BALKANIZATION of AMERICA

Since the “discovery” of America, the United States has always been a nation of immigrants and continues to be so.  Compared to all other nations, the USA has a very liberal immigration policy.  In 2005 we allowed an astounding 1,122,373 legal immigrants permanent resident status.  There are about 3.5 million on the waiting list to enter legally.  The US probably accepts more legal immigrants than all the other industrial nations combined. 

For the most part, legal immigrants come to the United States because they want to become Americans.  Historically, immigrants integrated fairly quickly into American society, adopting our language and culture.  However, this is not what is happening now. 

As noted by ex-Colorado Governor Dick Lamn in an August 8, 2002 article, One Nation, One Tongue, published in the Rocky Mountain News (link gone but a version is archived here):

“The Southwest, and to a lesser extent, the whole nation, is in danger of backing into becoming a bilingual nation without debate or forethought.  This seems to me to be a grave mistake.  I look around the world in vain for an example of where bilingual nations live in peace with themselves.

One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way:

The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy.  Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon-all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence.  Pakistan and Cyprus have divided.  Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion.  France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.

A nation is much more than a place on a map.  It is a state of mind, a shared vision, and a recognition that we are all in this together.  A nation needs a common language as it needs a common currency.  You have to share something with your neighbors beside a zip code.  We need many things to tie us together, but one indispensable element must be that we all speak one common language.

…America has been successful because we have become one people.  There is a "social glue" of a common language, a shared history, uniting symbols that tie us together.  We live under a common flag, which we honor, and salute.

Nations need cultural ties that bind also.  That culture was not fixed in cement with the arrival of the Pilgrims, but is always changing and evolving.  We can remember Cinco de Mayo as we do Saint Patrick's Day and Octoberfest and we can buy more salsa than catsup without endangering our national soul.  But we must avoid becoming a Hispanic Quebec; we must stay one people and one nation.”

As seen by the May 1, 2006, demonstrations by people supporting illegal immigration, a notable portion of the Mexican illegal alien population and their supporters believe the American Southwest belongs to Mexico.  They hold an allegiance to Mexico above USA, and believe they are “owed” the same rights as citizens.  For an interesting take on the demonstrations, see Illegal Alien Anarchy - Connecting the Dots!

As noted in a Judicial Watch Special Report: NEW FRONTS IN THE IMMIGRATION BATTLE:

A National Review Online article, American Dhimmitude The road from amnesty states:

“This isn’t really about immigration, though - it’s about power.

What we’re seeing in the streets is a naked assertion of power by outsiders against the American nation.  They demand that we comply with their wishes and submit our immigration policies for their approval, and implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.  Far from being a discussion among Americans about the best way to regulate immigration, the illegal-alien marches have been marked by the will to power: ubiquitous Mexican flags, burning and other forms of contempt for the American flag, and widespread displays of blatant racial chauvinism and irredentism.”

Taking it further, there are a number of Mexican and Hispanic advocacy groups, such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), the National Council of La Raza (La Raza), and to a lesser extent, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which more or less support, advocate, or have a revolutionary agenda of conquering America's southwest, retaking the northern portion of mythical “Aztlan” from the gringo invaders and establishing a “Republica del Norte.” 

The “reconquista” philosophy is detailed in El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan.  Their ideas of culture, society, education, and community are devoted to the concept: “For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.”  and “El Plan de Aztlan is the plan of liberation!”  It is worth noting that these groups are active in the nation’s colleges, universities and even high schools.  How radical are these groups?  Read MECHA’s philosophy and Constitution, and spend some time on La Voz de Aztlan,  Action LA,  Mexica Movement,  Estudiantes Contemporáneos del Norte and  We Hate Gringos and see for yourself. 

Also, here is a video and some audio clips that you might find enlightening.

It is worth noting that the Meso-American empire of the Aztecs did not extend as far north as the “Aztlan” promoters suggest and there never was a homogenous people or nation in the area but many different Native American Indian tribes, usually warring with each other and competing over the land. 

Some of the major tribes in the northern portion of “Aztlan” in the USA were the Hokan, Shoshone, Penutian, Navajo, Hopi, and Apache.  In California alone there were various tribes with more than 100 distinct language groups.  All these people and tribes were not any more “Mexican” or part of “Aztlan” than the Iroquoi, Choctaw, Delaware, Seminole, or Eskimo for that matter.

For some more information see:

The ‘Reconquista’—Mexico’s Dream of ‘Retaking’ the Southwest

Paving the Way to Aztlán with Propaganda, Politics, Racism

Bits of History Suggest Utah Is Location of Mythic Aztlan

The Aztlan supporters also neglect the little fact that the US won the 1846 Mexican War but still paid Mexico $18.3 million dollars for the mostly unoccupied, arid and/or mountainous lands in the southwest.  The sum was more than the $15 million paid in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase for about the same amount of land, although, on balance, the lands of the Louisiana Purchase were much more hospitable and conducive for agriculture use.  They also ignore the fact that at the time there were as many gringos in the area as Mexicans and both were far outnumbered by various Native Americans, from whom most of the land was actually taken from.  If they want to be mad at somebody they should really be mad at Spain who originally took all the land, resulting in many of the people in what is now Mexico eventually becoming Hispanic.  That, of course, excludes many of Mexico’s indigenous people who are being discriminated against to this day by Hispanic Mexicans.

To find out more about the Mexican War as well as a 1911 text, American History, by David Saville Muzzey, Ph.D., along with the text of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

In any event, what are the results of such attitudes?  As noted in Mexican youth protest possible deportation of criminal parents:

“As the U.S. Senate deliberates this week on sweeping legislation to curb illegal immigration, protests were orchestrated around the country.  In Concord, California, youthful Mexican protestors paraded down Willow Pass Road around noon then moved over to Monument Boulevard, later returning to Willow Pass Road about 1:40 P.M. on their way downtown.  As seen in photo youthful demonstrators riding on cars flaunted the Mexican flag while others threw gang signs.  Concord police made no move to arrest or ticket protestors that violated motor vehicle safety codes, apparently fearing reprisals from Mexicans.”

An article in the San Bernadino Sun on the massive riot at Fontana High School contains telling quotes from school officials totally ignoring the balkanization problem.  Unfortunately, the article is no longer available but was captured and posted on Americans for Legal Immigration along with some rather interesting pictures.

Another advocacy group, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), says it’s racist to make English the country’s official national language and inhumane to build a border fence.  MALDEF also promotes free college tuition for illegal immigrants and lowering educational standards to accommodate new Latino migrants.

As reported in a Front Page article, Mexican Anti-Americanism in America,  MALDEF “is one of the leaders in this anti-American movement.  MALDEF is a supposed grass-roots organization that receives almost none of its money from the people it claims to support.  In reality, they are funded by the Ford Foundation and take their ideological guidance from the anti-American leftists of the National Lawyers Guild.” 

Did your local news miss this picture when they showed all the American flag waving illegal immigrants and their supporters demanding their rights?

As noted in Men with Two Countries:

“In early 2002 the Mexican counsel general in San Jose, California, Marco Antonio Alcazar, visited a group of largely Hispanic ten and eleven-year olds at a Salinas, California elementary school.  There he extolled the virtues of Americans claiming Mexican citizenship and gave the school a collection of books from the Mexican government, designed “to help students understand Mexican history and culture.”  In these books, the failure of Mexico – a nation secretly tormented by the fact that its northern neighbor has become the world’s leading society while it has remained a banana republic – is blamed on “American imperialism.”

What are the expected results of these growing anti-American attitudes?  How about: Mexican Separatist School Pushes Marxism, Anti-Americanism where it was reported:

“A school in Los Angeles, California, is using taxpayer money to push a radical separatist agenda to its students, according to evidence obtained by Judicial Watch through the California Public Records Act.  Academia Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People Academy) was ostensibly established to provide an alternative to traditional schools and better education options for Latinos.  Behind the façade, statements by the school’s president, Mexican radical Marcos Aguilar, prove that the school’s purpose is far more threatening.

Aguilar was a student radical at UCLA in the early 1990s, when he joined the reconquista-focused student group M.E.Ch.A, which features the slogan "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada," or, "For the Race, everything, for those outside the Race, nothing.”  He was involved in destroying a teacher’s lounge at UCLA in 1993 as part of a protest to force the University to create a Chicano Studies department.”

Why does this section mostly focus on the attitudes of Mexican illegal immigrants?  Because most illegal aliens currently being apprehended crossing the southern border are Mexican, as noted by the government’s own data as reported in a Judicial Watch report, U.S. Border Patrol Survey Analysis as detailed in the pie chart to the right.

While English is not the official language of the United States, it is the de facto official language and English fluency is a requirement for anybody to be successful in the USA.  Many illegal aliens have lived in the USA for years, even decades, and can not speak English.  They are able to live comfortably in their “little Mexico” or “little China town” communities and never integrate into American society.

Results?  The balkanization is becoming so great that English is becoming a minority language in some rather large enclaves. 

Did you know that English proficiency is one of the main requirements to become a citizen and that one must be a citizen to vote?  So then, why are ballots printed in foreign languages?  In Los Angeles County, ballots are translated into Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.  Due to the recent influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants, many other counties around the US routinely have ballots printed in Spanish.  If foreign language ballots are required, how did these people ever become citizens?  Or are we just simply allowing non-citizens to vote?

The answer to that question is federal law – the 1965 Voting Rights Act was amended to mandate bilingual ballots in counties where there are 10,000 voting-age citizens in one ethnic group or where 5% of voting-age citizens belong to any single non-English-speaking group. 

So much for the “English language proficiency” requirements of becoming a citizen. 

In an interesting aside, the Associated Press reported that 50% of Hispanics backed English measure, Proposition 103, on the 2006 Arizona ballot.  In fact, as reported in Hispanics help pass laws against illegals: “All four of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration propositions passed by wide margins - and, perhaps surprisingly, several surveys showed that between 40 percent and 50 percent of Hispanics voted for them.”  Evidently, like immigrants of the past, there are many Hispanics who want to integrate into American society and believe English is mandatory.

Most public schools are now teaching Spanish almost to the exclusion of all other foreign languages.  How much longer before we start printing road signs with Spanish subtitles like WalMart and some other stores are currently doing on their isle signs in some of their stores? 

As demonstrated throughout history, and more recently by Quebec and the Balkans, a nation needs a common language, culture, and heritage which is summed up in the motto of the United States: E Pluribus Unum ("Out Of Many, One"). 

Or as Michael Savage puts it, “Borders, Language, and Culture” are what make a nation.

Contrary to the common refrain that immigration, legal and illegal, contributes to “diversity” an October 8, 2006 article in the Financial Times, Study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity, reports:

“A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University’s Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists.

His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbor to the mayor.

...When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust.  “They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof Putnam.  “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.”

How can the Balkanization be avoided?  Not by Professor Putnam’s ideas of changing society but by President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1907 ideas on who the immigrant should be and what the responsibilities of the immigrant are:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.  But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American.  There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.  We have room for but one flag, the American flag.  We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.  And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Then there are Thomas Jefferson’s 1787 thoughts on immigration, from Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 8, The number of its inhabitants?:

“…But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners?  It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together.

Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.  Every species of government has its specific principles.  Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe.  It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies.

Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants.  They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another.  It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children.  In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation.  They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.  I may appeal to experience, during the present contest, for a verification of these conjectures.

But, if they be not certain in event, are they not possible, are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience 27 years and three months longer, for the attainment of any degree of population desired, or expected?  May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?

Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom?  If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.  If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements….”

A recent opinion piece in the Dallas News, Can We Bridge the Black-Latino Divide, echoes the growing problem: “As the debate over illegal immigration has intensified, so, it seems, have the tensions between Latinos and Blacks.  Dallas school board meetings are a microcosm of what many urban communities, especially those with large influxes of Latino immigrants, are experiencing.” 

While the author uses the political correct “Latino immigrants” the problem is actually with the Latino illegal aliens, especially those displacing poor Blacks on the economic ladder of success.  Note that the tension is increasing the division between Blacks and all Latinos and damaging the relations between Blacks and Latinos – another unintended consequence of allowing illegal immigration.  

As reported in Examine Mexico's Real Intent Before Reforming Immigration:

“In May, 2005, the BBC reported: "The Latinization of California is nothing short of a revolution.  California will become a predominantly Spanish-speaking state within the next few years.  And, as the majority population, there is really no need, or incentive, for them to assimilate into mainstream American society as their predecessors have always done.  Whether Latinos then decide to push for greater autonomy or to seek a political agenda of their own with closer ties to Mexico and Central America is very much up for grabs."  In 2001, the pro-immigration New California Media reported that Mexico "continues to mourn the loss of half of its territory to the U.S. in the 19th Century."

Mexico is pushing hard for amnesty and various benefits for millions of illegal Mexican migrants.  Once naturalized, amnestied migrants could add tens of millions of people and future voters to the U.S. through births here and through immigration of extended families. U.S.-born children, even of illegal immigrants and guest workers, are American citizens and could vote at 18.  Furthermore, in 2001 Ernesto Ruffo Appel, then-border czar of Mexico, reportedly advised Mexican migrants: "If the border patrol agent finds you, try again."”

How come the BBC gets it and our MSM, President and Congress don’t?

As noted in an Investor Business Daily article, Los Angeles, Mexico (archived here):

“Few caught the significance of the words of then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo before the National Council of La Raza in Chicago on July 27, 1997: "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders."  (emphasis added)

…President Vicente Fox repeated this line during a 2001 visit to the U.S., when he called for open borders and endorsed Mexico's new dual citizenship law.

A June 2002 Zogby poll found that the majority of Mexican citizens agree with him and hold the view that, since the Southwest U.S. really belongs to Mexico, they do not need permission to enter.  The poll found that 58% of Mexicans agreed with the statement, "The territory of the United States' Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico."”

An interesting aspect of the balkanization of America is the often playing of the “race card” whenever the discussion of illegal immigration comes up.  According to most Latino advocacy groups, just being against illegal immigration is racist.  This attitude is best expressed by Alfredo Gutierrez, political consultant, "We call things racism just to get attention.  We reduce complicated problems to racism, not because it is racism, but because it works."  Quoted in The ProEnglish Advocate, 1st quarter, 2002 as reported by Richard de Uriarte, in The Phoenix Gazette, March 14, 1992. 

This attitude is carried out in the Latino “rights” groups mentioned earlier and by other such groups such as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund where every perceived injustice is because of “racism.”  In actual fact it is these very groups that are often acting in a racist manner.

"Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada!"  which means "For the Race, everything, for those outside the Race, nothing!” 

Such attitudes do not contribute to an indivisible country and homogenous society and are not in keeping with the official motto of the United States: E Pluribus Unum ("Out Of Many, One").  While the motto was originally intended to reflect the unity of the various states, over the years, as the nation grew, it also came to reflect the unity of all the various peoples that make up the country.

Such attitudes do, however, greatly contribute to the Balkanization of the USA and are part of the collateral damage of illegal immigration.

The canary in the mine is found in our inner cities and prisons as noted in Illegal immigration sparks 'race war' in cities, prisons.

In addition to the gang problems and the racist attitudes held by many illegal aliens, the language barrier creates greater balkanization and the job displacement is fueling resentment, especially between Blacks and Hispanics.  This has been building for some time but is now reaching a boiling point.  As noted in a 1999 article, Hispanics, Blacks find futures entangled Immigration, by Martin Kasindorf and Maria Puente, USA TODAY:

“With Latinos due to surpass Blacks as the nation's largest minority group by 2005, the two groups could be in for an uncomfortable period of jostling over primacy, particularly in California, Texas and New York, where large numbers of Latinos and Blacks live side by side.

"As the Hispanic population grows, as it remembers the predominant place in the racial dialogue Blacks traditionally held and remembers its feelings of exclusion, it's going to be hard for them to modulate their feelings of potency from numbers," veteran Black civil rights leader Roger Wilkins says. "That's going to cause real stress with Blacks."

Already, frictions sporadically flame into turf wars over jobs, schools, housing and other issues.

….Dallas School Board meetings during the 1997-98 school year degenerated into near-brawls between Hispanics and Blacks over filling the post of school superintendent. The warring factions recently settled on

Bill Rojas, a Black man of Puerto Rican descent. People on both sides say tension over controlling the schools is still just below the surface. Blacks hold more teaching and administrative jobs than Hispanics, though the student count is 50.3% Latino, 39% Black.”

For some insight on where this is heading, note the 1/1/07 commentary “Believe it or Not in America in 2007 There’s A Forbidden Zone Where Blacks Risk Death If They Enter In” by Earl Hutchinson, a Black American (his race is only pertinent to put the commentary into proper perspective) political analyst and social issues commentator, in the The Hutchinson Political Report where he comments:

“There’s no physical sign, barrier, or even a chalk line that marks the zone where a Black can’t enter at the risk of grave harm.  But the zone is there, and Blacks know that if they enter it they can be beat, shot at, or killed.  The twist is that the forbidden line is not in a redneck, backwoods, and Deep South town during the rigid and violent Jim Crow segregation era.  The bigger twist is that the Klan, Neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and bikers didn’t establish the racially restrictive zone.  Purported Latino gang members established it.  The forbidden zone is in a small, mixed ethnic bedroom community in Los Angeles.  The year is 2007, not 1947.

A Black family that recently fled the community in fear for their lives bluntly told a reporter that they left because Blacks there are scared to death.  In the past year, the hate terror escalated to the point where Blacks tell tormenting tales of being harried when they leave their homes, or their children walk to school.  They say that they are forbidden to go into a park, and a convenience store.

…The easy explanation for the hate terror is that the perpetrators are bored, restless, disaffected, jobless, untutored, violence prone gang members, and the violence is a twisted response to racism and deprivation.  The attacks no doubt are deliberately designed by the gang hate purveyors to send the message to Blacks that this is our turf, and you’re an interloper.  But despite arrests, police crackdowns, gang injunctions, assorted anti-violence marches and rallies, and community peace efforts, the Black and Latino low intensity battle has shown no sign of abating.

Then there’s the vehemence of the racial hate.  The dirty, and painful secret is that Blacks and Latinos can be racist, maybe even more racist than whites, toward each other.  It’s easy to see why.  Many Latinos fail to understand the complexity and severity of the Black experience.  They frequently bash Blacks for their poverty or type them as clowns, buffoons and crooks.  Some routinely repeat the same vicious anti-Black epithets as racist whites.  The color complex reinforces the notion that Blacks are a racial and competitive threat, and any distancing, ostracism, avoidance, and even violence is a rational response to keep Blacks at arms length.

On the other side, some Blacks feed the same myths and racial stereotypes, and bash Latinos as anti-Black, and violence prone, gangsters that are a menace, as well as ethnic and economic competitors.  The warped misconceptions and fears have so far trumped the loud calls and efforts by Black and Latino activists and many residents for unity and peace.

For some additional insights on the growing problem, see the report The Rift Evidence of a divide between Blacks and Hispanics mounting from the “illegal alien friendly” Southern Poverty Law Center as well as the following articles:

·  Los Angeles School Brawls Expose Black-Latino Tension,

·  Black, Hispanic Activists Strive for Unity in Los Angeles,

·  Ethnic Media Try to Defuse Ethnic Tensions in L.A,  

·  Rising Black-Latino clash on jobs.  

For additional information on the balkanization problem see the Full Disclosure Network video  Hispanic Minuteman-cop Fights Corruption and Illegal Immigration  and a 1999 article by Professor Maria Chang of the University of Nevada Reno, entitled Multiculturalism, Immigration, and Aztlan.

Balkanization – more collateral damage to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.

EDUCATION

Many legal immigrants to the US are highly educated – something that is highly desired in an immigrant.  In contrast, most illegal aliens are very poorly educated.  The average education levels for Mexican fathers, a large component of the illegal alien population, and their U.S.-born children are at the bottom of the educational spectrum. 

Uneducated immigrants, regardless of heritage or ethnicity, who have little interest in education, generally end up with poorly educated children.  While the averages are already bad, the education gap between Mexican and non-Mexican natives is far larger than the simple averages would indicate. 

 

 

       

 

Charts from: Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States: A Book of Charts

As noted in Children, Grandchildren Of Mexican Immigrants Fail To Close The Education Gap:

·   45% of all non-Mexicans have a post HS degree

·   5.4% of first generation Mexicans have a post HS  degree

·   9.3% of second generation Mexicans have such degrees

·   8.5% of third generation Mexicans have such degrees

·   9.6% of fourth generation Mexicans have such degrees

“So even in the fourth generation - after at least fifty to sixty years of "assimilation," it appears that the descendents of Mexican immigrants display scant interest in higher education.  This is a stunning finding.  It belies the expectation that college-based affirmative action programs would eventually level the education playing field.”

The long lasting refusal of Hispanic immigrants to embrace education is also evident at the bottom end of the educational spectrum:

·               14.6% of first-generation Hispanics are High School dropouts – versus 4.6% of first generation non-Hispanics

·               15.9% of second-generation Hispanics are High School dropouts – versus 8.2% of second generation non-Hispanics

Excluding the additional costs for subsidized school feeding programs, the average cost of educating children, including the children of illegal aliens, in the nation’s public schools is about $7,524 per child per year.  For a K-12 education, that is almost $100,000 per child. 

A very high percentage of illegal aliens’ children do not speak English.  In the 2004/5 school year in Colorado, 114,857 students, almost 15% of the state’s K-12 public school student population, were English language learners.  The state does not ask about citizenship, so the cost of educating children of illegal aliens in Colorado public schools is unknown but somewhere between $500 million and $1.2 billion per year, depending on whose numbers you want to use for the number of children of illegal aliens that are in school.  Thus, in Colorado, just the education costs for the children of illegal aliens is somewhere between $270 and $650 per household, an amount that would buy a lot of lettuce, even at twice the cost per head. 

Nationally, there are an estimated 5.1 million ESL students speaking 145 languages.  80% of ESL students speak Spanish.  If 90% of the ESL students are children of illegal aliens then the education costs for children of illegal aliens is about $34.5 billion per year.

Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools Into the Red notes that “The estimated costs of educating illegal aliens and their children exceed 28.6 billion dollars in 2004 alone.”  The report further notes:

A look at the top ten highest state expenditures provides a stark illustration of the trade-offs for accommodating large-scale illegal immigration:

In California, the $7.7 billion spent annually educating the children of illegal immigrants - nearly 13% of the overall 2004/5 education budget could:

·   cover the education budget shortfall for the 2004-05 school year, estimated by the Legislative Analyst Office at $6 billion and nearly cover the $2 billion reduction this year from the Proposition 98 formula. 

·   or the remaining $1.7 billion could pay the salaries of about 31,000 teachers and reduce per student ratios, or furnish 2.8 million new computers - enough computers for about half of the state’s students.

·   prevent educational shortfalls estimated at $9.8 billion over the past four years that have impacted on “…class size, teacher layoffs, shorter library hours and fewer counselors, nurses, custodians and groundskeepers.” (Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2005)

In Texas, the $3.9 billion spent annually educating the children of illegal immigrants could:

·   cover more than the $2.3 billion shortfall identified by the Texas Federation for Teachers for such things as textbooks and pension contributions.  

·   make Texas’ salaries for teachers more competitive by national standards, thereby reducing costly attrition, and recruit the 5,000 new teachers needed each year.

See the report for the other eight.

Almost all communities have schools that are being greatly affected by illegal aliens.  While the majority of illegal aliens congregate in the bigger cities, rural and even high-end enclaves are also being affected.  As an example, in Summit County, Colorado, home to 4 major ski areas and the high-end vacation towns of Breckenridge, Dillon, Frisco, and Silverthorne, the ESL student population increased from 20 students in 1994 to 525 in 2003 – an increase of 2,625% in just ten years.  Summit County may be able to increase taxes to come with the extra $3.8 million to pay for educating all the new ESL students but many poorer counties can’t.

While the costs of educating children of illegal immigrants are crushing the primary and secondary school budgets, many institutions of higher education are competing to get illegal immigrants.  As noted in a recruiting seminar, Helping Undocumented Students Navigate the College Pipeline:

“Based on three years of research, this webinar will offer up-to-date information about policies and practices to provide undocumented immigrant students with greater access to higher education.  The session will include information about state and federal policies that shape college access for undocumented students and offer best practices for helping undocumented students persist through the college admissions, college attendance, and financial aid acquisition processes.”

The poor education level of illegal aliens dooms most to poverty level jobs in the USA and prevents them from climbing the economic ladder of success.  This factor has related social costs that are enormous – a subject covered in following sections. 

However, the direct cost of educating the children of illegal aliens is about $35 BILLION a year.  You can add in another billion or two for the costs of supplemental feeding programs and other welfare benefits administered through the schools but which are off the “education costs” in the school budgets.

Most illegal aliens are working in lower paying jobs are often sharing houses and apartments with other families.  Most pay little or no state or federal income taxes and, because they have low incomes and frugal lifestyles, they pay little sales taxes as well.  The local and state taxes illegal aliens pay, comes no where near paying for the education costs of their children.  The difference is picked up by the tax paying public.  Since many localities fund public schools through real estate taxes, this often means escalating taxes which put an enormous burden on elderly home owners living on fixed incomes.

This has added more collateral damage costs to the “victimless crime” that taxpaying Americans must shoulder in order to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.

 

 

www.congressandimmigration.com