Recent public comments in the local press on the issue of in-state tuition for children of undocumented immigrants and the issue of immigration in general have often been hateful, racist and even violent in their tenor.
It is important to dispel some of the myths and unpack some of the rhetoric that these commentators seem to thrive on in their attack on undocumented immigrants and anyone who speaks with compassion for children of undocumented workers and their parents.
Many of the comments of those who attack in-state tuition for children of undocumented workers use the “false hope” argument. This argument tends to come in the guise of compassionate concern, but actually can be even more insidious and harmful in some ways than obviously xenophobic rants.
In this argument, those who support repealing in-state tuition argue that they feel “just terrible” that children of undocumented workers — in their words, “illegals” — receive a college education and then cannot find employment.
This argument is disingenuous for several reasons. Those who make this argument fail to point out that the children in question are thriving in Utah schools despite the odds and are already showing the promise they would undoubtedly demonstrate if we allowed them to reach their full educational and career potential. Also, a college education is not only about obtaining a job, but about developing critical thinking skills and so much more that contributes to the development of a human being. In addition, we are investing in the education of children of undocumented workers for several years before they attend college, and it makes no sense to abandon the child at that point in their trajectory. Finally, there is no reason that such barriers to future careers need exist in the first place. We can choose to change existing law.
This raises another important argument that is frequently used — the “rule of law” argument. This argument labels children of undocumented workers and their parents as “illegal” and illegitimate.
One problem with this argument is that those who make it speak of the “rule of law” as if our laws are always and everywhere manifestly just and above suspicion. However, the truth is that laws can be manipulated for reasons of political expediency. Laws can be illegitimate and completely unjust.
Our nation enforced laws that enabled the genocide and disenfranchisement of American Indians, enslaved Africans, denied women the right to vote and own property, provided for the rights of factory owners at the expense of immigrant laborers and child labor, aided and abetted laws supporting violent religious persecution of Catholics, Jewish Americans, and Latter-day Saints and, of course, enforced infamous Jim Crow laws in the American South and similar unjust laws in the American Southwest.
Clearly, the rule of law leaves something to be desired unless wise and thoughtful citizens keep a watchful eye over the political nature of the law as well as the power and privilege involved in the crafting of the law.
In addition, this argument runs straight into another obvious logical wall, for laws must reflect the needs and understanding of a populace over time. When laws do not reflect current economic realities, then laws begin to make no common sense. More than that, when laws fail to uphold human dignity and human life — the needs of children and their parents — they become cynical, harmful and destructive.
It seems the rightful place of any freethinking human being to stand up against such damaging and unjust laws. I know that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. thought this way, and so did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Wasn’t it Washington and Jefferson, among many others, who fought a revolutionary war against unjust laws?
It seems clear that our immigration laws have reached this critical juncture-they no longer make sense in today’s economic climate. This is especially true when we consider that it is American citizens who benefit from the goods and services made possible by the labor of undocumented immigrants, and that some of those same Americans want to deny the children of immigrants an education and deny civil rights to their parents.
Such an arrangement is obviously immoral and smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy, hearkening back to something like feudalism, or at the very least indentured servitude. All of this is to say that existing immigration laws can no longer speak for the common good, nor do they speak for the dignity of human life.
In the end, a nation is often judged not by how it has treated its most privileged and powerful members, but by how it has treated its most vulnerable and disenfranchised members. In many ways, this ethic was shaped by age-old proverbs such as “love thy neighbor,” “do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor” and “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers (and sisters), that you do unto me”-all of these from the Old and New Testaments.
In this country, one of the most vulnerable populations is children. They depend so much on the world we, their elders, shape for them.
In the 2008 session of the Utah State Legislature, our lawmakers are again debating, in essence, whether children have the right to an education. It can be dressed up, masked or veiled, but that is the heart of the matter.
Adopting a bill that would deny so many children an education and hope for a better future for themselves and their families seems a mockery of the “rule of law.” I would hope that no one would want to leave a legacy that denies children the right to reach their full educational potential — something that might have implications for us all should we lose the creativity of children because of our lack of vision.
Theresa A. Martinez is the assistant vice president for Academic Outreach, co-chair of Utahns for the American Dream and an associate professor of sociology at the U.
Prof. Theresa A. Martinez is the Assistant Vice President for Academic Outreach and Associate Professor of Sociology. She is also co-chair for Utahns for the American Dream.