Bill To Stop TN Taxpayer Education Funding Of Illegal Immigrants In Subcommittee

Photo Credit: State Representative Bruce Griffey / Facebook

Tennessee state Rep. Bruce Griffey’s bill that would allow public schools to deny enrollment and the state to not fund education for students who are deemed to be in the country illegally has made its way to the House K-12 subcommittee.

Griffey’s bill seeks to make Tennessee a more inhospitable state for illegal immigrants by denying them one of the perks that currently comes with habitating within the state.

The bill directly opposes a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says all states are required to supply free education to individuals that are here illegally.

House Bill 1648 says that a local school district or public charter school may “enroll, or refuse to enroll, a student who is unlawfully present in the United States.”

Griffey said on Facebook that his bill “focuses on the costly expense of providing free, taxpayer-subsidized public education to illegals in [Tennessee] and calls for defunding it.”

The bill would allow the state to withhold funding for students who are deemed to be in the country illegally and and school districts who choose to enroll them.. The funding for those students would be the sole responsibility of the district, and the state would be held harmless against action regarding that funding.

Districts also would not be allowed to count students deemed to be in the country illegally toward any Basic Education Program state funding calculations.

Griffey highlighted the $4.8 billion spent annually by the state on public education funding.

“According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in 2017, $383 million of [Tennessee’s] education budget went to funding education for illegals,” Griffey said in his social media post. “As illegals continue to flood across our border in record numbers under the failed policies of the Biden Administration, it is inevitable that this figure is significantly higher in 2021 than it was in 2017.

“Tennesseans should not have to be paying hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses resulting from criminal acts to which the federal government is turning a blind eye,” Griffey said.

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On The Tennessee Conservative’s social media outlets, we posted the following meme that (at the time of the posting of this article) has reached 2,819 people and had 487 engagements on Facebook alone.

In the comments section Frances Sylvester Hollums stated that we should be spending money educating our own, not illegal immigrants.

Brion White said, “Stop all taxpayer funding of ‘ILLEGAL’ immigrants, PERIOD!!!”

If you support this bill, contact the House K-12 Subcommittee, contact info below:

House K-12 Subcommittee Republicans:

Rep. Kirk Haston – rep.kirk.haston@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-0750

Rep. Michele Carringer – rep.michele.carringer@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-1721

Rep. Glen Casada – rep.glen.casada@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-4389

Rep. Scott Cepicky – rep.scott.cepicky@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-3005

Rep. Chris Hurt – rep.chris.hurt@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-2134

Rep. John Ragan – rep.john.ragan@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-4400

Rep. Mark White – rep.mark.white@capitol.tn.gov – (615) 741-4415

About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative  ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career.  Most recently, he served as Deputy Directory for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others.  He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History.  Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com