Tennessee lawmakers back immigration bill that creates a permanent underclass

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18-04-2025

There is no justification for House Bill 793 and Senate Bill 0836, the sister bills that in the legislature that would allow Tennessee's public and charter schools to deny enrollment to undocumented students.
First, as critics have mentioned, the argument that undocumented students create a financial drain on education systems holds little weight. Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes that support local schools.
If anything, the legislation will cost money, as the state could stand to lose around $1 billion in federal education funding. And that's to say nothing of the legal fees Tennessee will incur as the lawsuits start rolling in.
The Senate version passed on April 10. The House version, which is different in some significant ways, has yet to pass.
The legislation directly violates the Supreme Court ruling in 1982's Plyler v. Doe, which determined that states could not deny any child an education, no matter their immigration status.
Of course, Rep. Willam Lamberth, R-Portland and Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson − the respective sponsors of the House and Senate bills − have made clear that this constitutional challenge is the intent. They want to leverage the (conservative) Supreme Court to re-open the door for schools and districts to refuse to educate undocumented kids.
It's an egregiously cruel leg of the right's attempt at immigration 'reform,' but there's an ugly reality that undergirds this attempt to punish children for their parents' decisions.
Even with Trump's stated goal of deporting millions of documented immigrants, many of the reported 11 million will likely remain.
And they know that those who do − the undocumented children that will later become uneducated adults − will simply assume their predestined position in America's underclass, continuing to serve as part of the overlooked, underpaid fuel that powers this country's economic engine.
Education is the great equalizer. Everyone knows this. It's an understanding that transcends race and socioeconomic status. It's the focus of well-to-do parents who want their kids to sustain, and grow, family wealth, as well as the struggling families pushing their children to do more, be more, have more.
Education doesn't just divide the haves from the have-nots; its absence reinforces the demarcations that have always existed. It's why the enslaved were forbidden from learning to read and why, in urban districts across America, the Black and Brown still receive a substandard education when compared to their White counterparts.
We like to blame these truths on individual flaws − on laziness or an unwillingness to learn, on parents who plop their kids in front of the TV instead of helping with homework.
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Rarely do we consider the systemic. Rarely do we acknowledge that the system is actually designed to replicate, generation after generation, a workforce of millions of uneducated or undereducated people, people who will do the hard labor for the low wages because they have no other choice.
During his 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly referenced 'Black jobs' while attempting to stoke anger toward the throngs of migrants from Mexico and Central/South America.
According to Trump, these immigrants − with their limited language and resources, who typically earn pennies on the dollars in poultry plants, on industrial farms, and similar − have been taking jobs earmarked for Black Americans.
It made sense.
The Black and Latino have long languished on the bottom rung of America's socioeconomic hierarchy. I won't call it a 'ladder' here, though it is commonplace, because the opportunity to climb from one social class to the next was never part of the American agreement − not for the majority or the Black and Brown.
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For how could we actually allow everyone to 'get a good education' and 'get a good job?'
Who, then, who would pick the tomatoes? Who, with reasonable options, would slaughter and defeather the chickens before packing them onto convenient Styrofoam trays of wings and breasts and thighs? Who, with a good education, would perform the grueling, dangerous labor of our most essential jobs − but only at poverty-level wages?
The answer is, of course: No one.
Because if America's socioeconomic spectrum really is a ladder, the bottom rungs have been slathered with superglue, sticky enough to all but ensure generational poverty. Again, the people at the bottom aren't lazy or stupid. They're destitute and desperate and, too often, devoid of hope.
So they keep showing up to do the necessary work that the people with options won't do because, for them, it's the only option.
After all, the best, most reliable, way to lock in a perpetual underclass is to strip away any opportunity to rise above that station.
And the best, most reliable, way to strip away those opportunities is to block access to a high-quality education, or any education at all.
And that's exactly what HB 793 and SB 0836 are designed to do.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at [e-mail] or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @AndreaWillWrite and BlueSky at @andreawillwrite.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Undocumented students have the right to go to public school | Opinion