Immigration, education and Alabama

Last week, Federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn upheld Alabama law HB56, allowing its provisions to go into effect in Alabama. Of the law’s many notable provisions, one section in particular requires public schools to “verify” the immigration status of students upon enrollment. This verification process requires that students enrolling after 9/29 provide a birth certificate and that those who cannot must provide additional documentation, such as a green card, within 30 days. Although a student who cannot provide such verification will not be forced to leave, their information will be recorded in a statewide student management system.

According to the New York Times “[s]ince the announcement of the decision on Sept. 28, school officials have noticed that more Hispanic students are missing from classrooms. On Sept. 30, about 5 percent of the state’s Hispanic schoolchildren — 1,988 students — were absent.” Alabama lawmakers have stated that the reason for the education provisions relates to mere record keeping and to determining the allocation of taxpayer resources. However, this particular reasoning elides the fact that undocumented immigrants pay taxes for public services. It also conveniently sidesteps the nearly certain outcome of such a provision: undocumented persons removing their children from public schools.

Similar to the reaction to Brown v. Board of Education, Alabama lawmakers seek to enforce de facto segregation. However, instead of closing the public schools altogether, as they did in the aftermath of Brown, they are closing them to one class of students through a thinly veiled “request for information.” In this case, the claim that the law is a request for information is a way to avoid running afoul of Pyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), which held that denying public education to undocumented immigrants violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Outside of the obvious implications, the concept of seeking information itself is inherently problematic. What could possibly be the purpose of this information? Public school districts are not ordinarily responsible for soliciting information beyond the address of the students, to ascertain whether they belong in that particular school district; their parents; and their emergency contact information. Now, Alabama lawmakers seek to deputize teachers and educators as ICE officers in a quest for greater information about the students in the school district, a task that could be accomplished through surveys or other means that would not be as destructive to the lives of so many children. I watched the NBC Nightly News on 9/29/11 and saw Lance Hyche, of the Alabama Education Association say that he did not believe teachers and administrators should be involved in enforcing federal immigration law. I agree with him wholeheartedly.