The Tennessee House Departments and Agencies Subcommittee advanced a bill on Tuesday that would require schools to track students’ immigration status.
House Bill (HB) 1711, sponsored by State Representative Elaine Davis (R-Knoxville), now heads to the House State & Local Government Committee.
HB 1711 expands reporting requirements in Tennessee for illegal immigrants. Schools would need to keep track of students’ immigration status so the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration can make a report on how much illegal immigrants in public schools are costing the state annually.
Besides schools, prisons, hospitals, and social service agencies would be required to keep track of people’s immigration status to create a report to determine the annual financial effect illegal immigrants have on these services.
The bill proposal would mandate law enforcement agencies to submit quarterly reports to the Tennessee Department of Safety, to include information about illegal activities committed by illegal immigrants, criminal gang activity, violations of federal law, and illegal immigrants arrested or detained for federal immigration laws.
Law enforcement would need to report legal residents and illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes or convicted of crimes, the bill proposal states.
A government official or employee who fails to file these reports could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, which carries a possible jail term of more than 11 years.
For local governments, HB 1711 would require them to report to the Tennessee Department of Safety the number of times illegal immigrants violated an ordinance or resolution that carried a civil penalty.
Local governments would also need to report the number of illegal immigrants and legal residents receiving public benefits, HB 1711 says.
At the bill hearing, Davis said, “Tennessee lacks a comprehensive accounting system. We don’t know the fiscal impact of illegal immigration.”
If Tennessee is “unaware” of how tax dollars are being spent or if potential fraud exists, the state is “cheating the taxpayers of the monies that are directed towards programs and services,” such as schools and law enforcement, she added.
Davis said the bill proposal, as written, does not affect federal education funding.
People spoke out against HB 1711, including public school teacher Betsy Hopkirk, who spoke in her own capacity.
Hopkirk said “decades of research” show children are unable to learn when “they feel unsafe.”
HB 1711 would “introduce fear and distress into our schools,” she said, adding that it “undermines the safety” schools work “hard to build.”
“Fear spreads across the learning environment. It affects students who witness classmates being singled out. It affects every teacher asked to collect information that conflicts with our duty to protect and educate,” the teacher noted.
She asked the committee members whether they wanted schools to prioritize “student academic outcomes” or to serve as an “instrument of immigration enforcement.”
The teacher asked how immigration data would be collected in a public school system already overworked.
She suggested that elected leaders establish pathways to citizenship so this type of data would not need to be collected.
If the Tennessee Legislature approves HB 1711 and Governor Bill Lee signs it into law, it will go into effect on July 1st.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
A headcount does not start to identify the real cost of illegals in our public schools. How much are ESL classes and related teachers costing us? How much does their inclusion in the classroom slow down the learning of those who belong her? The cost is staggering in so many ways.