The cost of illegal immigration

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Tonight, the Costa Mesa City Council is scheduled to debate a policy to have city police enforce immigration laws. A 2004 report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform pegged illegal immigration’s cost to California at more than $10 billion a year. That includes the cost of educating illegal immigrants and their children, estimated at $7.7 billion. Is illegal immigration affecting the quality of education in Costa Mesa? Is there any substantive evidence one way or the other?

Anecdotes, some extrapolated survey numbers and my own instinct based on observation and interaction at the schools seem to indicate that illegal immigration is indeed affecting the quality of education in Costa Mesa. However, I think that there’s probably no way to accurately gauge whether that’s true or not. That’s primarily because the answer to the second part of the question is that there isn’t any totally reliable and substantive evidence one way or the other.

We don’t know how many illegal immigrants or how many U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants attend our schools, because we literally can’t ask. According to the 1982 Plyer vs. Doe Supreme Court ruling, undocumented students have the right to attend public schools and participate in all school activities. In addition, school officials are not allowed to require children or their parents to prove that they are in this country legally by presenting evidence such as green cards, citizenship papers or social security numbers.

Even though it seems like the answer to questions of effects is obvious and that simple solutions should be at hand, there’s not really anything we can do, because we can’t honestly assess costs and benefits. This question and the recent discussion of city police enforcement of immigration laws in Costa Mesa keep bubbling up because it does seem obvious that illegal immigration is causing lots of problems.

The federal government needs to solve the problem, but it hasn’t, so the temptation, borne out of frustration, is to try to solve it on a local level. The police enforcement idea is its own can of worms, but right now the school side is pretty clear-cut thanks to Plyer vs. Doe. Until the federal government starts actually controlling the borders and changes the laws to undo Plyer vs. Doe, we can’t even accurately consider the question of illegal immigration’s effect on the quality of education.

* MARK GLEASON is a Costa Mesa resident and parent.

Illegal immigration affects the quality of education for all children because it places a financial burden on the educational system that it wasn’t meant to bear. According to the Federation for Immigration Reform, children of illegal immigrants represent nearly 15% of the kindergarten through 12th-grade public school students in California. Almost $2.2 billion is spent annually to educate illegal immigrant students in those grades -- enough to pay the salaries of 41,764 teachers, or 14% of California’s teachers.

Illegal immigration takes tax money meant to educate American children and uses it to educate children whose parents have broken the law. Because school officials are forbidden to identify illegal immigrants, there is no way to know how many attend our schools.

Many of the illegal immigrants in this area are from Mexico, so one of the main problems is language. Teachers take time away from other students to teach English. There are English classes offered to parents, but often these parents are reluctant to learn English and cannot help their children with their schoolwork.

Parents who are here illegally fear being apprehended by the government and limit contact with the school and teachers or with other parents. Few join the PTA. Isolation costs money. Community coordinators are paid to reach out to parents.

Another cost factor is mobility. Families move from school to school and often go to Mexico for long vacations without realizing they are disrupting their children’s education and exacerbating teaching challenges.

I don’t blame people from wanting to escape to America to have a better life, but by breaking the law these parents set a bad example for their children. We have only ourselves to blame, however. We have for years looked the other way so we could enjoy the benefits of low-cost labor. We have sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. We cannot instantly turn back the clock. With some degree of compassion and mercy, I believe each level of government should enforce all laws to send a message that no longer will Americans permit anyone to enter our country who does not follow the rules first.

* WENDY LEECE is a Costa Mesa parent, former school board member and member of the city’s parks and recreation commission.

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