Houston-Texas Governor Greg Abbott overturns a 1982 court ruling requiring public schools to educate, along with the Supreme Court, which has shown its willingness to overturn decades-old precedents such as Law vs. Wade’s ruling on abortion. He said he would. All children, including undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Abbott’s comments opened a new front in his campaign to use his power as governor to strengthen Texas against unauthorized migration. And they showed how broadly some conservatives think about the types of changes to American life that a bold conservative majority in court may be willing to forgive.
The latest proposal to close public schools to undocumented children has greatly expanded the scope of the controversial precedent. After the draft opinion overturning the Roe v. Wade case was leaked this week, the main focus was on other rights that may be legally relevant to the 1973 decision, such as contraception and access to same-sex marriage. rice field.
Undocumented children have been undocumented since the court ruled to revoke Texas law in 1982, admitting schools to refuse admission to unauthorized immigrant children, according to legal experts. The legal situation surrounding our education has changed little. Several years of attempts to break the decision of the case known as Praila vs. Doe have failed, including efforts in Alabama over a decade ago and California in the 1990s.
“If Abbott is serious about taking on that challenge, this will be the first time this has happened over the years,” said Preston Hunekens, a spokesman for the US Immigration Reform League. Illegal immigrants.
What has changed is the composition of the courts, and Mr Abbott said the number of new immigrants arriving from different countries is putting an “extraordinary” burden on Texas schools. Immigrants arriving now speak many different languages ”not just Spanish,” he said. The governor said educating undocumented children would soon become “unsustainable and affordable” if the federal government lifted the pandemic policy of returning many migrants at the border. ..
In a radio interview Wednesday, Republican’s third term, Mr. Abbott, said he would “revive” the Piller case and “challenge this issue again,” but did not give him time to do so. Asked about his comments at a press conference on Thursday, the Governor, a former Attorney General of Texas, provided details of his discussion.
“The real heart of the challenge is to say, listen, you’re the federal government because we handle billions of dollars a year on education alone, it’s thanks to you, and you pay for it. Is your responsibility, “he said. Abbott said.
He added that the Supreme Court wants to overturn another case, Arizona vs. the United States. In 2012, the authority over immigration law enforcement was held by the federal government, not the state.
“Arizona’s decision must give the state full authority to enforce U.S. immigration law, or either,” Abbott said, adding that he hopes both will be overturned. ..
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It wasn’t clear how he planned to proceed with the legal challenge, and whether Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would go with him. Mr. Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
However, Mr Abbott said a recent Supreme Court decision to enforce the “anti-commander” clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prevents the federal government from imposing compulsory obligations on the state, would help his case against the pliers. rice field. Under that doctrine, he said, Texas could claim that the federal government improperly directed the state’s educational resources in pursuit of its immigration policy.
A record number of immigrant children arrived with few attendance at school, creating challenges for schools across the country. The district must be prepared to expand bilingual services, transfer teachers, and support students who may be traumatized in their home country.
Undocumented immigrant children were important for maintaining admission to healthy schools in indigenous youth populations such as Iowa, where the population is declining.
However, recording the immigration status of school students violates federal law, so the exact number of students in question is not known. The overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrant children are born and citizens of the United States. Researchers estimate that there are about one million undocumented young people in the country.
Undocumented migrants do not qualify for many public interests. And Texas is less than most states.
Edna Yang of American Gateways, a Texas immigration legal service provider, said undocumented immigrants in the state receive very few benefits, including emergency medical services, food aid to children, and public education. ..
According to the Governor’s Office, the cost per additional student enrolling in a public school in Texas is approximately $ 6,100 per year and does not include the cost of providing bilingual and special education services. This will incur additional costs of over $ 2,000.
The state accounting auditor last investigated this issue in 2006. Undocumented children cost about $ 1 billion to educate at the time, according to the report, but unauthorized migration to the state had an overall positive impact on the Texas economy. Huennekens, an immigration reform group, said state programs for students with limited English proficiency will cost more than $ 7 billion in 2016.
However, excluding undocumented students could disrupt everyone’s system, said Zefkapo, president of the teachers union Texas AFT, where schools accompany those students in each state state. Funds and the federal government. “Not all undocumented children are in one school or one school district,” he said. “It will hurt everyone.”
Attitudes towards immigrants have changed in Texas. There, former Republican governors like George W. Bush and Rick Perry adopted relatively gentle tones. During his term, Perry signed a law allowing undocumented college students access to state tuition and financial assistance at public universities in Texas.
However, taking a strict stance on immigrants was a politically comfortable place for Mr. Abbott. He used this issue to defeat the Republican primary challengers and returned in his general election contest against Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat and former member of the House of Representatives El Paso.
“I don’t see this as a new frontline,” said Thomas A. Sentz, president and legal adviser to the Mexican-American Legal Defense Education Fund. “I think his comment is a desperate dog whistle to strengthen his outlook for reelection.”
The Piller case was born out of a 1975 law passed by the Texas State Parliament that banned the allocation of funds for non-citizen education and allowed school districts to refuse registration of unauthorized immigrants to children. I did.
Under the law, the school district of Tyler, a town in eastern Texas, has begun to charge $ 1,000 a year for children of unauthorized immigrants. This move has been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court.
The ruling was close, with a majority of five judges finding that Texas law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. Courts have determined that it causes “lifetime hardship” for children who have been punished for their parents’ actions, and upholding the law can create a “shadow population” where children are not in school. I concluded. Even the dissenting judge agreed that Texas law was a bad policy.
“I see Praila vs. Doe as one of the most important constitutional decisions in the history of the Supreme Court,” said Yale Law School professor and author of a book on public education and the Supreme Court. Justin Driver said. “It’s because this decision has succeeded in interfering with this kind of law and preventing it from spreading nationwide.”
Mr. Driver said he co-authored a memo accusing the Reagan administration of not strongly supporting Texas in the Pryor case when Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. was a legal aide to the Reagan administration. Mr. Driver added that it is not clear whether Judge Roberts has the same view of the case now, 40 years later.
However, the 1982 proceedings objection reflect historical and textual reasoning as found in the draft opinion that overturns the leaked Roe v. Wade case of Judge Samuel A. Arito Jr. .. Judges who opposed it did not like this policy, but the Constitution did not prohibit laws like Texas, calling the court’s ruling an “injustice judicial proceeding.”
Jeffrey Abramson, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin, said:
Edgar Sandoval When Miriam Jordan Report that contributed.