Thread: Cost Of Educating Children Of Illegal Immigrants In N.C. Ris

http://www.wral.com/apncnews/7517483/detail.html

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The cost of educating children of illegal immigrants in North Carolina is more than 20 times what it was 10 years ago, and some argue the money would be better spent on other students.

A study by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed educating illegal immigrants' children costs the state an estimated $210 million a year. Ten years before, the figure was less than $10 million.

The state has already been overwhelmed trying to pay for people who are supposed to be here, said Ron Woodard, director of the Cary-based group N.C. Listen, which advocates for greater immigration restrictions.

"Why are we having to spend money on people who are here illegally?" Woodard said in a series appearing this week in the News & Observer of Raleigh.

Others counter that money spent on the education of immigrants will pay off in future tax revenues from higher salaries. Poorly educated immigrants require more money for programs such as Medicaid or possibly jail time, they said.

"It's peanuts in the scheme of things," said James H. Johnson Jr., co-author of the Kenan Institute study. "What would we rather do, leave these people uneducated? It's a form of enlightened self-interest to invest in these kids."

From 2000 to 2005, Hispanics accounted for 57 percent of enrollment growth in the state's public schools, the Kenan study showed. From 1990 to 2000, Hispanics accounted for 15 percent of enrollment growth. And the children of immigrants are more likely than average students to be poor and speak little English.

Nearly $45 million of the $6 billion the General Assembly appropriated for public schools this year went to English as a Second Language programs. Much of that money goes to the hiring of bilingual teachers.

Schools are required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act to show improvement in the test scores of students who speak English as a second language.

"It's made us much more aware of those students and how well they're performing," said Jim Causby, director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators and a former Johnston County school superintendent.

Ricardo Padilla said he and his wife came from Mexico to Johnston County because the economy was so poor at home.

"For me and my wife to go to college would be difficult," he said, "but I hope that my children will do well in school and go to college to advance themselves in life."

Some critics in Wake County in recent months have blamed the growth in the number of immigrant students for forcing the district to consider billions of dollars in school construction over the next decade. Twelve percent of the district's new students are Hispanic, the district said.

"There is an impact on each family who has a kid in school," Wake County Commissioner Phil Jeffreys said. "There is overcrowding and time taken away from their kids to try to get the non-English speaking kids up to speed."

Others counter that money spent on the education of immigrants will pay off in future tax revenues from higher salaries. Poorly educated immigrants require more money for programs such as Medicaid or possibly jail time, they said.

How? They won't be able to get jobs since they will still be illegal.

What would we rather do, leave these people uneducated?

How about deporting them?

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusiv ... ml?id=2983

In 2003-04, the most recent year for which data are available, Hispanic students numbered 88,335 out of 1,342,806 K-12 students in the state.

Using Pew’s estimates that 65 percent of those children are undocumented, the illegal student count would number roughly 57,400. The John Locke Foundation, publisher of Carolina Journal, calculates that it costs taxpayers, on average, $8,500 per year to fund the operational and capital costs of educating a child in North Carolina. That translates into an expenditure of approximately $487 million annually to educate illegal immigrant children, a cost that will continue to grow as the population increases.

For some reason I put more stock in the John Locke Foundation than in the Kenan Institute especially when bankers paid Kenan Institute.