Speaker. I rise today to oppose H.R. 4134 on behalf of a generation of children who will be left to twist in the wind because they have been denied an elementary education. I agree that measures should be taken to discourage and prevent undocumented individuals from entering our country. I will not support. however. any meanspirited. punitive attempts to secure our borders that will devastate numbers of children because of the sins of their parents. Are we as a body going to reduce ourselves to mistreating little children because we are angry that their parents have not complied with our laws? The obvious recourse would be to punish their parents or proactively prevent them from immigrating here unlawfully. What good will it do to ban their children from attending public school? In the long run. it is the children of American citizens that will also be punished. because they will be forced to deal with the tragedy of a population of uneducated immigrants. It sickens me to think of the discrimination that will inevitably result as parents will be forced to prove that there children are indeed legal. Unfortunately. those children who look foreign will be forced to prove that they are. in fact.
Identified stereotypes
Children who look foreign will be forced to prove their legal status.