Free schooling for unauthorized immigrants in NJ challenged by lawmaker

🍎 States must pay to send unauthorized immigrants to public schools

🍎 New Jersey lawmaker wants to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decision

🍎 Families would have to pay at least $1,000 a year

A Republican state lawmaker wants to defy a U.S. Supreme Court decision so that New Jersey taxpayers don't have to pay for the children of unauthorized immigrants to attend public schools.

Assemblyman Paul Kanitra, R-Ocean, said he visited the U.S. border with Mexico last year on a trip to Texas.

"One of the things we heard time and time again was that they were seeking out places like New Jersey and New York because of all the benefits that we were offering them," Kanitra said.

Kanitra has introduced the “Protecting Legally-Present Youngsters’ Limited Educational Resources Act.”

The bill (A5233) would make parents of unauthorized immigrants pay tuition to send their children to New Jersey schools.

Kanitra said the quality of public education in New Jersey is "going down, and down, and down" because students with English as a second language strain limited resources.

Tuition would be at least $1,000 but could reach the district's cost per pupil. In some districts, like Camden City, per-pupil spending exceeds $29,000.

Read More: Pay cops to catch migrants? NJ bill challenges 'sanctuary state'

Not like other benefits

Over 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that a state cannot deny a public education to any child who is an unauthorized immigrant.

In the 1982 decision, which was 5-4, the Court wrote that public education was not like other benefits

"Public education has a pivotal role in maintaining the fabric of our society and in sustaining our political and cultural heritage; the deprivation of education takes an inestimable toll on the social, economic, intellectual, and psychological wellbeing of the individual, and poses an obstacle to individual achievement," the decision said.

However, momentum is building among conservatives to overturn Plyler v. Doe in the same Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.

In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Plyler v. Doe was the one case he would like to see overturned the most.

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