John Hope Bryant: “as stated earlier when we debated the Bryant of Tennessee amendment, there have been two areas which we have always…”

“as stated earlier when we debated the Bryant of Tennessee amendment, there have been two areas which we have always excepted from our hardline approach to trying to deal with the question of illegal immigrants. Those have been emergency room care and education of children. We have always done that. It would be a tragedy if the Gallegly amendment were added to this immigration bill. We have tried to write a bill that deals constructively with the problems facing the country, that leaves off the extremes of the right or the left. This is one of the extremes of the right. This is a proposition 187 type proposal. It is not in the interest of the American people. It is not in the interest of our future as a country. It is absolutely illegal. Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is that for good reasons the Supreme Court ruled a long time ago that we will not visit the sins of the father and the mother upon the children when it comes to the question of education. This bill should not contain a provision that does this even if it were constitutional, but it is not constitutional. It will not save anybody any money. Bear in mind that, in order to implement the Gallegly proposal to let States deny education to little children who have no responsibility for their status at all, would mean that the schools would have to document the immigration status of every student in order to know which of those are in an undocumented status.”