Guidance on immigration Executive Orders and the impact on California students
Published: February 1, 2017
In the wake of recent Presidential Executive Orders impacting immigration, some families and school leaders have expressed concern about their potential impacts on California’s students. Although the Executive Orders will impact many California families, the responsibility of school districts and board members to serve all students has not changed.
In 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982) that under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, if a state provides a free public education to U.S. citizens, it cannot deny such an education to undocumented children. The court found that denying students a basic education because of their immigration status was denying them “the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.” Although schools owe the same duty to all students that they have since Plyler v. Doe, families that fear an increase in immigration enforcement by the federal government in the wake of these Executive Orders may act on these concerns and keep their children home from school. This will hinder our schools’ ability to teach and our students’ ability to learn, and will hinder California’s future.
It is important for California schools to remember, and for students’ families to understand, that public schools cannot ask for a student’s immigration status or deny enrollment due to lack of documentation, such as social security numbers or birth certificates. Many school boards have already taken steps to let families and students know that their schools are “safe havens” and education will continue regardless of immigration status. Despite the recent actions by the new presidential administration, the Constitutional protection that guarantees all students here in the United States a right of equal access to education regardless of their immigration status remains.
For further information, please see a CSBA briefing from November 2016 on immigration and California schools.