Posts tagged with 'ethnic studies'
Weekly Diaspora: AZ Lawmakers Try to Ban Undocumented Children from Public School
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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are considering two bills that would block undocumented immigrants’ access to education to an even greater degree than current state law.
SB 1611 — sponsored by state Senate President Russell Pearce (R) — bans undocumented students from enrolling in Kindergarten through 12th grade and attending community college. It also requires schools to notify law enforcement agencies if parents are unable to submit proof that their child is a citizen or legal resident. The other bill, SB 1407, requires schools to submit data on the number of enrolled undocumented and authorized immigrants alike, under threat of funding loss.
Given the state legislature’s persistently anti-immigrant stance on public education, these new laws are plainly part of a larger strategy. The state was the first to pass a law prohibiting students from receiving public funding for education, including merit-based scholarships, and last year welcomed two new laws banning ethnic studies and equal opportunity programs. The measures being considered now would work in tandem with those other laws to categorically deprive undocumented students of an education, while subjecting even authorized immigrants to greater scrutiny than before.
Challenging Plyler v. Doe
New America Media’s Valeria Fernandez reports that the proposed measures are an attempt on the part of lawmakers to spur a challenge to the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe. The landmark ruling determined that children, regardless of citizenship, have a constitutionally guaranteed right to public education.
Anti-immigrant politicos have long taken issue with the decision, arguing that the public education of undocumented immigrants is an undue economic burden to the state. But many educators take the opposing view. As one Phoenix high school principal told New America Media, such hostile measures have already cost him 100 students, which means fewer financial resources for the school as funding is determined by the number of students enrolled. Other critics contend that failing to educate these students “would create an underclass and harm the state’s long-term interests.”
Public education undermined by older, white electorate
But, as Harold Meyerson notes at The American Prospect, the unfortunate fate of Arizona’s immigrant population is compounded by the fact that, while only 42 percent of Arizonans under 18 are white, 83 percent of Arizonans over 65 are white. As he states, the educational opportunities of a rapidly growing population of racially diverse youth are being determined — or undermined — by a class of much older, white Americans.
As racial demographics across the United States are shifting in much the same way as in Arizona, the political power dynamic could change accordingly. But until then, state lawmakers in Arizona are taking drastic measures to ensure that the state’s growing majority of Latinos — and especially immigrants — are deprived of the educational opportunities that would enable them eventually to shift the political status quo.
Labor groups jump into the fray
Perhaps that’s why organizations representing sectors besides education are now getting behind educational equality measures. As Seth Sandronsky reports for Working In These Times, prominent labor organizations including the AFL-CIO and the southern Arizona-based Pima Area Labor Federation (PALF) have recently announced their opposition to Arizona’s ethnic studies ban, and their support of the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program, which is allegedly in violation of the ban.
In an interview with Sandronsky, Rebekah Friend, the secretary-treasurer for the Arizona AFL-CIO, illuminates the links between educational equality, labor rights and civil society:
HB 2281 (the ethnic studies ban) in Arizona is part of a bigger, repressive attempt nationwide to control parts of the population, from women’s health care to workers’ and immigrants’ rights. … It’s a mindset to cleanse out ethnic studies, unions, and all social spending generally that we in unions and others have fought for, like the eight-hour working day, child labor laws and social security, and won.
California and Connecticut to pass their own DREAM ACT?
Meanwhile, as Arizona youth and their allies continue the fight for education, two other states are pushing the envelope on educational equality for undocumented students. Connecticut and California have both considered passing their own versions of the DREAM ACT. While the original DREAM ACT, which died in the Senate last November, would have created a path to legalization for certain undocumented youth who committed to attending college, these new bills are less sweeping, if similarly progressive, in scope.
Melinda Tuhus of the Public News Service reports that Connecticut’s DREAM ACT “would allow undocumented high school graduates to pay in-state tuition at Connecticut’s public colleges, if they graduate after four years of high school.” And in California, the legislature’s Higher Education committee has already moved forward with its own mini DREAM ACT, which “would allow undocumented immigrants who graduate from a California high school to qualify for college scholarships and financial aid,” according to New America Media/La Opinion.
The measure builds on a California Supreme Court ruling last November, which upheld the state’s decision to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges. Both states’ measures run counter to the growing national trend of denying in-state benefits and public funding to undocumented students — a retrogressive movement that began with the passage of Arizona’s pernicious 2005 law, Prop 300.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Tucson Shooting Reshapes Explosive Immigration Debate
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
The Tucson shooting that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) critically wounded and 6 others dead last Saturday wasn’t explicitly motivated by Arizona’s polemical stance on immigration. Nevertheless, the tragedy bears a number of weighty implications for immigration issues both in Arizona and across the nation.
Contextualizing political violence
Pima county sheriff Clarence Dupnik was among the first to discuss the shooting within the context of Arizona’s heated immigration battles. In several television appearances, he characterized the tragedy as a product of hatred and intolerance, telling reporters during one press conference that Arizona has “become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” Many on the right, including Senator Jon Kyl, were quick to admonish Dupkin for needlessly politicizing a national tragedy.
But, as Care2’s Jessica Pieklo argues, the sheriff’s contentiously moderate stance on immigration makes him uniquely positioned “to shine a critical light on the fevered political rhetoric that has enveloped his state and this country.” While Dupnik has spoken out against Arizona’s SB 1070, engendering the goodwill of immigrant rights advcoates, he has also argued that schools should check the immigration statuses of students, a position endorsed by the anti-immigrant right. Given his varied stance on the issues, it’s difficult to dismiss his characterization of the tragedy as some kind of party-line pandering. Rather, his statement seems an objective assessment of Arizona’s volatile political culture—made all the worse by increasingly fierce immigration debates.
And as Dupnik probably well knows, that volatile political culture has repeatedly coalesced into political violence over the past 20 years. Following the shooting, the immigrant rights group Alto Arizona produced an interactive timeline of Arizona’s long history of violence. As ColorLines’ Jamilah King notes, this troubling history has frequently centered on explosive immigration issues, from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawlessness to murders committed by Arizona Minutemen. (more…)
Weekly Diaspora: Schools a Minefield for Undocumented Students After DREAM defeat
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
It’s no secret that anti-immigrant activists have a penchant for targeting youth, the most vulnerable of the undocumented set. But the Senate defeat of the popular DREAM Act confirmed the obvious. The war on immigrants is being waged not only along our borders, but within our classrooms as well.
But depriving undocumented students with a pathway to citizenship clearly wasn’t enough. From coast to coast, anti-immigrant forces are trying to block undocumented students from attending college, keep Latino teens from learning about their cultural heritage, and stop immigrant children from knowing their rights.
Undocumented students need not apply
Georgia has become the latest state to consider banning undocumented students from college. While no federal laws prohibit undocumented youth from pursuing higher education, a number of states—like Arizona—have attempted to block access to college by denying in-state tuition and publicly funded scholarships. Georgia, however, is among the first to attempt an outright ban on undocumented students.
According to Prerna Lal at Change.org, North Carolina community colleges tried to implement a similar ban last year, but repealed it after realizing the law was causing the schools to lose money. Wary of meeting the same fate, Georgia colleges—including University of Georgia and Georgia Tech—are thinking about a more measured policy that would ban undocumented students only if schools lacked the space to admit all qualified candidates. Lal notes that such a policy would serve political rather than practical ends, as undocumented students make up less than one percent of Georgia college’s 310,000 students.
Ethnic studies are un-American?
Meanwhile, in Arizona, students of all ages are facing an uphill battle for ethnic studies curricula. A controversial law signed by Governor Jan Brewer (R) last May threatens to abolish a variety of ethnic-based academic programs by the end of the year. The law, which makes exceptions for Holocaust, African-American, and American Indian studies, seems to specifically target Raza Studies—a program that promotes Mesoamerican history, culture, and pedagogies.
Roberto Rodriguez at New America Media reports that school districts are standing against the law and in support of the Raza Studies program which is proven to positively impact student success:
The consensus amongst Tucson’s Mexican- American community is that come Jan. 3, 2011, Raza Studies will be fully operational—continuing to educate and inspire minds and prepare students to attend colleges and universities nationwide. The program is virtually an anti-dropout program (more than a 90 percent graduation rate) and a college student factory (upwards of 70 percent go on to college).
State schools superintendent Tom Horne is a vocal proponent of the law, which renders him the target of a potentially historic lawsuit that some say could rival Brown v. Board of Education. The new law is just the latest in a slew of measures intended to make Arizona a hostile environment for Latinos, thereby discouraging immigration while driving attrition.
Know your rights
In response to growing hostility towards immigrant students of all ages, some schools have started educating youth about their rights—even distributing “Know Your Rights” cards.
As Elise Foley at the Washington Independent reports, a couple of San Diego schools have incurred a fair amount of controversy for doing just that. After receiving reports that undocumented students were having a hard time concentrating in school due to stress related to their immigration status, schools began disseminating pamphlets teaching kids to “protect yourself from immigration raids!” The pamphlets drew ire from local police, who argued that the illustrations portrayed them in a negative light.
Drop the I-Word
In the meantime, Colorlines has launched a campaign to counter negative depictions of the undocumented. They’ve teamed up with a host of other progressive organizations remove the term “illegals” from media discourse. The I-word, according to the campaign, “creates an environment of hate by exploiting racial fear and economic anxiety, creating an easy scapegoat for complex issues, and OK-ing violence against those labeled with the word.”
The I-word is particularly pernicious when applied to undocumented children, whose constitutionally protected right to a public education seems ever in question. By dropping the racially charged term, media outlets can better foster meaningful dialogue about immigrants and immigration instead of producing anti-immigrant sound bites that only foster division and hate.
The DREAM is not dead
In the same spirit of community empowerment, several non-profit organizations have launched a $300,000 Spanish-language campaign to leverage support of the DREAM Act into votes against the Republican Party. According to Sarah Kate Kramer of Feet in Two Worlds, the ads are being aired in nine crucial cities across the country, and feature a montage of voices claiming to be “the undocumented students of the DREAM Act.” They urge the public to vote Democratic, saying:
…who opposed this bill? Who wants to quash our dreams? Republicans. The same people who opposed the extension of unemployment benefits. Republicans. Who try to deny immigrant rights in Arizona and other states. Republicans. Who always seem to stand with big corporations against working families.
As mid-term elections draw nearer, anti-immigrant forces will likely come down harder on undocumented students whom they falsely claim are stealing public education from citizens. Fortunately, with Democrats promising to revisit the DREAM Act post-election, Latinos have everything to gain by getting out the votes.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
