CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A new North Carolina law will allow illegal immigrants to volunteer in their child’s school using a passport or consulate ID for required criminal background checks.

Previously, volunteers were required to provide a social security number and state-issued driver’s license to help out in schools, which prohibited undocumented parents from getting involved, Fox 46 reports.

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The change will give illegal immigrants a means of participating in supervised activities with students, but will prohibit them from going on class field trips or providing one-on-one tutoring.

“The question really becomes, can we do an adequate background check with just a passport ID. If it’s reasonably assured that they can find what they need to find through a passport for a background check, that’s a great start. But there has to be a conversation about limitations to that,” Curtis Watkins, spokesman for the Mecklenburg Republican Party, told the news site.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district runs nightly background checks on 107,000 registered volunteers, and previously required a social security number and valid state ID. The graduation rate for Latino students in the district lags about 20 percentage points behind white students, 71 percent versus 91 percent, and district officials hope the change will encourage more undocumented parents to participate and help to close the gap, the Charlotte Observer reports.

“Before this, I wasn’t able to go into my child’s classroom and read to the students. Now, I can participate in a way that helps my child and other children,” Charlotte parent Estela Hernandez told the news site. “This is truly, truly important because when my child falls behind in school, I can be there to see it and I can learn how to help.”

Parent Maura Trejo told Fox 46 essentially the same thing.

“It was very frustrating. I wanted to be with him and he asked me many times. Mommy, can you be there at lunch to help with the teacher? I said, no I can’t,” Trejo said. “He didn’t understand.”

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“It means higher graduation rates. It means higher grades because it means parents will be able to get more involved and actually be there for the kids in school,” said Hector Vaca, spokesman for Action NC, one of the groups that advocated for the change.

“It’s a lot easier to be able to get a passport,” he told WBTV. “Because it is offered by your home government.”

The change is a good start, but Action NC and others are pushing for more access and are working with law enforcement to incorporate fingerprinting to expand opportunities for illegal immigrant parents in schools.

“What we want is nothing less than full access for these parents,” Vaca said. “They are hard working. They are honest.”

Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James isn’t convinced.

“There is no way to verify that the passport or documents illegals are providing to CMS are in fact genuine and actually belong to them,” he told the Observer in September. “Since they routinely use fake social security numbers and other forms of ID, how can anyone verify that the documents they are providing are real?

“No doubt the school board would like an easy fix … but if they do a half-baked job with the background check they will put all CMS children at risk to predators,” he said.