Kary Moss, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said the students should be treated as any other in-state students, both in admission and spending.

“Undocumented students are in-state students,” Moss said. “They have been living in Michigan, presumably attending school there since they were in middle school, yet they’re being treated as out-of-state students. All this (change) does is equal the playing field for them.”

But with tuition on the rise annually, the extra money brought in from out-of-state students, which currently includes those who live undocumented, could potentially lower tuition.

“(Out-of-state tuition) has an enormous impact on the budget, as much as in-state does,” MSU Trustee Mosallam said in a previous interview. “It’s a philosophical question — historically, MSU is a land-grant school, so we have to meet needs for in-state kids first.”

With a low number of out-of-staters compared to other nearby universities, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said MSU still has a long way to go.

“We’re about 80 percent in-state,” Simon said in a previous interview. “Out of our peers in the Big Ten, we’re particularly low in out-of-state students.”

Moss, however, said the small margin of undocumented students would not make a visible difference in tuition rates for other students.

“It doesn’t affect that many students, but it can obviously make a huge difference in whether these talented students can afford to go to a Michigan university,” she said.

Rather than bringing harm to anyone, Moss said the change would only bring more diversity into universities across the state.

“If other universities followed in (U-M’s) footsteps, it would make Michigan a more welcoming place,” she said.