SCHOOL'S OUT?

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

CHILDREN ACROSS THE COUNTRY MAY one day discover that their first schoolwork assignment has nothing to do with reading, writing or arithmetic. Instead, they will be asked to prove that they are not in the U.S. illegally. That, at least, is the intent of a proposed amendment to the immigration-reform bill that would give states the right to turn away undocumented children from public schools. The measure easily passed the House of Representatives last week after Speaker Newt Gingrich made a rare speech from the floor supporting it. "Offering free, tax-paid goods to illegals has increased the number of illegals," he said. "It is wrong for us to be the welfare capital of the world."

Representative Elton Gallegly, the California Republican who sponsored the amendment, couldn't agree more. Educating the 355,000 illegal-immigrant children in his state's public schools will cost taxpayers $2 billion next year alone. "What [illegal immigration] has done to the quality of public education in California is unbelievable," he says. His proposed solution is similar to a provision in California's controversial Proposition 187, the state immigration law that has been tied up by constitutional challenges since it passed in 1994.

In 1982 the Supreme Court ruled that Texas could not charge tuition to children who were not legal residents. David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, argues that it is not in the public's interest to "create a permanent caste of uneducated, illiterate people in our society." Gallegly's response: "It's a lot cheaper to return someone to his country of origin than it is to educate him."

That theory may not be tested any time soon. Opponents of the amendment say they don't expect the Senate to go along with Gingrich and the House. The Speaker, Senate Democrats say, was simply responding to the anti-immigration sentiment stirred up by Pat Buchanan and playing to angry voters in delegate-rich states such as California. "It was mostly politics," agrees Linda Chavez, of the conservative, pro-immigration Center for Equal Opportunity. If the bill emerges with the school amendment intact, President Clinton could be forced to veto a bill he desperately wants to sign. Gingrich, not to mention Bob Dole, wouldn't mind that at all.

--By James Carney/Washington