There are about 1,200,000 children enrolled in Tennessee public schools in grades K-12. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of that number, 10,000 are undocumented immigrant children, less than 1 percent.
In order to deal with this horrific problem, Tennessee House Majority Leader Representative William Lamberth and state Senator Bo Watson have introduced a bill that would allow local public school boards to ban students without legal citizenship. The bill would challenge the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court Plyler v. Doe decision, which entitles all children to public education regardless of immigration status.
Watson and Lamberth say the bill “seeks to challenge” the court decision. “The flood of illegal immigrants in our country has put an enormous drain on American tax dollars and resources. Our schools are the first to feel the impact,” Lamberth said.
Watson added, “An influx of illegal immigration can strain LEAs [local educational agencies] and put significant pressure on their budgets. This bill empowers local governments to manage their resources more effectively and builds upon the legislative action taken during the special session to address illegal immigration at the local level.”
So, in order to save all those precious tax dollars being spent on less than 1 percent of Tennessee’s schoolchildren, these bozos intend to spend millions of dollars challenging a Supreme Court ruling that has been law for more than 40 years. This isn’t about saving money. It’s just more performative GOP cruelty wrapped up in a legislative package.
Look, every politician knows how to stop illegal immigration: arrest the employers who hire undocumented labor. Problem solved. But their money is green and their skin is white and their profits depend on cheap labor, so we’ll just continue to get this crap legislation targeting the weakest link in the chain.
Speaking of which: Another recent GOP bill would require the parents of children without citizenship to pay tuition for public school. It’s called the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement Act. And yes, those initials spell “TRUMP” because there’s nothing more amusing than effing up the lives of innocent children.
These same Trumpaholics also passed a bill that would fine and/or jail any local government officials who don’t cooperate fully with federal and state deportation efforts. That bill is also headed to the courts.
Which brings us to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which, to its credit, has established a legal hotline and guidelines for school principals in response to a new federal directive allowing immigration-enforcement officials to make arrests at schools. Principals are instructed to ask for identification and the purpose of the visit, and demand to see a warrant or other documents. If there are documents, they are to scan them and send them to the central office.
From the directive: “Federal government agencies like ICE are required to follow proper legal procedures when engaging immigration enforcement activities. … It is reasonable and appropriate to request that the official wait until you have received a response from the Office of General Counsel.”
“Reasonable and appropriate” are not terms I would use to describe behavior we have seen locally by federal agents, most notably the bizarre raid conducted by masked and hooded men on a TACOnganas food truck last week. But the raid, in which three men were escorted from their jobs and reportedly sent to an immigration facility in Louisiana, had the desired effect of sending many local immigrants into hiding.
A landscaping service in my neighborhood was working with half as many laborers as usual last week, and taking “twice as long” to do the job, according to the crew leader I spoke with. And at my favorite Mexican restaurant last Friday, the usual servers were nowhere to be seen. The manager was waiting tables, the kitchen was behind on orders, the understaffing was obvious.
Across Memphis and across the country, untold numbers of people are staying home, avoiding work, avoiding school. There will be a cost for all of this — financially, yes, as food prices rise and restaurants and other businesses struggle to stay afloat. But there is another price we’ll all pay: a diminished sense of community and the pointless pain being caused by these laws that are passed solely to inflict suffering on the least of us. We’re all going to pay the price for that, one way or another.
