Restrictionist Lawyer Reveals Long-Term Assault on Immigrant Children

Originally posted at Immigration Impact on October 28, 2011. Immigration Impact is a project of the American Immigration Council whose mission is to strengthen America by honoring our immigrant history and shaping how Americans think about and act towards immigration now and in the future.

Restrictionist Lawyer Reveals Long-Term Assault on Immigrant Children

Today, the head of the legal arm of one of the most notorious restrictionist groups in the nation boldly admitted his work on Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law aims to end public education for the children of immigrants. Michael Hethmon of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), an offshoot of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), made no bones about being the author of the education provision in HB 56—which on its face requires public schools to determine the immigration status of enrolling students and their parents, but in reality chips away at children’s ability to get an education.
In fact, FAIR’s long-term vision to erode any and all rights afforded to the children of immigrants becomes increasingly clear with each new FAIR initiative—from attempts to repeal access to birth certificates at the state level through their state legislative arm (State Legislators for Legal Immigration) to IRLI’s litigation strategies in the courts that attempt to turn U.S. policy against immigrant children.

In defense of the education provision, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange assured a judge that the provision would require nothing more than data collection and that “no child will be denied an education based on unlawful status.” However in the same New York Times article, Hethmon of IRLI admitted that HB 56’s education provision is just a first step:

The man who wrote the schools provision … that it is not meant as a deterrent — at least not yet. It is, however, a first step in a larger and long-considered strategy to topple a 29-year-old Supreme Court ruling that all children in the United States, regardless of their immigration status, are guaranteed a public education.

Hethmon then goes on to explain why this data collection provision is an important part of bigger plans and why they were careful no to go too far in HB 56:

Mr. Hethmon said the problem with these challenges is that they have not taken the trouble to gather the evidence the court found missing in Plyler.

“The toughest question has been obtaining reliable — and I mean reliable for peer-reviewed research purposes — censuses of the number of illegal alien students enrolled in school districts,” he said. “That information could be compared with other sorts of performance or resource allocation issues.

That information is then passed on to the State Board of Education not only to prepare an annual report with the data but also to “contract with reputable scholars and research institutions” to determine the costs, fiscal and otherwise, of educating illegal immigrants.

Because no one is actually barred from attending school and the data is not passed on to law enforcement, the provision passes constitutional muster, Mr. Hethmon said.

But it also potentially enables a fresh challenge to Plyler v. Doe, and the idea that schools are obligated to provide a free education to illegal immigrants.”

There is no doubt the “reputable scholars and research institutions” Hethmon refers to include FAIR’s research arm and sister group, the Center for Immigration Studies. If the Alabama Department of Education continues to collect data on the immigration status of immigrant children and makes it public, it won’t be long before FAIR and CIS produce data on the “fiscal costs of educating the children of immigrants in Alabama.”

While the New York Times article also quotes well-respected legal scholars who feel the chances of a repeal of Plyer V. Doe are highly unlikely, the damage that would be done by allowing these anti-immigrant groups access to private student data is undoubted. FAIR will exploit this information in order to wage a public relations campaign against the children of immigrants.

FAIR and company, also known as the Tanton Network, are continuing to build an elaborate infrastructure and execute a long term plan that systematically chips away at the rights of immigrant children. It’s time Americans, beginning with Alabamians, put their collective foot down against this.

Photo by cybrarian77.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Intersection of Immigration and Civil Rights

Originally posted at Immigration Impact

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Intersection of Immigration and Civil Rights

By Seth Hoy

Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose dream of equality and human rights changed the course of history. His legacy will be remembered this week by people of all colors and creeds who still believe in the American dream and who continue to fight for equality, civil rights and the basic human dignity they deserve. Over the weekend, thousands of human rights activists took to the street in Phoenix, Arizona, to march for civil rights and for “long-overdue federal action on immigration.”So how is immigration a civil rights issue? In a recent editorial, Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., the pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, connects Dr. King’s fight for equality with the struggle many immigrants face today.

Immigration is about human dignity and the nobility of parents of different tribes and nations facing the risk of coming to a foreign land, a land of opportunity, to work for a better tomorrow for their children…Dr. King invoked the truth, the truth being that all humans ought to be treated with a certain dignity. It would be natural for us to look to him as an example for fighting for a just cause.

Gerald Lenoir, director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, also draws parallels between the struggles of African Americans and the struggles of recent immigrants:

Even some of the migration experiences of African-Americans, coming from the South, leaving conditions of economic injustice and terrorism from both legal authorities and groups like the Ku Klux Klan, we see that same kind of movement in people across borders.

Leaders within the civil rights movement have long been outspoken supporters of immigration reform—especially when it comes to speaking out against broken immigration enforcement policies and racial profiling. Last March, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox as well as a bevy of civil rights leaders, presented a petition to the Department of Justice and Homeland Security signed by more than 38,000 Arizona residents calling for an investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio—a man whose abuse of power, racial profiling and egregious immigration enforcement tactics have earned him numerous law suits, an FBI investigation and a summons to appear before a Grand Jury. At a press conference introducing the petition, Congressman Conyers called for unity in the fight to end racial profiling.

We think, in a lot of ways, our Hispanics brothers and sisters are becoming the new targets of discrimination and profiling that used to occur to African Americans. We’re saying it together—African Americans, Hispanic Americans and everyone else—no more racial profiling.

Similarly, Rev. Al Sharpton, also an outspoken advocate in the fight to end racial profiling, noted that defending civil rights should be an “everybody issue”:

We need to stop comparing disparities and start finding solutions. It is imperative for the African American community to stand together with the Latino community and for the Latino community to stand with the Asian community. You cannot have human rights for some—we need it for all. We must stand together with all our brothers and sisters against this national outrage.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center reveals that one year after the election of President Barack Obama, “black optimism about America has surged, while Hispanics have become more skeptical about race relation.” According to the poll, Hispanics are now seen as the ethnic group facing the most discrimination—which is not surprising, as America’s Voice blogger Jackie Mahendra says, given the “racially-charged immigration rhetoric that flows from talk radio to nightly news to the halls of Congress.”

Now, more than ever, it’s important to remember Dr. King’s message that all men are created equal—not just for Hispanics and African Americans, but for all people who come to this country in search of the American Dream.

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