DON GONYEA, HOST:
Any child born on U.S. soil has a right to citizenship - so far. The Trump administration wants to do away with that constitutional right. The Supreme Court will hear arguments why on Wednesday. According to the Migration Policy Institute, if it's repealed, 4.8 million U.S.-born children would begin life without U.S. citizenship over the next two decades. NPR's Jonaki Mehta joins us now to talk about what that could mean for access to education. Good morning.
JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: Hey, Don.
GONYEA: Let's start with K-12 public education. Who gets to go to school in this country, and how could this decision change that?
MEHTA: Yeah. You know, that is a great place to start because the Supreme Court actually tackled this question in 1982 in a case called Plyler v. Doe. And the primary question before the court was whether the state of Texas could deny undocumented children access to free public education. And that decision affirmed one of the most foundational rights for children in this country, and that is the right to a free public education, regardless of immigration status. Here's Wendy Cervantes from the nonpartisan Center for Law and Social Policy.
WENDY CERVANTES: In that decision, it was recognized by the justices that denying a K-12 education to children would basically create a permanent underclass.
MEHTA: And, you know, Don, not everybody agrees with the precedent that Plyler set. The Heritage Foundation, which is the conservative think tank behind Project 2025 - that's the Trump administration's policy playbook - they've argued that it costs a lot of money to educate undocumented students. The Heritage Foundation has called for states to directly challenge the Plyler decision, and some states are doing just that, like Tennessee, where legislators have proposed allowing public schools to track students' legal status and turn away undocumented students.
GONYEA: So there are legislative threats to Plyler brewing, and then there's the heightened threat of deportation for these children. How is that impacting access to schools?
MEHTA: Yeah. That's exactly right. I spoke to a few immigrant rights advocates, and all of them reminded me, yes, Plyler exists, and schools are supposed to be safe havens for all children. But the way that immigrant families have actually been feeling doesn't necessarily align with their rights. Here's Alejandra Vazquez Baur of the National Newcomer Network, which advocates for recently arrived immigrant students.
ALEJANDRA VAZQUEZ BAUR: Significant attendance gaps in big and small districts across the country after an immigration raid are clearly impacting not just undocumented children, but lots of children who have citizenship and yet still feel that it is not safe enough for them to leave their homes and go to school.
MEHTA: And, you know, it's important to remember that schools aren't just a place for kids to get an education. It's also where students often first encounter lots of different public services.
GONYEA: And what kind of services are we talking about?
MEHTA: Yeah. So for many students, school is the very first place they might encounter things like basic health care, like a school nurse, mental health resources, like counselors. It's a place to get free meals, and the public school system provides lots of services for students with disabilities. Now, all students with disabilities are covered by federal special education law, but here's where it gets a little bit complicated. So a lot of the funding for disability services, things like speech therapy, occupational therapy, those things are often paid for by Medicaid.
Medicaid sends billions of dollars every year to schools, but students typically need legal status to benefit from that program. So if birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, we could be looking at a new class of students in the coming decades who would not qualify for Medicaid. But here's the thing - schools are still obligated to serve those students with or without that Medicaid funding. So the elimination of birthright citizenship could put a bigger financial burden on schools which are already spread thin.
GONYEA: OK. That covers K-12 public education. Would higher education be affected if birthright citizenship were to go away?
MEHTA: Yeah. So the main way is that losing citizenship makes it much harder to get help paying for college. That's because without legal status, students aren't eligible for federal financial aid or even some state financial aid.
CAITLIN PATLER: And because of their status, they're also more likely to come from families living in poverty. So those two things together make affording higher education almost impossible for children who are undocumented.
MEHTA: That's Caitlin Patler. She's a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, and she pointed out that U.S. citizenship is directly tied to educational attainment and ultimately what someone contributes to the economy. So she thinks ending birthright citizenship would be a loss not just for these potential future children we're talking about, but for the country at large.
GONYEA: That's NPR education correspondent Jonaki Mehta. Thank you.
MEHTA: Thanks, Don. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
