Sunday, August 13, 2006
Who's tracking our 51st state?
Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants living and working in the United States vary, but I've heard the figure 12 million, or more than the population of the state of Ohio, a state which itself has many illegals working in construction, food service, landscaping, and tourism/leisure, jobs that Americans will definitely do.
But because they aren't in one state, no one tracks what our 51st state is doing. Since 1982, the states have been required to provide education for children of illegals, whether or not they were born here. When the GAO was charged with finding out the costs of educating these children, its researchers discovered no one was tracking this. Read the report (pdf) here.
"Of the 22 state governments we surveyed, only 3 provided information on the costs of schooling illegal alien children. Seventeen states said that they did not have such information, and 2 states (Florida and Georgia) did not respond."
Some states used a variety of figures to estimate the costs:
"We did not evaluate the estimation procedures these states used. The annual cost estimates that they provided to us ranged from $50 million to $87.5 million in Pennsylvania to $932 million to $1.04 billion in Texas."
Some states said it was illegal to track the cost of educating illegal aliens, certainly a very conservative view of that federal mandate; another district in the southwest actually said they had Mexican children, living in Mexico, who crossed the border to attend in their district! Is that a liberal or conservative method of tracking illegals?
"Of the 17 states that said they did not have information on the costs of schooling illegal alien children, 6 indicated that it would be illegal to ask about children’s immigration status. Three of these 6 mentioned the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision we cited earlier. . ."
The Census Bureau is no help--they don't record the legal status of foreign born persons in the US, but keep in mind, the Census counts residents, not citizens, so in planning for government give-aways, it is to the locals' advantage to pump up their figures with Census Bureau stats. And although the writers of this GAO report don't use this word, the DHS figures for number of illegals are really screwy--their word is "problematic."
Three years ago the Census Bureau said it was developing a research plan aimed at eventually developing new information on the population of illegal immigrants residing in the United States, according to this GAO report. I won't hold my breath. Besides, even this aborted plan doesn't include tracking the educational costs of illegals' children. I support the Bush Administration on many things but they are beholden to business interests who want cheap(er) labor, powerful unions who need new members, a minority group flexing its political muscle, greedy pols who want someone to pay into our growing healthcare costs, and distractions of a foreign war to do much about our own porous borders.
This issue alone is costing him a lot of support among his Republican base.
But because they aren't in one state, no one tracks what our 51st state is doing. Since 1982, the states have been required to provide education for children of illegals, whether or not they were born here. When the GAO was charged with finding out the costs of educating these children, its researchers discovered no one was tracking this. Read the report (pdf) here.
"Of the 22 state governments we surveyed, only 3 provided information on the costs of schooling illegal alien children. Seventeen states said that they did not have such information, and 2 states (Florida and Georgia) did not respond."
Some states used a variety of figures to estimate the costs:
"We did not evaluate the estimation procedures these states used. The annual cost estimates that they provided to us ranged from $50 million to $87.5 million in Pennsylvania to $932 million to $1.04 billion in Texas."
Some states said it was illegal to track the cost of educating illegal aliens, certainly a very conservative view of that federal mandate; another district in the southwest actually said they had Mexican children, living in Mexico, who crossed the border to attend in their district! Is that a liberal or conservative method of tracking illegals?
"Of the 17 states that said they did not have information on the costs of schooling illegal alien children, 6 indicated that it would be illegal to ask about children’s immigration status. Three of these 6 mentioned the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision we cited earlier. . ."
The Census Bureau is no help--they don't record the legal status of foreign born persons in the US, but keep in mind, the Census counts residents, not citizens, so in planning for government give-aways, it is to the locals' advantage to pump up their figures with Census Bureau stats. And although the writers of this GAO report don't use this word, the DHS figures for number of illegals are really screwy--their word is "problematic."
Three years ago the Census Bureau said it was developing a research plan aimed at eventually developing new information on the population of illegal immigrants residing in the United States, according to this GAO report. I won't hold my breath. Besides, even this aborted plan doesn't include tracking the educational costs of illegals' children. I support the Bush Administration on many things but they are beholden to business interests who want cheap(er) labor, powerful unions who need new members, a minority group flexing its political muscle, greedy pols who want someone to pay into our growing healthcare costs, and distractions of a foreign war to do much about our own porous borders.
This issue alone is costing him a lot of support among his Republican base.
# posted by Norma : 8/13/2006 09:24:00 AM
