Reposted with permission of the American Federation of Teachers
http://www.aft.org
Where We Stand
by Albert Shanker
A False Economy
Should the children of illegal immigrants be turned away from public 
schools? Unless a controversial amendment to the new federal immigration 
bill is stripped out before the bill becomes law, that is exactly what 
states will be permitted to do.
You can't blame the states for feeling frustrated. The federal 
government has not controlled illegal immigration, and the states have 
been stuck with paying for the services illegal immigrants use.  But 
denying their children an education is no way to solve the problem.  
For one thing, it is probably unconstitutional. A similar Texas law was 
overturned by the Supreme Court in 1982, and a California law, which 
passed in 1994, has never been implemented and is currently mired in the 
courts.
 There's no question that adults who are undocumented aliens should be 
held accountable. But is it fair to make their children pay? They did 
not choose to break the law, and they can't go back home on their own.  
As the 1982 Supreme Court decision put it, punishing the children of 
illegal aliens for the wrongdoing of their parents is grossly unfair--it 
"does not comport with the fundamental conceptions of justice."
It is also unlikely to be effective. The amendment says that allowing 
undocumented kids to attend U.S. schools "promotes violations," but this 
is ridiculous. Does a Mexican worker leave the village where he was born 
and undertake a journey that is difficult and dangerous simply to enroll 
his kid in kindergarten in L.A.? These parents don't come here to take 
advantage of U.S. schools; they come to get jobs. Refusing to educate 
the kids will not make a dent in the number of illegal aliens entering 
the country, and it won't make the ones who are here pack up and go 
home. As a deterrent, it is worthless.
Supporters of the amendment admit there are problems, but they say that 
the biggest problem is the cost of educating the children of illegal 
aliens. However, the cost of not educating these children is even 
greater. Even if they never become citizens, they are likely to remain 
in this country--probably in the states and cities where they now live. 
The 1982 Supreme Court decision talks about the price children 
themselves will pay if they are denied an education: "The inability to 
read and write will handicap the individual deprived of basic education 
each and every day of his life." It also points out that the cost is 
passed on to the rest of us:
By denying these children a basic education, we...foreclose any 
realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way 
to the progress of our Nation. It is difficult to understand precisely 
what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and 
perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely 
adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and 
crime....[W]hatever savings might be achieved by denying these children 
an education, they are wholly insubstantial in light of the costs 
involved to these children, the State and the Nation.
These sentiments are being echoed today by a large number of 
people--Republicans as well as Democrats.  Although Robert Dole strongly 
favors the amendment refusing these children an education (he was on the 
other side in 1982), other prominent Republicans such as Senators Orrin 
Hatch and Alan Simpson, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, Governor George W. Bush, 
and former President George Bush say it is unwise and wrong. So do many 
law enforcement officials. If kids aren't educated in school, they'll be 
educated on the streets, where they will become victims or 
victimizers--and in many cases permanent charges on society. An article 
in the Wall Street Journal ("The Cops' View: Don't Close School to 
illegal Aliens," June 26, 1996) quotes Dade County, Florida, police 
chief Donald Warshaw, who says, "If you're a street juvenile with no 
direction...your whole morality is going to be based on what you learn 
on the streets. That's going to drive you to the commission of minor 
crimes, leading to the commission of major crimes."
If we are really serious about discouraging illegal immigration, a good 
way of doing it would be to issue ID cards showing that people are 
entitled to work. But this kind of proposal never gets anywhere because 
too many employers depend on the cheap labor that illegal immigrants 
provide. Supporting an amendment to refuse undocumented kids an 
education doesn't cost these people anything--at least not now--and it 
gives the impression that they are tough on illegal immigration.
The Supreme Court got it right in 1982. Fairness, common sense--and 
cost-benefit analysis--all tell us that it is wrong to deny the children 
of undocumented aliens a free public education. One way or another, most 
of them will be participants in our society. It is up to us to decide 
what kind of participants they will be.
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* Some days it's not worth chewing through the restraints.
--- Maximus 2.01wb
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