Denying education hurts children, the country
First Focus on Children told lawmakers today that Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision holding that states may not deny undocumented children access to public education, has ensured that generations of students received the education they deserved and kept public schools from being turned into quasi-immigration enforcement agents, and that overturning it would condemn these U.S. children to a lifetime of illiteracy.
“I come before you today – not as a doctor or lawyer – but as someone who has worked in federal and state policy on behalf of children for more than thirty years,” First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley wrote to members of the House Judiciary Committee in testimony for the record submitted for the March 18 hearing titled Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe. “As a child growing up in El Paso, Texas – more than 700 miles from Tyler, where Plyler originated – that Supreme Court decision was vital to my own community and its children…I had close friends, neighbors, classmates, and teammates whose families were directly affected by Plyler. They taught me much about life, and they have gone on to lead impressive lives that have benefitted their families, their communities, and our nation – all because a Supreme Court decision kept their schoolhouse doors open.”
Turning the hearing title on its head, Lesley suggested that greater adverse effects would result from overturning Plyler, starting with the deliberate condemnation of innocent children to a lifetime of illiteracy.
“That is not a policy tradeoff,” he wrote. “It is a cruelty. And it strikes at fundamental values of importance to this nation.”
First Focus on Children’s testimony notes:
- The current effort to overturn Plyler v. Doe asks this Congress to endorse something that all nine justices in 1982 recognized as indefensible: the deliberate condemnation of a class of children to illiteracy because of their parents’ immigration status.
- Citing a full century of precedent, Justice William Brennan’s majority opinion read “Public education has a pivotal role in maintaining the fabric of our society and in sustaining our political and cultural heritage; the deprivation of education takes an inestimable toll on the social, economic, intellectual, and psychological well-being of the individual, and poses an obstacle to individual achievement. In determining the rationality of the Texas statute, its costs to the Nation and to the innocent children may properly be considered.”
- The children affected by this decision cannot advocate for themselves in these hearings. They cannot vote. They cannot hire lobbyists. They are children, which is precisely why this Congress and the Constitution must protect and speak for them.