illegal aliens that you do not provide to Americans?'” Peck said.
Senate Vice President Tim Shallenburger of Baxter Springs tried to remove part of the bill that ends the in-state tuition program when the chamber debated the bill Tuesday.
The Senate voted 18-19 to reject Shallenburger’s amendment.
The in-state tuition program is open to someone who attended an accredited Kansas high school for three years or more, graduated from an accredited Kansas high school or earned a general equivalency diploma and sought to legalize their immigration status
There were 310 students – 0.2% of the total student population – enrolled in state universities, community colleges and technical colleges who received in-state tuition in the program as of the fall of 2024, according to the most recent state data available.
The Board of Regent said there was no more recent information because the agency no longer collects that data.
Most of the students -180 – were enrolled in community colleges. Another 106 were enrolled at public universities, and 24 attended technical schools.
Most of the students – 102- were enrolled at Johnson County Community College, 46 attended Wichita State University, 26 attended Kansas City, Kansas Community College, 24 attended the WSU Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology, 21 attended Butler Community College and 17 attended Fort Hays State.
Shallenburger said he opposed giving general public benefits to anyone who is living in the country illegally but said it was different for someone who is trying to educate themselves.
“There are real people out there who want to get an education,” he said.
He recalled meeting with a group of students in Wichita when he was running for governor in 2002.
He didn’t realize at the time that they were all undocumented immigrants, including one who was a valedictorian at a Wichita high school.
“Very impressive students,” Shallenburger said. “Spoke better English than I did.”
He said their issues at the time were an inability to get a driver’s license and in-state tuition.
“I thought why, if there’s anybody who deserves it, it’s the people who have been here, who’ve lived their lives here, they’ve been Kansans. They say the Pledge of Allegiance just like we do.
“And we’re going to penalize them now if they live in Kansas because they can’t get in-state tuition,” he said.
The Higher Ed Immigration Portal reports that there are 22 states that provide reduced tuition for students living there illegally after Florida, Texas and Oklahoma recently eliminated their instate tuition programs.
Last year, a federal judge halted a 2001 Texas law signed by former Republican Gov. Rick Perry that gave college students without legal residency access to instate tuition.
On that same day, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a joint motion along with the Trump administration to end the law for in-state tuition for immigrants not living in the country legally.
Texas was the first state to permit in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students.
Republican state Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee, chair of the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee, said the state is currently violating a federal law that prohibits states from providing public benefits to immigrants in the country illegally.
“Kansas has been in violation of federal law now for 22 years,” Thompson said. “What this bill does is conform us back to federal law.”
Thompson recited testimony that Kobach provided last year in which he cited a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform showing that Kansas taxpayers paid $603.1 million dollars to support 104,000 illegal immigrants in the state during 2023.
The bill requires anyone seeking state or local benefits to show proof that they’re a citizen or a permanent resident of the United States or an alien lawfully present in the country.
It also would require that if someone is charged with a crime and is not a citizen or
national of the United States, their immigration status would have to be verified with the federal government.
The bill does include some exceptions for benefits, including emergency medical care; short-term, noncash, in-kind emergency disaster relief; public health immunizations, testing and treatment of communicable diseases; and assistance for crisis counseling.
“We don’t deny situations where there’s actual need and there’s a need to help these people,” Thompson said.
Dinah Sykes, the top Democrat in the Senate from Lenexa, said the bill was predicated on a false premise.
She said many public assistance programs such as Medicaid require a Social Security number to apply, something she said undocumented individuals don’t have.
“This bill is an unnecessary attempt at targeting our immigrants, legal or otherwise, that are in our community,” Sykes said.
“It’s based on the false assumption that undocumented persons receive public resources at an unprecedented and expensive rate,” she said.
“This is just not true,” she said.
