Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 2 | Educating Immigrant Students page 3

The Lopez Family
The Lopez siblings—Alfredo Lopez, Faviola Lopez Tizcareno, Antonia Martinez and Noe Lopez—were born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They came to the United States when they were still very young and settled in Tyler, Texas, where their parents, unaware of the events that would unfold in September 1977, rented a home two blocks from the federal courthouse.

Three of the four siblings—Alfredo, Faviola and Antonia—gathered recently in the living room of Faviola’s home where the entire Lopez family still lives. The parents, the four children who were born in Mexico, the six who were born in the United States, and sixteen grandchildren all reside in what for some is their adopted home. But for most, it’s the only home they’ve ever known. As Alfredo says, “Now we’re from East Texas.”

Thirty years ago, however, it didn’t feel very much like home. Because the four Mexican-born Lopez children were in the United States illegally, the Tyler Independent School District wanted to charge their parents $1,000 a year for each one of them to attend school. Faced with this seemingly insurmountable barrier, their parents made a bold decision. Along with three other families, they decided to risk both deportation and public scrutiny to challenge the Texas state law that was effectively keeping their children from getting an education.

Antonia Martinex

Judge Justice says he made very clear to all the parties involved that he would not conceal the identities of undocumented immigrants from federal authorities—that, in short, he would not break the law. But it wasn’t the federal government he was concerned about. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had a policy, he said, that if an undocumented immigrant was in litigation, he or she would not be deported pending the outcome of the litigation. “I didn’t want them to be harassed by the general public,” he says, “which they would have been.” So he scheduled the initial hearing for 6 a.m. “I had a feeling that somehow or another the reporters would not be there,” he says, and he was right. The media was a no-show, and the identities of the four Lopez children, as well as their fellow plaintiffs, remained anonymous for years to come.

The children themselves say that for a very long time they were unaware of their own role in Plyler v. Doe. Alfredo was in the second grade at the time, Faviola was in the first, and their sister Antonia was not yet in school. All three would graduate several years later—Alfredo in 1987, Faviola in 1989 and Antonia in 1992—from John Tyler High School. They now have families of their own, they own their own homes, and they abide by a strong work ethic instilled in them by their parents. But it was high school, all agree, that gave them the tools that served them well in the workplace.

“I took up auto mechanics in high school,” Alfredo explains. “And that was my deciding factor.” He started working at a Sears Auto Center in 1986, his senior year of high school, and he was employed there until 1995, when he started a full-time job for a regional grocery store chain where he now works as a shipping foreman. He’s been there for the past 15 years, but without Plyler v. Doe, without a high school education, he firmly believes that he would not have had a foothold in the job market.

Alfredo Lopez

Antonia works at a local bank, where she’s been for the past ten years. Before that, she sold car insurance for four years and she says the business courses she took in high school have helped her the most. “I’ve seen a lot of people,” she says, “who have gone to college to do what I do.” Her sister Faviola is now a stay-at-home mom, and she also says the office, typing and computer skills she learned in high school were helpful to her during her ten years as a customer service representative for insurance companies. “If it hadn’t been for that,” she says, “I would have been working at McDonald’s.”

Another ripple effect of both her education and on-the-job experience, Faviola says, is a strongly held belief that not educating children—any children—is analogous to the recent spate of statewide efforts to prohibit undocumented immigrants from getting a driver’s license. Since eligibility for car insurance depends on a driver’s license, the laws have made it a criminal activity for undocumented immigrants to pay for car insurance. “They’re still driving,” Faviola says, “because it’s a necessity. But they’re driving without insurance. So who does it help?”

University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas compares these issues to Newton’s third law of motion. “Whenever there is an action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” he says. “It’s true in physics and in hydraulics, and it’s true in social pol-icy.” In this case, he continues, “we’ve created a criminal class of people…and I think that puts us all at risk.” The same action/reaction principles, he says, apply to the millions of children who have undoubtedly received an education since the Supreme Court reached its landmark decision in Plyler v. Doe. Ever the scientist, he says, “I don’t take time to prove the water is wet. I think it is clearly evident that the students would have been worse off, and this is one of the pieces of evidence that when civil rights litigation wins for the poor, everybody is better off. These children are likely taxpayers.”

Faviola Lopez Tizcareno

Photos: Courtesy of the Lopez family

The Lopez children are, indeed, taxpayers. Two of the four who were part of the Plyler v. Doe case are now citizens and the other two have their green cards. Of the ten Lopez children, all but one graduated from high school. All of them have an impressive work ethic. All but two, who still live with their parents, own their own homes, and their parents now own three, including the one they once rented two blocks from the court-house. And their children—the grandchildren—intend to take Plyler v. Doe one step further.

They want to be doctors, teachers, and entrepreneurs, and more than any other college or university, they want to go to Texas A&M. Nine-year-old David Tizcareno says he wants to be a businessman; his sister, thirteen-year-old Mayra Tizcareno, wants to be a therapist for premature babies, maybe a doctor; nine-year-old Karina Martinez wants to be a pediatrician. Some day she also plans to buy a mansion, one with an elevator her parents can use when they get old. Twelve-year-old Joshua Martinez wants to be a soccer player; thirteen-year-old Kassie Lopez wants to be a language arts teacher; and her sixteen-year-old brother Michael Lopez wants to be a high school social studies teacher.

Next page: Since Plyler v. Doe, there have been numerous studies that look at the socioeconomic impact of immigrants.

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