School Doors Should Not Be Closed to Immigrant Kids : Lott would get off to a good start by blocking the ban

Forty-seven senators--42 Democrats and five Republicans--sent a sensible letter Monday to then-Majority Leader Bob Dole urging him to remove the ban on public schooling for immigrant children from a House immigration bill in conference committee. But Dole retired from the Senate Tuesday without taking action on the request. A copy of the letter has gone to Trent Lott of Mississippi, Dole’s anticipated successor as majority leader, and he should heed its advice. School-age kids should be in classrooms, whatever their immigration status. Here is an opportunity for the Senate’s incoming GOP leader to do the right thing. Dump this provision. It is an overreaction to the extremely complex problem of immigration law.

If the provision stays, Lott may face a filibuster on the Senate floor by the 47 signers of the letter. And that could hold up or even defeat the entire immigration bill, including those aspects that control illegal immigration.

These children are not likely to go back to their countries of origin, even if their parents do, studies have shown. They will remain here, and without an opportunity for education it’s unlikely they would turn out to be fully productive members of American society. Barred from classrooms, they would face the prospect of life on the streets, with all that means in terms of lost hope and opportunity and, too often, of crime.

Further, there is the cruel weight such a provision in federal law might place on teachers. Many, perhaps most, children of illegal immigrants are born in the United States and thereby constitutionally have citizenship--and the right to a public education. The House bill would deny this right to children born abroad and illegally brought to this country. So who would have the task of trying to sort out which is which? Possibly the schools and the teachers.

Wouldn’t it be better to educate all children? Wouldn’t it benefit this country to train the labor force of the future in values, language and skills? The argument here does not touch on the far wider questions of immigration reform and the right of Congress to make laws to regulate entry to the United States. This is an issue of common sense. The right course is education.

Some of this is politics, of course. There are GOP strategists who would bar immigrant children from schools in order to force President Clinton’s veto during a presidential campaign in which immigration is a hot-button issue.

Let Bob Dole, as a man whose reputation was made as a conciliator, send to his Senate successor a signal that there is too much at stake to spear immigration reform with an ill-conceived provision.