TN Republican lawmakers cast Latino immigrants as a racial and linguistic threat

Yahoo

12-02-2025

In 2012, I went back to high school. This time it was as a 32-year-old anthropologist, observing the impact of immigration on Nashville.
Firsthand, I saw the wisdom of Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision that protected undocumented children's access to free, public K-12 education.
Justice William J. Brennan, in the majority opinion, warned that denying undocumented students access to K-12 schooling would create an 'underclass' with a 'second-class social status' in the nation.
In the years since the youth I worked with graduated high school, I have seen the positive impact of the Plyler decision in their lives, Nashville, and, ultimately, Middle Tennessee. The recently introduced House Bill 793/Senate Bill 836 would allow public schools to refuse enrollment to undocumented youth, thereby upending Plyler.
This bill is a shortsighted and dangerous piece of legislation that threatens Tennessee's future, its economy, and its social fabric.
Through my long-term research in Nashville, I came to know many undocumented young people and learn of their aspirations for their future.
They spoke movingly of the things they wanted to do: go to college, become teachers and buy their parents a house.
They wanted to prove that they were worth the investment in them by their families − and by the state they called home. I have seen these young people, now in their very early 30s, do just that.
They are nurses, lawyers, small business owners, warehouse workers, and homeowners.
But they are more than their accomplishments: they love their children, help their neighbors, lead their churches, listen to their friends and make Tennessee their home.
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They are sewn into the fabric of their communities, not as an underclass or second-class citizens, but as needed equal partners.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth argues that the current larger number of undocumented people in the nation as compared to 1982 justifies relitigating Plyler.
Central to this argument is the claim that the cost of educating a larger, often-non-English-speaking, low-income population draws resources away from U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Such logic is fallacious at best and demographic fearmongering at the worst. As was true in 1982, undocumented immigrants pay more into our public welfare systems than they receive now.
This fact is particularly the case in Tennessee, where high sales taxes levy a greater tax burden on low-income families' income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a nonpartisan tax policy organization, undocumented residents of Tennessee paid $314 million worth of state taxes.
In contrast, the recent changes to the corporate franchise and excise taxes cost Tennessee $364.7 million from August-December 2024 alone.
Scarcity arguments that scapegoat immigrants while ignoring the loopholes benefiting the wealthy and powerful that truly drain public coffers are not new. There are clear precedents such as anti-Irish sentiment in the age of the robber barons and hostility toward Italian and Jewish immigrants during the speculative boom of the 1920s.
It is unsurprising then that immigrants' economic contributions are downplayed and basic needs overemphasized today. It is also no surprise that legislators invoke fiscal responsibility as they both enrich would-be oligarchs through tax breaks and undermine public schools through vouchers and calls to shutter the federal Department of Education.
The most troubling aspects of HB793/SB836 are its insidious assumptions and potential implications. The bill continues another historical pattern in nativist movements: the demonization of difference.
Latino immigrants are the latest group to be cast as a racial and linguistic threat to the American character. Ironically, past immigrant children were welcomed into public schooling in an attempt to fast-track Americanization.
Supporters of HB793/SB836 will argue that the bill is about enforcing immigration law and not about race or language. Excluding undocumented immigrants from public schools today looks a lot like a racial removal program disguised as one based on immigration status.
It is also a slippery slope and nefarious precedent to single out one population as a drain and deny educational access as a result. Injuries to one vulnerable group often hurt another. If Lamberth is serious about costs, he would be better off reforming regressive taxes rather than managing public school enrollments.
HB793/SB836 doesn't withstand data-driven evidence about costs. It also does not pass a moral sniff test. I cannot − and will not − quantify the lives and value of undocumented people. All of the children in Tennessee are its future.
If we don't want that future to be second-rate, we cannot, as Justice Brennan wrote, create 'second-class' citizens through denied education.
Andrea Flores is the Vartan Gregorian Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author of "The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America," based on her research in Nashville, Tennessee.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee bill excluding undocumented school kids is wrong | Opinion