“If Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may safely be trusted to make it void.”
– 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Having passed one of the nation’s harshest laws against immigration and a separate law targeting ethnic studies, Arizona state legislators could soon take up a new bill that would zero in on migrant children within the public schools.

Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in Arizona’s public school classrooms, but a new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer Tuesday makes it illegal for these students to learn about their heritage in school. HB 2281 prohibits schools from offering courses at any grade level that caters to specific ethnic groups. The new law also means Arizona students will lose access to African-American and Native-American studies.

In a separate bill, SB 1097 would compel teachers and administrators to determine the legal status of students and their families, along with an estimation of the costs associated with educating those children.

SB 1097 was passed by the Arizona state Senate on March 31 and is now pending before the House. Sponsoring the legislation is state senator Russell Pearce who previously tried to push for legislation denying citizenship status to children born to illegal immigrant parents. Arizona’s SB 1097 mirrors legislation currently before the Oklahoma state legislature that would require all public schools to verify the immigration status of their students.

Similarly, the Texas State Board of Education stunned America by suggesting that Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez be stripped from text books and replaced with a positive spin on Joseph McCarthy. Dentist Don McLeroy, of the Texas Board of Education, recently explained that his decision to edit ethnic minorities out of textbooks has something to do with freedom: “We have an obligation to Texas to make sure [students] understand the original principles upon which America was founded.” Much like Arizona’s new immigration law, this ethnic studies ban is political interest dressed up to look like education reform.

Asian Americans and other groups who have been singled out, interned, and excluded in the past have an investment in the immigration debate; it was through the historical struggles of Chinese Americans for their civil rights that led the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to abolish forced labor and the 14th Amendment to establish citizenship based on birthright and not on the legal status of their immigrant parents.

These aforementioned bills certainly face a constitutional challenge that was established over 125 years earlier through the heroic efforts of 19th century Chinese American civil rights activists like Wong Kim Ark and Yick Wo: in 1982, the Supreme Court cited United States vs. Wong Kim Ark that illegal immigrant students could not be barred from schools under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It was with the legal precedence of Wong Kim Ark that the Court ruled that the law discriminated against children who had no control over their legal status, adding, moreover, that eliminating them from schools would result in “the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries.”

And hopefully we may never forget that during the summer of 1885, many Chinese Americans in San Francisco violated a municipal laundry ordinance in protest of a law drafted with concern that immigration brought too many Chinese to California.

Yick Wo had lived in California since 1861 and had been in the laundry business for 22 years. After Yick Wo was denied his license, he resisted, was jailed, and ultimately Yick Wo appealed his case ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that the ordinance violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights because of the blatant discriminatory results of its implementation. The state argued that the Fourteenth Amendment could not infringe upon the police power granted to cities and states.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Yick Wo stating that although the laundry ordinances were seemingly race-neutral on its face, it was administered in a prejudicial manner and therefore an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, i.e. based on what is currently called “reasonable suspicion.”

The slew of Anti-Chinese ordinances of that time, as enforced, conferred an authority broader than the state police’s power. This power was discriminatory and constituted class legislation prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all persons, citizens and non-citizens alike. Is this in essence similar to the racial profiling that will result in the implementation of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070?

Let’s keep in mind that from the beginning, America has struggled with the very definition of what “We the people” and “to form a more perfect Union” truly mean. Let us always remember that our Asian pioneers rose from the shadows of exclusion and internment to be a voice in the immigration debate.

Let’s embrace our shared differences and common goals by celebrating a Day of Inclusion during the month of December.

For more information go to:
www.dec17.org

and download our guide at:
www.dec17.org/ACR76_Postcard.pdf

Write to your Senator and Representative in Congress.
www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

Write to President Barack Obama
www.whitehouse.gov/contact

In all due respect,
– Steve Yee