“The constitutional protections of due process and equal protection apply to everyone in the United States, including non-citizens – even those not here lawfully. However, politically disenfranchised immigrants are an especially vulnerable group and are routinely denied these basic rights embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Eroding the fundamental rights of immigrants is dangerous for us all. When the government has the power to deny legal rights and due process to one group, all Americans’ rights are severely threatened.” The United States was founded on the idea of immigration but we seem to have forgotten our roots the Bill of Rights should apply to every person regardless of immigration status. The 14th Amendment should be …show more content…
Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States banned a state statute denying funding for education to unauthorized immigrant children and simultaneously struck down a municipal school district's attempt to charge unauthorized immigrants an annual $1,000 tuition fee for each undocumented immigrant student to compensate for the lost state funding.” The Supreme Court found that this policy was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as unauthorized immigrant children are people "in any ordinary sense of the term," and therefore had protection from discrimination This act violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court majority found that the Texas law was "directed against children, and imposed its discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children did not have control when they where brought illegally into the United States by their parents. The majority also observed that denying the children in question a proper education would likely contribute to "the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime." By allowing them to have an education the economy of the United States would thrive. Officials argued that unauthorized immigrants were not "within the jurisdiction" of the state and could not claim protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court majority rejected this claim, finding instead that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful." The Supreme Court ruled against the state statute because "the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to aliens who, after their illegal entry into this country, are indeed physically 'within the jurisdiction' of a state." The act