{"id":1919,"date":"2011-06-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/alabama-requires-schools-to-check-for-immigrants.html"},"modified":"2011-06-13T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T12:00:00","slug":"alabama-requires-schools-to-check-for-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/alabama-requires-schools-to-check-for-immigrants.html","title":{"rendered":"Alabama requires schools to check for immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"Should schools teach all students to become productive members of society,\nor should they scare off people the state doesn’t like at the moment,\nspending resources to do it that could be spent teaching?\n

\nLiz Goodwin blogs in The Lookout for Yahoo! News, 10 June 2011,\n\nAlabama immigration law pressures schools to check immigration status<\/a>\n

\nAlabama’s new immigration law is drawing comparisons to SB1070, the\nanti-illegal immigration crackdown signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer\nlast year before a judge quickly blocked it from going into effect.\n

\nBut Alabama’s new law is actually much broader and much tougher than SB\n1070–most notably for a provision that asks school administrators to\ncheck the immigration status of their students.\n

\nSupporters say the law will help the state determine how much public\nmoney goes to educating undocumented children.\n

\n“That is where one of our largest costs come from,” Sen. Scott Beason,\nR-Gardendale told The Montgomery Advertiser. “It’s part of the cost\nfactor.”\n<\/blockquote>\nSo deal with it by putting more unfunded work on the heads of school\nadministrators?\n

\nBesides, if all the schools are required to do is check, what money\ndoes that save?\n\n\n

\nThe law doesn’t say schools should turn away students who can’t provide\ndocumentation–that would be in blatant violation of the 1982 Supreme\nCourt ruling Plyler v. Doe, which struck down a Texas law that forbade\npublic money going to the education of illegal immigrants. In the Plyler\ncase, the court ruled that fashioning laws to punish children violated\nthe 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.\n<\/blockquote>\nNo, they can’t turn students away, but they can scare them away,\njust by checking.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nI’m with Mobile County School Board President Ken Megginson:\nschools\n

\n“are not in the law enforcement business.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd they shouldn’t be recruitment shops for private prisons, either.\n

\nHow about deal with one of the root causes instead: the war on drugs,\nwhich has run up violence and run down the economy in the countries\nimmigrants are fleeing?\nHow about legalize drugs starting with marijuana, and spend less money\non prisons and stupid anti-immigration laws and redirect some of it\nto prevention, rehabilitation, and yes, education!\nWant still more money for education?\nStop pouring it down the drain in Afghanistan and Iraq,\nwhere those failed shooting wars waste money just like the\nfailed war on drugs.\n

\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on education instead.\n

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