Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I thank this committee for holding these public hearings on an issue important to Georgia
education and in all areas of society in which an individual’s life intersects with the state.
Immigration reform means making the social world bigger. It means making our
immigrants. These are native Spanish-speakers from México, Guatemala, Honduras and
I share some personal history before I say more about these students and their
unique situation in life. My secondary education took place in the mid- to late 1970s in
the suburbs of Washington, DC. Only in the past 10 years, by scanning yearbook photos
before high school reunions, have I realized a disturbing fact. And that is, I attended
Scanning the yearbook pictures I notice that every fourth or fifth face is unknown to me.
This is surprising, because my graduating class in high school was relatively small—less
than 200. The faces I do not recognize are, without exception, faces of color. In origin,
they are Asian, African and Hispanic. These English as a Second Language students
occupied their own classrooms in the junior and senior high schools I attended. Although
we would graduate together, we never mixed. White students, in fact, made jokes about
them. It pains me to think that I may have been one of the ones laughing at these slurs,
segregation, less acknowledged but no less real than separateness between white and
black.
You may be thinking that educational practice thirty-some years ago in a state
that is not Georgia has no bearing on the present conversation. I would agree, up to a
point. The fact is that law-making bodies such as the Georgia Legislature help shape the
social world. As Georgia and other states consider what I hope you will forgive me for
for undocumented migrants and their families—I think about my students on Buford
Highway and the students, my cohorts, 30 years ago that I never got to know.
In 1829 a Creek tribal leader spoke to the Creek nation, the Muskogean
confederacy that included Alabama, Georgia and Florida, about President Jackson’s
intent to relocate them west of the Mississippi. This leader said to them, “I have listened
to a great many talks from our Great Father. But they always began and ended in this—
group after their arrival in order to justify having called them “illegal” in the first place?
Do we send a message through such laws, “You are too close; we do not wish to see
you”?
immigrants in Georgia, who in turn number among some 12 million in the United States,
are sometimes tagged with the label “invisibles.” These students number among a further
millions upon millions who travel the world’s networks of migration. One of the women
in our class who works as a restaurant server at an elite Atlanta social club relates the
experience of customers looking past her, or of not speaking when she says “hello” to
them. I believe that we judge wrongly when we correlate such “invisibility” to a desire to
shirk responsibility. Undocumented immigrants are not invisible because they cannot be
seen. They are invisible because we are blind to their identity as human beings.
friends. They form a vital part of my community of learning. They educate me about
courage, generosity, love and joy. If their rights as human beings are constrained, so are
ours.
I thank you for your attention and for your service on behalf of everyone in the
—John Turnbull
1780 Ridgewood Dr NE Apt R
Atlanta GA 30307
(404) 441-6777
johnt629@yahoo.com