Work, School, and Traffic Stops: Part II

Education at the North Carolina General Assembly

I find it revolting that an American thinks that we should financially support people that cannot legally work in this country through taxpayer subsidized education… If you feel so strongly about this issue find an illegal and pay for their education at a private university.

–NC Rep. George Cleveland (R-Jacksonville)

The bigots and poultry companies have lobbyists and we don’t, so we will walk the halls of the legislature ourselves when we have to.

–Domenic Powell, NC Dream Team

Around the United States, lawmakers have turned to public education in recent years as a proxy to fight policy battles over immigration. In line with this trend, the North Carolina General Assembly debated two bills during its most recent session designed to restrict undocumented children’s access to public education. Immigrant youth across the state spoke out against each, with many publicly declaring their undocumented status and refusing to be intimidated by state legislators. Ultimately, one bill passed only after its most restrictive component was removed, while the other was abandoned altogether. The debate over these two measures holds valuable lessons for those seeking to understand the values at play in public debates over the recent wave of state anti-immigrant laws.

• House Bill 11 (No Postsecondary Education/Illegal Aliens): Stalled in House Education Committee

In early 2011, Rep. George Cleveland filed HB11, a measure that would bar undocumented North Carolina residents from enrolling in the state’s community colleges and public universities. Under current state law, undocumented students are eligible to take classes at such institutions, but they must pay out-of-state tuition (no matter how long they have lived in North Carolina) and may only register after all their U.S. citizen peers have done so.

Cleveland’s inflammatory statements helped to galvanize public opposition to his bill. Within a week, undocumented students and allies gathered at the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville to voice their dismay (see video above, courtesy of the Mountain Xpress). I asked NC House Education Committee co-chair Bryan Holloway (R-King) about the bill shortly thereafter, and he downplayed its significance, assuring me that House Republican leadership did not view it as a priority. For several weeks, students and allies in Asheville and elsewhere continued to publicize the bill and its potentially damaging consequences. Ultimately, Holloway and his co-chair, James Langdon (R-Angier), chose not bring HB11 before the Education Committee for consideration.

• House Bill 744 (Safe Students Act): Passed (Amended Version)

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision established that all U.S. residents, irrespective of national origin or immigration status, have a right to primary and secondary education. Nevertheless, state lawmakers across the nation continue to propose laws aimed at denying this right. In May 2011, NC Rep. Dale Folwell (R-Winston-Salem) introduced one such bill, HB744, which sought to compel public school principals to inquire about the citizenship or immigration status of all new students. Folwell’s proposal came less than a month after the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education issued a memo reminding lawmakers and school boards across the country that asking families about immigration status is against federal law. As has often been the case with such patently unconstitutional measures, Folwell maintained that HB744’s goal was research-oriented. It aimed to determine the cost to taxpayers of undocumented students’ public education, he claimed, not to exclude such students from the classroom altogether. This same reasoning, however, has been used often in other states to justify laws with clear discriminatory effects.

Alabama’s stringent immigration law provides the most recent example. Enacted at roughly the same time the NCGA took up HB744, it contains a strikingly similar provision requiring public schools to report the admission of undocumented students to the state government. When the law took effect last fall, Alabama school districts reported massive, extended absences among Latino students, as parents pulled their children out of school rather than risk exposing their families to potential deportation. The Federal District Court subsequently struck down this provision, and the current school year began with a much higher attendance rate among the state’s Latino students. Alabama continues to wage a court battle seeking the provision’s reinstatement, however, and the bill’s author has spoken very candidly of his ambition for the provision: to provide the template for an eventual Supreme Court challenge, in hopes that the current court will overturn Plyler v. Doe and allow states to deny primary and secondary education to undocumented residents.

Shortly after Folwell filed HB744, the North Carolina Dream Team, an organization composed of undocumented youth from around the state, responded with outrage. Hours before the House Education Committee convened to discuss the bill, the Dream Team issued a press release accusing legislators of “telling undocumented immigrants working and living in our state that they are good enough to pick its residents’ food, but not good enough to sit next to them in class.” Several Dream Team members spoke at the committee hearing, declaring their own undocumented status and noting that they felt attacked by the bill, which they saw as a tool to intimidate and exclude students like themselves.

Rep. Folwell’s anger at the students boiled over in a post-hearing interview. Referring to one outspoken Dream Team member, he fumed: “We just spent $100,000 on that girl’s education and she stood up and said she is illegal. That is the arrogance that we are dealing with – the entitlement.” Shortly thereafter, Folwell confronted another Dream Team member, José Rico Benavides, face to face in the halls of the General Assembly building, angrily claiming that the young man didn’t “have the balls to call me a coward to my face.” Reflecting on the experience this week, Rico Benavides recalled being shocked by Folwell’s behavior, telling me “someone who has that in their heart should not be… in a position with power.”

Ultimately, before sending Folwell’s bill to the full House for a floor vote, the Education Committee removed the provision requiring principals to inquire about immigration status. As the Raleigh News and Observer noted, Folwell’s aggressive anti-immigrant posturing contributed to the forceful blowback that undoubtedly played a role in lawmakers’ decision to scuttle the provision.

You can find WNC Migration Review’s discussion of recent NCGA employment and identification bills in this post, and stay tuned for analysis of recently proposed law enforcement measures.