LA RAZA DEMANDS SPECIAL EDUCATION FOR ILLEGALS - Gringos Pay!

ON EDUCATING THE ILLEGALS: Ever wonder why Mexico doesn’t educate their own people?
Worse public schools. America’s public schools already suffer under severe budget constraints, causing large class sizes, textbook shortages, and leaky ceilings. Yet, US law requires that all illegals receive free public education K-12. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that this costs $7.4 billion dollars each year.

The birthrate among illegals is more than double that of legal US residents. The Pew Hispanic Center calculates that within seven years, the children of immigrants, legal and illegal, will account for one in nine school-age children in the US. The Urban Institute estimates that already, 15% of all school children in California are illegals, many of whom speak little English. These students are usually mainstreamed in classes with native English speakers. This means that teachers must slow down instruction, denying native English speakers their right to an
appropriate-level education.
The challenge is even greater because not all those students’ native language is Spanish: For example, in my nearest major school district, San Francisco, it would not be unusual to find a class that had native speakers of Chinese, Russian, Tagalog, Spanish, and English. Imagine the challenge of trying to educate them all. If your child were in that class, would you be confident that he or she would receive a quality education?
Immigrant children pose less obvious challenges to the schools. Barbara Nemko, the Napa County Superintendent of Schools, points out examples: “Unless she speaks Spanish, we have a hard time justifying hiring an even an excellent teacher… So much of our staff development
time must now be allocated to dealing with the needs of ‘English Language Learners.’ Our immigrant kids also come to school with serious health problems that we must address. For example, dentists now visit our high-immigrant schools providing dental services at no
cost to the student.”

Immigrant advocacy groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and La Raza have additionally burdened the public schools by demanding that schools provide special controversial programs such as bilingual education, in which students are taught in Spanish for much of the day. Bilingual education programs exist throughout California even
after longitudinal research has not demonstrated their effectiveness and after a voter-approved an on those programs.

MALDEF and La Raza also pushed through legislation that allows, in 19 states, illegal immigrants to not only attend any public university in those states, but to pay in-state tuition, while legal residents of neighboring states must pay the out-of-state rate which is three to eight times more. It’s quite an injustice, for example, that a legal resident can be denied admission to taxpayer-supported Berkeley and must attend community college so an illegal foreign national can attend Berkeley—at in-state rates! And often, because of reverse discrimination admission
policies, the illegal is admitted with B grades while the rejected legal resident may have Agrades.