I disagree with the Supreme Court here as they IMO fail to balance the need for providing a safe conducive educational environment and in prior cases which did narrow K-12 student first amendment rights…uphold the school’s ability to foster an educational environment where “consciously or otherwise, teachers—and indeed the older students—demonstrate the appropriate form of civil discourse and political expression by their conduct and deportment in and out of class.”
This ruling effectively undermines the school’s ability to do precisely the latter.
Unfortunately, there has been several examples of US citizens including those born in the US being deported or bigoted US officials attempting to deport them.
One famous example was Wong Kim Ark who was born in San Francisco in the early 1870’s to non-citizen Chinese parents because the prevailing citizenship laws precluded them from getting citizenship.
Though he was considered a US citizen and had made trips to China to visit relatives a few times without incident by officials, that changed in August 1895 when he was denied entry to the port of San Francisco as the immigration official in charge argued he wasn’t an citizen despite having been born in the US. It didn’t help that this took place in the midst of anti-Chinese/Yellow Peril hysteria in the US public* and a little more than a decade after the passage of the racist anti-Chinese immigration act of 1882.
However, despite the prevailing anti-Chinese hysteria of the era among many “real murikans”…including many within the government of that era, the Supreme Court ended up upholding and confirming the concept of birthright citizenship…even if the parents are non-citizens with the exception of children of ambassadors, heads of state, etc.
So for those of us who are aware of US history, telling someone who “looks foreign” that he/she should be deported is echoing the very mentality and sentiments which lead to the actual attempted/actual deportation of bona-fide US citizens.
- I see some disturbing parallels with some discussions threads here on CC regarding the wholesale stereotyping of all Chinese students based on the actions of some.