US: A Prom is No Place for Immigrant Checks

[proud2BlibKansan]

Forget the golden memories. Under a new law passed by the Alabama Senate last week, undocumented immigrant children could be kept out of their school proms, and a whole lot of other activities that are an important part of the fabric of an American education. Tutoring? Sports? 4-H Club? The school band? These children can forget those too.

The Senate has decided to focus on schoolchildren as it joins states like Arizona and Georgia in coming up with new approaches to immigration enforcement.

In Section 8 of the bill (SB 256), any child who is not lawfully present in the U.S. is prohibited from participating in "any extracurricular activity outside of the basic course of study" in elementary school or high school. But the basic course of study isn't all there is to an education.

In 1982, the Supreme Court held in its Plyler v. Doe decision that all children, regardless of immigration status, had a right to go to public school. The Plyler case involved a Texas bill that authorized local public school districts to deny admission to children who were not legally in the country. The court held that by denying admission to these children, it would impose "a lifetime hardship on ... children not accountable for their disabling status." The court held that any attempt to deny schooling to undocumented children would violate the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The Alabama Senate apparently believes that since the Plyler decision only applied to K-12 education, everything that was not "education" could be snatched away from these children.

more . . . http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/03/us-prom-no-place-immigrant-checks