Bill Requiring Public Schools to Track Undocumented Students Has Been Watered Down But Needs to be Defeated.

by Rod Williams, March 7, 2026 - There are a lot of really bad or dumb bills that get introduced in the State legislature, but thankfully, most of them get rewritten to be less bad, are defeated, or are sent to a summer study committee, which allows them to die quietly. 

HB793 is a bill that would have allowed public schools to ban or charge tuition to undocumented students. The bill's sponsor, Representative William Lamberth, is moving to amend it. The revised proposal focuses on verifying immigration status and reporting data rather than excluding students or charging tuition. 

As originally written, the bill, if passed into law would likely have been found unconstitutional. A previous Supreme Court decision had found that all children have a right to a public education. 

As rewritten, if the bill passes, the State will avoid an expensive fight to defend the law in the courts. Nevertheless, it is a bad bill. Teachers are not qualified to determine if a student is "undocumented." There are various levels of immigration status between U.S Citizen and undocumented and statuses may change.

Some people may be Lawful Permanent Residents or Green Card Holders. Some may have Conditional Permanent Resident status, which is a 2-year, non-renewable green card granted to immigrants whose marriage to a U.S. citizen is less than two years old at the time of approval.

And then there are people with a Temporary Visas which is for individuals in the U.S. for a specific purpose and time. These include people with a Student Visas, F-1 or M-1 visas for academic or vocational studies, Tourist Visas, B-2 visas for pleasure or medical treatment, and Employment Visas such as H-1B, L-1, or O-1 visas for specialized workers.

And then we have refugees and asylees status, which is for persons fleeing persecution who are granted legal status to remain in the U.S. These people may be legal at one time and then become illegal because they were deemed not to be entitled to that status or because the status for all people from that country was terminated. Also, how do you list someone who overstayed a visa? Documented or undocumented.

Teachers already have a difficult job. This bill would complicate it. How is a teacher to determine one's status? They are not investigators or immigration attorneys. If the bill passes, it will result in a lot of incorrect information. Also, the bill will provide useless information. It does not require the teacher to list the name and address of the student who may be undocumented, so what is the point?  It needs to die. The legislature needs to refer it to a Summer Study Committee. 

For more on this issue see this link, this one and this one. 

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