Thread: How Schools Handle Illegal Immigrants

How Schools Handle Illegal Immigrants
How Undocumented Students Attend Schools


Reported by Kurt Ludlow



Police are still looking for the 18-year-old high school student who they say went on a BB gun shooting spree last week in Bexley, Columbus and Whitehall.



But while police search, others are wondering how the young man ?who is also an undocumented immigrant -- has been able to attend high school in Columbus for the past three years.



Victor Gallegos and four juveniles are charged with shooting out the windows of nearly 100 cars. Victor wasn't born in the United States, but he has spent most of his life here. He is an illegal immigrant living with family members in a Columbus trailer park while attending Walnut Ridge High School.



Nobody knows how many other undocumented students attend schools in Ohio because there's nothing any school can do to keep them out.



The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that states are prohibited from denying a free public education to undocumented immigrant children. Part of the reasoning was that schools are not the agents for enforcing immigration law and that the cost of educating these students is not an acceptable reason to deny them an education.



The director of the Ohio Commission on Hispanic Affairs says it is a just decision.



"It's unfortunate that the system is the way it is and we have undocumented and illegal immigration,?Ezra Escudero said. æ?ƒut two wrongs don't make a right. And to deny education to these kids that didn't choose to come here would compound an already grave situation."


Schools are prohibited from asking students about their immigration status. And even if they know a student is in the country illegally, they do not report them.

As for Victor Gallegos, once he is caught, it will be up to U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services to decide whether to deport him.

http://www.10tv.com/Global/story.asp?S= ... v=LUESMuat

æ?ƒut two wrongs don't make a right.

I'll have to agree with this. It's wrong for people to be in the US illegally and it's wrong to make taxpayers pay for K-12 education.

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