"Something will have to give," says political scientist Jay Bernstein, a former Cal State
professor. "Either taxes will have to rise or spending priorities must change or many thousands
of students will soon find themselves outside the college campuses they've long anticipated they
would almost automatically attend."
Washington Times, "Campuses brace for student avalanche," December
26, 1997.
IMMIGRANTS ARE OVERWHELMING SCHOOL SYSTEMS
Schools are already overcrowded; there are six million more children in school now than 10
years ago. By 2002, the school population will grow from 49 million to 55 million--because of
immigration.
Without school-age immigrants (about 250,000 a year) and the children of immigrants (about 725,000 a year), school enrollment would not be rising at all. For example, in Miami in 1995, foreign students streamed into the public school system at a rate of 120 a day. In 1995, New York City had to create a special high school in Queens just for the children of immigrants. In San Francisco, where one in every three public school student is in a "limited English" program, a separate Newcomer High School has been created for immigrants. Nationwide, the number of students with limited English has doubled to 3.5 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
California offers a stark example of what is happening. The state's immigrant fueled demographic change has serious effects on its public education system. About 1.3 million public school students speak a foreign language and have limited English skills. Native Spanish speakers account for more than 1 million of them.
According to Kenji Hakuta a Stanford education professor, "It's a sad situation for schools right now. We've got extremely scarce resources. We have people fighting over bread crumbs. And we have groups with equally strong and important needs for which society isn't willing to provide. When the stakes are like this, the fight only gets more and more vicious."
California's funding for limited-English students has steadily increased to $319 million today
from $108 million in 1986. Funding for low-income students [often blacks] decreased to $64
million from $93 million while the number of low-income students grew to 1.9 million from 1
million. The number of students who primarily speak a language other than English went to 1.3
million from 514,000. Another $50 million in federal funding went directly to California's
bilingual education programs. The prospect is for tensions over educational resource allocations
between immigrants and poor native-English speakers to get much worse as the Latino student
population rises to 50% of total student enrollment by 2005 (compared to today's 39%).
(San Francisco Examiner, "Competing needs of Latino, black students
put pressure on scarce funds," May 14, 1997.)
From 1990 to 1996 the share of California public school students considered "limited English Proficient (LEP)," jumped to nearly 25% from just over 18%. The share of students 'graduating' out of LEP instruction each year into regular courses dropped from 10.5% in 1986 to 6.5% in 1996. This situation is expected to get worse.
What is proposed to deal with this trend? California plans to offer the national math test in
Spanish in 1999 for eighth-graders. "We may need to give increased time for students who lack
English skills to take tests. We will need to modify tests by removing the more difficult
vocabulary, and resort to more qualitative assessment by making observations of kids and
looking at portfolios," according to Stanford professor Hakuta. The question is, will this prepare
them for college? According to Delia Pompa, U.S. Dept. of Education bilingual education
director, "What we must keep in mind is that if the kids don't graduate and go to college we'll
have a population ill-prepared to enter the work world and conduct themselves as responsible
citizens."
(San Francisco Examiner, "21st-century test for schools: Millions of
students with limited English," May 15, 1997.)
EDUCATING IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IS COSTLY
Special programs (such as English as a Second Language--ESL, can cost fifty percent more than
regular schooling. The estimated cost to the American taxpayer for the education of immigrants'
children is over $30 billion a year ($20 billion for K-12, $6.3 billion for higher education, and $4
billion for ESL programs). Florida, for example, has over 140,000 students who need ESL, and
in 1994 paid $517 million on education for alien students. The money spent on these special
programs means less money for educating today's American youth.
FOREIGN STUDENTS TAKE PLACES OF AMERICAN UNDERGRADUATES
There are over 452,000 foreign students in American colleges; 75,000 of them receive financial
assistance from their colleges. But they also take money from the government: between 1988
and 1992, alien college students received $1.8 billion in federal Pell grants for higher education.
All of this money might have gone to aid the education of American citizens.
FOREIGN STUDENTS TAKE PLACES OF AMERICANS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
There is a glut of science Ph.D.s coming out of our graduate schools (about 22 percent more than
are needed); more than a third of them are foreign students. Most of the increase in Ph.D.s is due
to aliens, an estimated 50 percent of whom remain in the country. By flooding the job market,
they depress working wages for all "post-docs". These foreign students are particularly attractive
to universities and employers when they can use them to accomplish affirmative action
goals.
Similar displacement of American students occurs in the nation's medical schools. Foreign graduates of our medical schools who remain in the United States and others who enter from abroad under our immigrant preference system have contributed to a medical profession about 50 percent larger in numbers than needed.
In short, much of our scarce education resources are being used to educate immigrants; with immigration reform and lower levels of immigration we would have more resources to devote to the education of American children.
RISING COMPETITION FOR UNIVERSITY ADMISSION IS DUE ALSO TO
POPULATION INCREASE
Although the nation's universities educate a much larger share of foreign students than do U.S.
elementary and secondary schools, this is not the only reason for increased competition for
limited university admissions. The problem is also accounted for by the wave of youth in the
general population approaching college age. The U.S. Department of Education refers to this
generation as the baby-boom echo. This, however, ignores the fact that the number of college
age youth would be growing even without the baby-boom echo. Our overall population is
growing faster than that of any other industrialized country, and the major factor contributing to
that growth is immigration.
The Rand Corp. think-tank and the Univ. of California forecast an increase in California alone of
2.5 million additional university students over the next six years. As a result, the California State
Univ.-Northridge recently took the step of announcing that it will no longer accept students
transferring in as freshmen and sophomores from community colleges next year.
Washington Times, "Campuses brace for student avalanche," December
26, 1997.
The influence of immigration in contributing to the population growth in California may be seen in the U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released in December 1997. The Census Bureau estimated that California's population grew by 410,655 between July 1996 and July 1997. Of this increase, 231,325 was accounted for by net international migration, i.e., by immigration from abroad minus those person moving abroad (not included are the children born in the United States to immigrants). So, the population increase from immigration (narrowly defined) was over 56 percent of the state's population increase.
POLICY ISSUES
There are three basic policy issues concerning education and immigration: education of illegal
alien children; the volume of legal immigration and the strain it puts on the schools and public
budgets; and the admission of foreign students to U.S. universities as a route to immigration
status. The issue of the volume of immigration and its strains on public funds is discussed
above. The issue of education for illegal aliens is discussed below.
EDUCATING ILLEGAL ALIENS
The relationship of immigration and education has recently become a heated policy issue because
of the proposal to deny taxpayer-financed education to illegal alien children. This provision first
surfaced in California's Proposition 187, which passed in 1994 by a strong majority.
Implementation of the provision has been frozen, however, by a federal judge. Opponents of the
measure argue that it is unconstitutional, citing the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision
striking down a Texas law that denied education to illegal alien children. That decision centered
on the view that the state had enacted an immigration-related law, whereas the federal
government, which had not acted on the issue, has exclusive jurisdiction.
The issue was taken up in the 104th Congress and a similar initiative was proposed by Rep. Elton Gallegely as an amendment to the omnibus immigration reform bill (H.R. 2202). The provision passed by the full House of Representatives but was eliminated by the conference committee--because no vote had been taken in the Senate on this issue. But the measure was again passed as a separate bill in the House, and will likely arise again in the 105th Congress. One version of the proposal would deny public education to children who are illegal aliens themselves, rather than all children of illegal aliens (which would include some U.S.-born, citizen children).
(Sources: "The Future of the Ph.D.", Science October 6, 1995; "The
Unfair Burden", Florida Governor's Office, March 1994; The Center for Educational Statistics;
A Tale of Ten Cities, Bouvier and Garling, FAIR 1995; the U.S. Department of
Education; The Dallas Morning News, Nov. 24, 1996: The Net Costs of
Immigration: The Facts, the Trends, and the Critics, Dr. Donald Huddle, Oct. 1996.
FAIR 5/97
