It is back to school for many students in America, including the young undocumented kids, who according to federal laws, do have the same right to enroll in US public schools as US citizens and those with legal status to live and work in America.
The deepest recession that has recently swept the nation has already shrunk the federal budget pie allocated to public education. This has resulted in less classrooms, books, teachers, class hours, extra-curricular activities support, after-school programs, and many other benefits public school students used to enjoy during the booming years.
The question is: Will the undocumented young kids still get a share of this small pie, funded by the taxes, paid for by those who live and work in America legally?
This painful question begs an urgent answer with the current border crisis.
A primer on the Border Crisis
Many kababayans have been asking me how the border crisis just escalated to this point. Let me share with you this information published by TheNewAmerican.com:
“Since most of the children coming here illegally are from Central America, they are not deported immediately back to their country of origin. The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, signed into law by George W. Bush, requires that children entering our country illegally be granted a court appearance to allow a judge to evaluate their particular situation. The law was enacted to prevent victims of child trafficking from being automatically sent back to those who had effectively enslaved them, but the authors of the act did not anticipate the massive increase in the numbers of such unaccompanied minors, which has clogged the immigration courts to the point of eliminating their effectiveness.
The traffickers and smugglers responsible for facilitating the human wave from Central America have exploited that law to overwhelm the system. During the lengthy period of time between apprehension and the hearing, the illegal immigrants are free to go wherever they wish and the no-show rate for the determination hearings is high. As one example, Judge Michael Baird of the federal Dallas Immigration Court said on July 22 that 18 of the children whose cases he was scheduled to hear on that day didn’t show up for court.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials transfer unaccompanied minors to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to be housed in shelters, some on military bases and others in local facilities. Some are placed with Spanish-speaking sponsors. During the period between their initial apprehension and the final determination of their status by an immigration court, the children are sent to local public schools to be educated. This period can be a lengthy one. Reuters News on July 22 quoted Judge Dana Leigh Marks of San Francisco, who is president of the National Association of Immigration Judges: “We are reaching a point of implosion, if we have not already reached it.”
The report cited Justice Department figures that US immigration courts have a backlog of 375,373 cases, almost 50,000 more than they faced two years ago. Judge Marks, who is one of the 243 judges presiding over 59 immigration courts in the United States, is setting hearing dates as far off as 2018. It now typically takes three to five years for cases to clear the system, judges and lawyers have said.
With those tens of thousands of pending cases involving unaccompanied children who have entered our country illegally, the process of educating, housing, and attending to their other needs will likely continue for years and cost the taxpayers an unknown — but substantial — sum.”
What do you think? For humanitarian reasons, should undocumented kids be given free taxpayer funded education in the US?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
No….they should be deported