Bill Requiring Immigration Status Checks in Tennessee Public Schools Advances in Legislature

This article was originally published in Tennessee Lookout.

A bill requiring Tennessee public schools to gather data on student immigration status and report it to the state education department advanced out of a House legislative committee Tuesday.

The bill (HB073/SB0836) was introduced last year as part of a Republican effort to challenge Supreme Court precedent requiring public schools to enroll all children regardless of immigration status. As originally introduced,  the bill would have allowed Tennessee public school districts to refuse to enroll immigrant students who could not provide proof of legal status – or charge their families tuition.

But the controversial measure stalled, in part due to concerns it could jeopardize more than $1.1 billion in federal education funding.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican who sponsored the measure, told a legislative committee Tuesday the bill in its amended form is now “literally a data bill” to give state leaders reliable information on the number of students without legal immigration status enrolled in taxpayer funded schools. Provisions allowing schools to deny enrollment or charge tuition have been stripped from the bill.

But opponents of the measure, among them educators, immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers, have questioned how the data will ultimately be used, how educators untrained in immigration law can reliably review complex immigration documentation and how the specter of being asked to produce immigration paperwork in schools would impact children and families.

Lamberth last week deflected questions about the ultimate use of student immigration data, which the legislation specifies would be reported to the state in aggregate, non-identifying formats.

“We can take whatever action down the road that this body would choose to take,” after the data was gathered, he said then.

A statement Tuesday from Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of TIRRC Votes, raised continued alarms about the ultimate goal of student immigration status data gathering. TIRRC is the political arm of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.

“Across history, we’ve seen the dangers of governments making and keeping lists of the people that they think don’t belong,” the statement said.

“But rather than learn from our past, these power-hungry politicians, desperate for Trump’s approval, are doubling down on their efforts to identify and track immigrant students in the hopes of one day being able to exclude them from our schools.”

The bill is cosponsored by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican. The full senate passed the bill in its original form in April but has yet to take it up in its amended form this year. The House and Senate versions of the bill would have to be reconciled before the legislation could ultimately advance to the governor’s desk.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.