All you need to know about Republicans’ supposed deep-seated concern for innocent life is to read the proposed measure, floated by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, that would deny undocumented migrant children access to public education.
The governor seems to hope that the Supreme Court’s willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade—as revealed in a leaked draft penned by Justice Samuel Alito—indicates that the 6-3 conservative majority is open to killing other precedents. In this case, Abbott wants to challenge a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, that mandates public schools admit immigrant children regardless of their legal status.
Abbott is running for his third term in a state that’s increasingly trending purple. But the governor isn’t running to the center, he’s trying to gin up rage on the right. And it seems his advisers have concluded that further demonizing immigrants by denying their children access to education is a winning electoral strategy.
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s frightening that Abbott would sink this low to get votes. It’s horrifying that it might work.
“Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler v. Doe,” Abbott said on a conservative talk radio show. “And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue… I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler v. Doe was issued many decades ago.”
The 1982 opinion, penned by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., struck down a statute that cut off state funds to districts that admit children who hadn’t been “legally admitted” to the U.S. (The law allowed schools to charge students or refuse their entry into the district.)
Justice Brennan Jr. wrote that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee applied “to anyone” within a state’s boundaries. Brennan described the “inestimable toll” due to a lack of literacy, and argued against punishing kids for their parents’ actions. “Legislation directing the onus of a parent’s misconduct against his children does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice,” Justice Brennan said.
For his part, Abbott recently cited the “extraordinary” burden placed on Texas schools because of an influx of kids speaking different languages, and “not just Spanish.” (It’s a regular Tower of Babel in Texas!) The governor added that educating undocumented kids would soon be “unsustainable and unaffordable.” According to the governor’s office, the cost of each additional student is $6,100 per year.
Maybe Texas can find the funds elsewhere? It could start by ceasing to execute people—which costs taxpayers $3.8 million per capital punishment case. The “pro-life” Abbott has overseen the executions of nearly 50 prisoners, that’s over $190 million right there. His predecessors, George W. Bush and Rick Perry, also racked up expensive tabs committing state-sanctioned murder—but both at least adopted a posture of “compassionate conservatism” towards migrants.
Perry even signed a law that gave undocumented college students access to lower state tuition and financial aid. “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said.
“Obviously it’s intended to amplify hysteria about immigrants,” Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, told The Daily Beast about Abbott’s proposal.
Mark Kende, a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Drake University Law School, said the Plyler decision has always been vulnerable because of anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by conservative politicians. “There’s obviously a contingent of lawmakers and the public who think so-called illegal immigrants cause problems,” Kende said.
He also noted that the Plyler decision spelled out the public advantages of immigration. Perhaps there’s no better example than the fact that—immigrants, documented or not—pay taxes. And “they’re less likely to break the law or even drive recklessly,” Kende pointed out, given that they don’t want to attract attention from the state. “And they work jobs Americans don’t want to work.”
For Plyler to be overturned, Kende told The Daily Beast, there has to be a lawsuit. This could result from a public school trying to charge undocumented immigrant children tuition, or if Abbott applies an executive directive to deny kids access to state schools. He has hope that the 6-3 conservative majority might not be a slam dunk in this case, since Justice Neil Gorsuch has a history of leniency on immigration.
“It’s not the children’s fault if their parents broke the rules—and also you don’t want to have a group of illiterate, uneducated people living in the community,” Kende added.
It’s a sad state of affairs that Bush and Perry can serve as striking counterexamples of balancing basic human compassion with conservative policies that aren’t always the warmest toward immigrants. But that’s where we are—with Gov. Abbott literally using children as pawns in the right’s xenophobic culture war.
