State College Tuition for Unauthorized Immigrants? Leading Law Professors Debate at MPI	MPI home > Video

Two leading legal experts, Kris W. Kobach, Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Michael A. Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law and Director, Institute of Higher Education Law & Governance, University of Houston Law Center, debate the merits of proposed federal immigration legislation, the DREAM Act, and in-state college tuition for unauthorized immigrant students.  From 2001 through April 2007, ten states have extended in-state tuition status to unauthorized immigrants, while three have restricted access. Many other state legislatures are still struggling to decide whether to extend or deny in-state tuition to unauthorized immigrant students.  Professor Kris W. Kobach is a Professor of Law at the University of Missouri (Kansas City) School of Law, where he teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Immigration.  He has served as trial counsel in immigration-related cases in Kansas, California, Pennsylvania, and Missouri, where he has brought challenges to residency tuition status for unauthorized immigrants and defended local immigration ordinances, including in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.  He also served in the Department of Justice as chief advisor on immigration law and border security and counsel to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Professor Michael A. Olivas, is the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law and Director of the Institute of Higher Education Law & Governance at the University of Houston Law Center, where he teaches Higher Education Law and Immigration Law.  He has written about in-state residency plans for many years, drafted several such plans (including the first one, Texas HB 1403), and has served as expert witness and consultant to states seeking to enact and defend such plans. He is also the author of The Law and Higher Education casebook, in its third edition.

This event was sponsored by
 Bender's Immigration Bulletin,
the College Board,
and the Migration Policy Institute.