Scapegoating children for 15 seconds of relevance is a new low for anti-immigrant activist Joseph Turner, who filed a notice of intent this week with the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters to circulate a petition in support of a ballot initiative which, if passed, would prohibit undocumented children from receiving an education in the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District.

Turner’s measure, floated under an organization he founded called American Children First, also calls for impairing the education of American citizens. His proposal would require undocumented immigrant parents of American-born children to pay tuition for attending public schools. This, he believes, is necessary because “real Americans are tired of watching their children get treated like second-class citizens.”

Turner, who twice failed in runs for office in San Bernardino, now lives in Torrance. He has no connection to the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District, which, in turn, put out a statement clarifying that Turner “has had no contact with the Board of Education nor district administration.”

The district also pointed to United States Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, which in 1982 struck down Texas law denying undocumented children a K-12 education. As the court noted, preventing the education of undocumented children, who are in the country through no fault of their own, would only create more problems than it would solve, while doing nothing to address the problem of illegal immigration.

The Plyler decision has long been a target of Turner, who invoked his opposition to the court decision in his 2006 run for school board, a race in which he came in seventh out of eight candidates. Since it’s the law of the land, it represents a major stumbling block for his inventive solution to whatever problem he believes would be solved by stopping American citizens and undocumented children from receiving an education.

But while it may be temporarily amusing to entertain bizarre proposals like that of Turner’s, his antics only serve to distract from the real issues at hand.

There are substantive, legitimate debates to be had about illegal immigration. Without question, our government has failed to properly enforce immigration laws, and has allowed millions of people to enter the country illegally. But the critical task is to seek rational solutions grounded in reality, not nationalist fantasy. Attacking children brought here beyond their control, and American citizens with undocumented parents, only takes us further away from rational debate.

Turner’s proposal even diverts attention from the actual problems in California’s education system. California consistently ranks near the bottom on national tests, according to the Legislative Analysts’ Office, with large achievement gaps between low-income and nonlow-income students. Districts across the state must also contend with rising portions of school budgets devoted to pensions, rather than actual services. Meanwhile, teacher recruitment and retention has become a statewide problem.

But rather than talking rationally about immigration or education, Turner’s game is to make a spectacle out of attacking children, even American children, ostensibly in the name of helping American children. Even at his worst, Donald Trump has had the sense to dress up his scapegoating of foreigners with talk of “terrorists” and “criminals,” not children. As convenient as boiling down solutions to building a wall or denying children an education may be, such ideas are, at best, misguided and, at worst, hateful nonsense.

Sal Rodriguez is a staff columnist and may be reached at: salrodriguez@scng.com