I'm the son of two generations of immigrants on my father's side. My paternal grandparents, my father, and his younger brother came to this country legally during the late 1940s. They brought enough cash with them to purchase a small turn key business in Brooklyn. They had enough funds to support themselves while they got their new business organized. They did not come to this country expecting charity and most certainly did not ask for any government handouts.
My first experience with migrants was as a novice teacher down on the south Texas border. In 1982, Mexico saw rampant inflation. Mexicans flooded across the border. Although the US Supreme Court required public school districts to educate the children of these migrants, neither the Federal government or even the state of Texas provided any additional funding for the education of these children.
I was a 5th grade teacher at the time. I saw my projected enrollment go from 25 to 46 students. I didn't have enough desks or textbooks. We ran out of office supplies (paper, pencils, paper clips, tape, scissors, and glue) by December. Since the migrant kids had nothing, I had to purchase additional supplies out of pocket. As a first year teacher, I was only earning $16,000!
The crisis on the southern border has been well known to border states for several decades. Although lip service has been given by Congress to fixing the immigration crisis, nothing substantive has ever been done. While some people claim that the Texas state governor has been cruel and insensitive in bussing or flying migrants to northern cities; I believe that he's been trying to highlight problems that have gone largely unnoticed outside of our southern borders.
New York, Chicago, and other cities are now seeing what U.S. citizens and legal residents in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Florida (the latter of which has boat people from Haiti and Cuba) have had to experience for decades.
Our public schools (known as "state schools" for those of you in the UK), are funded by taxpayer dollars. While I am sympathetic to the plight of these migrants, the sad reality is that they are not tax payers. They're not even legal residents. They impose upon our district education budgets, our healthcare systems, and other public services without offering anything in return given the legal restrictions they currently face. They are now imposing upon all of the residents who live within the zoning area of a local high school in New York.
I know from my previous experience with virtual education that the average student does not do well in a virtual setting. Without sports and extracurricular activities to motivate them, a lot of students will slack off. Nationwide, our test scores went down during Covid. In our post-covid shut down world, student misbehavior has spiraled out of control. Academic mastery of basic skills is down. Truancy is up. None of these are good indicators as to what is likely to happen to many of the students at this school.
Part of the overall problem is the way the immigration laws have been set up in the United States. At this time, migrants who surrender to INS are processed and released pending a court hearing which could be YEARS away. During this time they are not allowed to work. It has therefore fallen upon state, county, municipal, and private entities to provide room, board, education, and health care to these people.
If our do nothing congress which only managed to pass 27 laws in 2023 versus the 200-600 laws that have previously been passed each year since 1789, got off their duffs; they could tackle the immigration crisis. One quick fix would be to grant temporary work visas to migrants who surrendered to INS and were then processed prior to being released. This would substantively reduce the economic burden that has otherwise been facing communities with large migrant populations.
Sadly, partisan politics has the left and the right at polar opposites. While these politicians posture for the media and work to get their daily or weekly sound bytes in, nobody seems willing to meet with the other side, to hammer out much needed legislation, and to compromise for the good of the nation.
In the meanwhile, communities with large groups of migrants are suffering.
10 Jan 2024, 12:16 pm
for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
