Connie Morris ignores the law

In her youth, it was drugs and lewd and licentious behavior. In her prudish middle age, Connie Morris has chosen to make a career of ignoring Plyler v. Doe, the legal decision which held that public schools must provide access to children of undocumented immigrants. That decision held that the Equal Protection Clause requires that a public education be available to all people within a jurisdiction, and that children are people, regardless of their legal status. There's simply no way around that.

A Hutchison News article on the immigration debate contains this choice passage:

Kansas school board member Connie Morris, who thinks public schools shouldn't be open to new undocumented children, dislikes the guest worker proposals floating in Congress.

"I'm not convinced a guest worker program would work. And I'm not hearing a lot of conversation about the education of the children of the guest workers. That's my main concern," she said.

"I think we need to secure our borders and require, as far as school enrollment, we need proof of citizenship or legal entry before enrollment in a publicly funded school."

She isn't hearing about education of the guest workers because it would be illegal to refuse to grant them access to the schools. Connie knows that, because she got burned over it last time she was up for election. She campaigned on a platform of denying public education to undocumented workers in Kansas. Garden City, which she represents, has a Tyson Foods plant which employs a lot of Mexican laborers, not all of whom (to put it nicely) have their papers in order.

Ranjit Arab made a documentary about that race, a short film called "El Jardin." It won some awards, and some clips are available from the Journal World. Arab tried to talk to Connie, but she dodged him. He showed up at a public meeting, hoping to meet her before the event. He confronted her, tried to ask a question, and she reported him to the FBI. She also accused Tim Cruz, then the mayor of Garden City, of being an illegal alien. He was born in the US.

Cruz is the Democratic challenger for the seat Morris currently occupies.