Que Pasa?

For those of you who remember the most basic of US history, you will remember that we are a nation of immigrants.  That is one reason that it is always so shocking to see such blatantly bigoted legislation pushed in the GA against those more recent immigrants.  There are over 30 anti-immigrant bills in the GA right now, and two of them had motion this week.

House Bill 744 the “Safe Students Act,” was heard on Tuesday.  The  mean-spirited bill will effectively make ICE agents out of school principals and erode at the trust between school administration and families.  It would require school principals to ask parents to “state whether the child is a citizen or a national of the United States, and if the child is not, the immigration status of the child.” According to the bill, the information collected “shall be used only for fiscal analysis and shall not be used to deny admission to a child who is a domiciliary of the local school administrative unit.” Right….

There are a few problems here – such as constitutionality.  In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that a state may not deny access to a basic public education to any child, whether that child is present in the country legally or not. While HB 744 states that the information collected will be not be used to deny admission to a child, it creates an antagonistic and intimidating environment that has the possibility of excluding certain students.  Further, if this bill were to become law, it would place an unjust burden on school principals by turning them in quasi-Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents by requiring them to ask parents for their child’s nationality and immigration status. This would erode at trust of school administration.

This bill would have a potential to be abused, even by well-meaning principals who’re simply doing their job. Unless there’s also training accompanied with this bill, there’s a possibility that school principals would only ask brown parents for their children’s nationality and immigration status, thus racial profile parents and children.  There is no further indication what kind of fiscal analysis the information would be used for, thus leaving room for interpreting this bill as a first step towards eventually seeking to challenge Plyler.

Not enough for you? Don’t worry… there’s more!

House Bill 36, the E-Verify bill, was heard for the second time in two weeks in the House Judiciary Subcommittee A on Wednesday. The bill prohibits state and local government contracts with contractors who employ illegal immigrants and requiring contractors to verify and certify their employees’ legal status or authorization to work in the United States.  This is a horrible idea for all sorts of reasons, but one of the worst is that the E-Verify system is full of holes! It was designed as a voluntary system by the federal government because it kicks out false results more than 10% of the time, which means that more than 1 in ever 10 applicants will be falsely denied a job.  Bad, bad, bad.

There will be a flurry of activity to move many of the more extreme bills in the coming week ahead of the crossover deadline – we will keep you updated.

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