(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) A new report reveals that the Biden administration’s open-borders policy poses serious ramifications for America’s public schools when it comes to economics and assimilation.
According to data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies, which is part derived from Census Bureau statistics, nearly 30% of public school enrollment (about 3 million students) from immigrant households are from homes headed by an illegal immigrant.
The nonpartisan research organization cautioned in the lengthy report that the estimates, much of which are based on circa 2021 information, could be even higher when factoring in the ongoing border crisis green-lit by the Biden regime.
Moreover, almost one-fourth of all U.S. public school students are from immigrant families of legal and illegal status, which number about 11 million, and about one-fifth of whom live in poverty.
Per the study published on Tuesday, “There are 55 public school students per 100 immigrant households, compared to 33 per hundred in households headed by the U.S.-born.”
The families are reportedly coalescing in impoverished areas, which brings limited resources into focus.
“Immigrants often settle in areas of high poverty, adding to the challenges for schools in these areas. In the 200 PUMAs with the highest poverty rates in the country, where poverty among students averages 41 percent, nearly 30 percent of students are from immigrant households,” CIS explained in its detailed analysis.
In government lingo, PUMAs are Public Use Microdata Areas, within which about seven high schools are located.
In nearly 300 of those PUMAs, 50% or more of the student population is from immigrant households.
Since state and local property and other taxes primarily fund the public schools in many jurisdictions, available funding from an eroded tax base is a conundrum.
“The lower income of immigrant households likely creates challenges for schools in some areas because tax contributions generally reflect income levels. As a result, immigration can cause a significant increase in enrollment without a corresponding increase in tax revenue,” CIS noted.
New analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies provides a visual representation of immigration’s (legal and illegal together) impact on public schools at the local level.https://t.co/O3ZR3iHrtB
— Center for Immigration Studies (@CIS_org) June 21, 2023
The analysis added that “Immigration may tend to strain the budgets of local schools because in addition to having more children in school on average, they are likely paying less in the state and local taxes that provide the vast majority of funding for schools.”
In the end, the middle-class taxpayer may wind up on the hook for the costs of Biden’s immigration surge.
The language barrier in the classroom is also an issue that could affect educational outcomes of all students. “[M]any local schools struggle to deal with a multiplicity of foreign languages, which likely creates significant additional challenges,” the study reported.
The influx of illegal aliens of all ages has strained social services to the consternation even of Democrat enclaves that touted themselves as sanctuary cities.
Democrat elites often use their wealth and connections to insulate themselves from polices that they have imposed on ordinary Americans, thus giving rise to the term limousine liberal (or champagne socialists in the U.K.).
They tend to send their own kids to private schools while residing in upscale neighborhoods with the requisite amenities.
The CIS report concluded that, given their “enormous share,” how immigrant children perform in school “is vitally important not only to them, but to our country’s future” and that “the fiscal and other challenges immigration creates for schools at the local level should at least be considered by policy-makers when setting immigration policy.”
The authors summarized that “Probably the most important issue when it comes to immigration is how many people should be allowed into the country. The impact on public schools would seem to be one of the most obvious areas where numbers matter.”
