California Conservative

An excellent article.

AP reports: “While Congress and the White House wrangle over federal policy on illegal immigrants, states and cities are wrestling with ways to accommodate their children — most of them U.S.-born American citizens, all with full rights to public education.”

The debate is often bitter and unpredictable as politicians argue whether to expand or cut health care for these families, whether to bolster immigrant-oriented school programs, and whether to offer in-state college tuition rates to children of illegal immigrants.

Some politicians and organizations contend that initiatives tailored to assist these children only lure more illegal immigrants to the United States. Others argue that most of these several million children will be lifelong Americans, and are more likely to be productive adults if they receive support now.

“If you’ve got children already here, let’s assume they’re a future part of society and are worth the same investment as any other kids,” said Randy Capps, lead author of a recent Urban Institute report on young immigrant children.

The report estimated that 22 percent of all American children under 6 have immigrant parents. More than 90 percent of these children were born in the United States and automatically are citizens, and nearly one-third — 1.3 million — live with at least one undocumented parent, the report said.

Those seeking tougher measures against undocumented people want Congress and the federal courts to reconsider two long-standing national policies — a constitutional provision that bestows citizenship on any child born on U.S. soil and a 1982 Supreme Court ruling requiring public schools to accommodate any school-age child regardless of immigration status.

“That Supreme Court decision was probably the single most devastating decree that undermined immigration controls,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

While we support President Bush on most policies, the proposition of creating a “guest worker” program is a very slippery slope. Dangerous. Some of the major european countries went down this road decades ago, and have been dealing with the problems ever since.

We need to work on ways to better control our nation’s borders, not open them further.

RELATED: California Schools: English Not Required

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 4th, 2005 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Economy, Education, Homeland Security, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.