I know this seems hard to believe, but in recent years we have learned that some state legislators have hearts of stone.
Peter Greene writes about Oklahoma’s bold and mean-spirited initiative: Turning non-English-speaking kids over to the authorities so they will be deported, thus saving the state the cost of educating them.
He writes:
There’s a lot to unpack in the news from Oklahoma’s GOP legislators, but let’s just skip straight to the most awful. From this special caucus of conservatives, looking for ways to close a budget hole:
The caucus said there are 82,000 non-English speaking students in the state.
“Identify them and then turn them over to ICE to see if they truly are citizens, and do we really have to educate non-citizens?” [Rep. Mike] Ritze asked.
The caucus thinks that could save $60 million.
But that’s not all.
The 22-member platform caucus has also decided they can save $328 million by eliminating “all non-essential, non-instructional employees in higher education.” So… what? All administration? Can the janitors. Make the students cook and serve their own meals? What exactly do they think this third-of-a-billion dollar unnecessary payroll consists of?
When will the people of Oklahoma and many other states with equally mean-spirited legislators wake up and vote for their self-interest and the public interest?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder…
How does a leading neo-Nazi website that has railed against Hispanic immigrants expand its audience beyond a loyal base of U.S. white supremacists? By publishing a Spanish-language edition, of course.
http://www.kxxv.com/story/35437053/el-daily-stormer-neo-nazi-website-is-now-in-spanish-too
Somebody please wake me up soon.
Too much like reading about those who bilk citizens out of millions going to prison, getting out, and then only a short time later having a long list of investors anxious to give them money….
Huge waves of immigrants to this country didn’t speak English. My own great grandparents grew up speaking other languages at home, because their parents still didn’t know English. Also, vast numbers of immigrants just showed up on North American shores without being legally checked in someplace like Ellis Island. Or they didn’t have papers at all. I bet it was the same for this guy’s ancestors. Send him back.
That sounds like me. I spoke Greek before I spoke English because my great-grandmother, who lived with us, spoke practically no English.
She was a legal immigrant. So was her daughter, my grandmother. My parents were born here. I was born here. But when I went to kindergarten, I spoke Greek, with only a few words of English. And there were no ESL classes back then, so it was sink or swim.
So, that could have been me, if there had been such a policy in place in the state I grew up in.
I really, really hope that this initiative dies on the vine, and that the Oklahoma GOP legislators find at least a modicum of human compassion. (Yes, I know, cue the hollow laugh. I don’t think they have any compassion to find.)
Can you imagine the terror of all of these children, swept up by whatever authorities, and sent for “processing”?
Mean spirited “TEA PARTY” legislators. TEA PARTY as in ALEC supported easily manipulated deplorable fools/minions.
These legislators/minions elected on campaigns founded on misinformation, hate, and lies are the fascist, racist troops for the autocrats that want to use the U.S. constitution as toilet paper and turn the U.S. into a dystopian state of suffering and misery.
States/municipalities are required to provide a free taxpayer-provided education to illegal aliens See https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/80-1538 Plyler v. Doe (1982) .
Oklahomans will have to educate these children, like it or not.
I am the proud granddaughter of four immigrants and I am an ESL teacher. Many of the parents of the children I teach are illiterate in their native language. They make every sacrifice to offer their children educational opportunities. Society would be well served if people of privilege would reexamine their values.
Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are a net plus to the economy. They contribute more than they receive. They pay taxes. Contrary to what is reported, they do not qualify for any benefits such as Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, or food stamps.
What Charles has stated is true. In Plyler v. Doe, the courts ruled that public schools must provide education to ALL children that reside within their borders. Schools districts are not ICE agents.
There’s that shifting of terms again – “undocumented” instead of “illegal”. They are “illegal immigrants” because they are breaking the law, simple as that.
Yes, they pay taxes, but they are still here illegally.
@MattMetzger: I agree with you, sir. Any person who is in this country, illegally, is an illegal alien. Many are here for economic reasons, to earn money in the underground economy. Many are paid in cash, and do not pay income taxes. Of course, illegal aliens pay sales taxes, and other such taxes. Illegal alien children get a free tax-supported public school education (if they choose to go to a public school). Most illegal aliens, do not want to break other laws, the last thing they want is to get involved with law enforcement and face deportation.
Illegal is illegal, not “undocumented”!
If you follow this fool’s logic to it’s conclusion this policy is another way to shift public ed money to privatized detention centers.
We really are a country that tolerates & celebrates cruel, inhumane tyrants. Here a mother speaks of her family’s inhumane treatment by ICE: “From what I had heard about the U.S., it was supposed to be a country that practices showing love to their fellow man. But what I have experienced with my daughter was horrible,” she wrote a few days later, after she was transferred from Border Patrol custody to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
I’ve been listening to a series about the ICE detention centers. They were, originally, meant to be comfortable “half way houses” until the people’s cases were decided. They’ve evolved into a vast prison system and worse. Whereas there are minimum to maximum security prisons, these detention centers are non-discriminatory. Anything from a traffic ticket to a convicted and recently released murder felon will be housed in the same complex.
I have very strong feelings about immigration and immigrants. My first wife was Chinese, and my current wife is Russian. They both immigrated legally, and both went through the naturalization process. My Russian wife went from a “red” to a “red white and blue”.
I am gung-ho for immigration, my people came from Ireland and Germany. We are all descendants from immigrants, even the “native Americans” came from Asia.
BUT- Immigrants must be carefully screened, and meet the legal requirements. Every nation has the right and duty to control their own borders. (I have spent over 16 years of my life, working in foreign countries, and always legally).
What about the fact that the U.S. has caused (and is still causing) many of the problems from which many Central Americans are fleeing to our borders? Do we have any obligation to those people? What would you do if you were caught up in it?
One thing the USA can do, is provide Mexico with additional financial support and engineering advice, to strengthen their southern border with Guatemala. (The Mexicans have a wall on their southern border).
Charles, why not tell Guatemala to pay for the Mexican Wall?
” . . We are all descendants from immigrants, even the “native Americans” came from Asia.”
No, Chas, that is not true as the term immigrants imply countries and borders and such. Those social structures were not part of the human “landscape” 15-20-35 thousand years ago. The Native American picture is a lot more complicated than “coming from Asia” as we are learning more and more everyday about the peopling of this hemisphere.
Interestingly, some parents use the threat of sending their children to stay with grandparents in the home country if the kids give them problems. Some get sent.
I am reminded of an incident a friend from Oklahoma told me about. It had to do with the Osage Indians. Seems they were getting rich on oil around 1920. Some folks talked the government into a program that made white men able to control their wealth. This led to a group of these people committing murder in order to get wealthy. It was among the first cases ever investigated by the FBI.
Roy, there’s a book out about this. “Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder, and the Birth of the FBI,” by David Grann.
Coincidentally, I just bought this the other day for my Kindle.
Trump as President has brought out the worst in our country. Normalizing his racism, ignorance, and the chaos it’s producing is just providing the breeding ground in which these maggots can now grow and multiply.
The assault on education, though still a major concern for me, is now taking a back seat to this assault on our democracy and human decency.