California Border Schools to Ask Students for Papers

Fri, Sep 3, 2010
Featured
By Claudia Núñez
La Opinión

CALEXICO — California school districts will soon begin implementing a controversial measure meant to prevent nonresidents from attending school in the United States, by deploying district staff to the border to monitor the residency documents of students entering the country.

The Unified School District of Calexico—just across the border from the city of Mexicali—hired two employees whose job will be to strengthen the implementation of the school district residency requirements for the current academic year.

The Mountain Empire School District, just east of San Diego, will also be hiring staff exclusively for this purpose.

The practice of checking student documents to verify where they live, however, has created divisions within the state educational system. Some school districts bordering Mexico have said they will not be allocating additional resources for this type of activity.

“Our mission is to educate, not to become immigration agents,â€