<p>I think we need to look at how we are processing immigration. What are the numbers in place? Are they realistic? Surely, people came in great masses through Ellis Island. I know my forebears did. Were there limits on how many we let into the country? My sense is that the big obstacle was just boat fare. </p>
<p>It would be interesting to learn the history of the quotas – I’m assuming we must have quotas now.</p>
<p>I have laundry fold. This is interesting though.</p>
<p>
I think your second post illustrates a fact that some people find disconcerting about this issue. Accidents of birth, be it place or time, are hard to blame on a child.</p>
<p>“Illegality” of immigration status is what is called “malum prohibitum” in law - it’s illegal because a law declares it so, as opposed to “malum in se” - things that are illegal because they are inherently evil - murder, theft, rape, etc. Dumping on kids because their residency status is “illegal” today even though the exact same physical status of our own forbears 100 years ago would have been perfectly OK and even encouraged seems a little unfair. They may be “illegal” - but they’re not evil.</p>
<p>Understand - things change, and control of immigration may be a perfectly appropriate change in law. Just harsh for the kids, and not their fault.</p>
<p>It is a shame that this entire thread became about illegal immigration rather than about districts balancing their budgets through enforcement of residency requirements. I live in an area that is next to a large and very poor school district. Our district requires copies of leases, mortgage documents and at least 2 utility bills every year. Anyone caught living out of district unless they are 2nd semester seniors. One wealthy district send an enforcement agent to suspected houses to count beds and request to see toothbrushes. Isn’t that worth discussing as well?</p>
<p>"It is a shame that this entire thread became about illegal immigration rather than about districts balancing their budgets through enforcement of residency requirements. "</p>
<p>the OP was the one who tied the two issues together, both her first post and again in post # 5. It was she who opened the “illegal immigration” can of worms…</p>
<p>I’d like to see the discussion remain on the original topic as well. I’m actually appalled at the way the woman in the article was treated. A felony? Jailed for ten days? There’s really no justifying that, imo. And it seems to me a lot of school districts are wasting money paying to physically verify student’s actual addresses. I get that it’s illegal (though I’m not entirely convinced it’s immoral), but I also get that we as a nation are not addressing the underlying issue: gross educational inequity. </p>
<p>Why not require multiple verifying address documentation as a requirement of enrollment, instead of jailing parents who are only acting out of a desperate desire to do what’s best for their children? Why wouldn’t it be enough to just send illegally enrolled students back to their own horrible schools once they’re discovered? Being literally trapped in an inadequate school environment is punishment enough; punishment in fact that lasts a lifetime! The real immorality is that so many seem to think it’s okay to condemn children to educational gulags, which more often than not, serve as one-way tickets to the permanent under-class. There are too many self-serving agendas involved America’s education system. I fear we as a national haven’t the courage, compassion, or commitment to honestly confront the problems we face. By the time it becomes abundantly obvious to everyone that our very national economic viability rides on solving these problems, it will be too late. But as long as ideologues can thump their chests in righteous indignation, it will all have been worth it!:rolleyes:</p>
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<p>I think that spidey was trying to make the point that our sense of national outrage over educational inopportunity is more media focused on the plight of this country’s illegal immigrants than it is over those of actual citizens, whose needs are often no less dire, and whose desire for decent educational opportunities are no less passionate. I didn’t get the impression that she was engaging in anti-illegal immigration rhetoric. Did I miss something?</p>
<p>Schools in California (unless they are on basic aid) receive a dollar amount to educate each student. Generally this amount does not cover the actual amount of the cost of the education. Poor schools get special extra funding from the federal government. Wealthier districts raise money, through donations/fairs/fundraisers to cover the extra cost of education.</p>
<p>Why am I mentioning this? Because, if the OP scenario of a mother placing a child in a school the funds that were used to educate her children may have taken away funding for children who were legitimately in the district. That is called theft. </p>
<p>My local school district has a HUGE percentage of illegal students. (As opposed to illegal aliens who do live in district.) When a child is caught, which is infrequent, (in the past) the parents were required to pay the district back for educating their children. </p>
<p>I would also like to point out the moral issue: Parents who sneak their children into districts, teach their children to lie. They lie everyday: about their address, their phone numbers etc. There are no play dates. I will never forget in kindergarten a child in my child’s class became confused during a writing lesson. The child began to write their “real” address, as opposed to the trumped up one. The child (and siblings) were forced to leave the district. (And to my knowledge it was not the teacher who turned the child in.)</p>
<p>The older kids were better liars.</p>
<p>I don’t know how anyone could watch a film like “Waiting for Superman” and not feel very keenly the terrible plight of impoverished parents – legally here or illegally immigrated here – stuck in lousy school systems. I’ve had a bit of taste of this. It is agony. You feel as if your child is getting lost in the great shuffle - that they are “have nots” in a world of “haves.”</p>
<p>I think Spidey does make a pretty good point that “residence” seems arbitrary when we determine what kids are in a school legally and what kids are there illegally.</p>
<p>The point is really the lousy schools. Fix those and the problem goes away. If only it weren’t such an intractable challenge.</p>
<p>I disagree with jailing the mom – the punishment doesn’t fit the crime here.</p>
<p>“I think a lot of Americans just don’t get why their own forebears came to America through the legal process and so many today apparently do not.”</p>
<p>Most Americans have no idea how their forebears came to America, except for the African forebears. If we did know, we’d find that the law was bent or smashed in many, many cases. Hidden health conditions that were barriers to entry, forged support commitments from fake American “relatives,” misrepresentations about which country one came from, etc. are part of our collective family history. My own grandfather could only get a visa to Cuba, so he went there for a couple of years and then got into the US as a “Cuban” immigrant. Nope.</p>
<p>It’s also hard to describe the Pilgrims and other early colonists as “legal immigrants” – the only legitimate local law was Penobscot, Wampanoag, etc. and they never gave permission for anybody to come here.</p>
<p>You can still oppose illegal immigration, of course, but we shouldn’t pretend that sneaking into the US is something new. It’s a big part of how many of us got here.</p>
<p>As I recall history, most of the immigrants came to this country to escape religious persecution in Europe, and now people need to leave the U.S. and return to Europe to escape religious persecution.</p>
<p>^ Uh. Are you familiar with the great wave of immigration at the beginning of the 20th century in this country? It was about economic opportunity.</p>
<p>^^Uh, maybe for your ancestors.</p>
<p>I’ve been a literacy tutor for more than 20 years (darn I’m old!), so I’m not anti-immigrant by any means. I’ve devoted thousands of hours and many dollars to helping them learn to read in English because I believe no one can have a decent life in America if they don’t have that skill. That said, it’s a very complicated thing nowadays. It used to be that my students were comprised of Spanish-speaking adults who were trying to make better lives for their families. They often assimilated in their own generation, definitely by their kids’. In the recent past, the population has come to skew heavily toward people from Mexico and Guatemala who not only don’t speak or read English, they don’t speak Spanish, either, and have no history of literacy in any language. You might think that’s not a big thing, but it is HUGE. The concepts involved in reading are very hard to teach to adults. I can’t imagine how this group will assimilate in several generations. It’s just not working out well and our educational system isn’t handling it at all. Sorry for derailing.</p>
<p>kluge:
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<p>Thank you, Kluge. Great extension of my point in the OP.</p>
<p>cartera
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<p>Yes, and let’s do the same thing for students whose parents chose to put them in a different school district. And in that instance, let’s also not turn teachers into law enforcement agents in order to catch them.</p>
<p>Zoosermom,</p>
<p>That is a fascinating post. Are those immigrants with no written language skills in any language generally here legally or do you know that status in your tutoring? Amazing.</p>
<p>Kluge:
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<p>Kluge, you are again correct. However, I struggle with why you, menlo, and others do not apply the very same reasoning and big-heartedness to the children of US citizens whose parents are trying to get them a better education. Where are your long, sympathetic posts on their behalf?</p>
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No, they aren’t here legally. I’m a law and order conservative, but I believe you’ve got to do the best you can with the situation you’re presented with. I have to say, though, that anyone working with this specific group of people who didn’t become outraged that the home countries pushed them out and left them to their own devices would really have no heart. The sad fact is that they aren’t going to realize the American dream and most never wanted to and don’t even know what that is. If you really talk to them over time, they wanted to stay home in their own communities but the home countries made that impossible. Whether one supports open borders or whatever, there has to be recognition that a lot of people are making out very well on the misery of some very needy people, and letting them stay as a permanent underclass where they don’t want to be and where they won’t excel is not a kind thing to do. There has to be some accountability for the home countries and the people getting rich on remittances.</p>
<p>MizzBee
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<p>This is exactly what we should be focusing on. Thank you for the redirection.</p>
<p>poetsheart
</p>
<p>Amen.</p>
<p>
No, you are right on target.</p>