Education

Issues

Note: about half of immigration into the United States is illegal, thus approximately half of the impact of immigration on our public school system is due to illegal immigration.

School enrollment increased by 14 percent between 1990 and 2000 and is now at an all-time high. At 53.1 million students, current enrollment exceeds the baby boomer record set in 1970. Yet without school-age immigrants and illegal aliens and the children of immigrants and illegal aliens, school enrollment would not have have risen at all during the 1990's.

Currently, one in every five students has an immigrant or illegal alien parent. One-quarter of these children were foreign-born. Legal and illegal immigration will account for 96 percent of the increase in the school-age population over the next 50 years. If mass immigration continues, the education of all children in America will continue to be undermined. Education costs will continue to escalate while quality of education will continue to decline.

About 14 percent of schools exceed their capacity by six to 25 percent, and eight percent exceed it by more than 25 percent. To alleviate overcrowding, more than one-third of schools use portable classrooms, and one-fifth hold classes in temporary instructional space, such as cafeterias and gyms.

Enrollment in grades 9-12 is projected to reach an all-time high of 15.8 million in 2005. Total enrollment will reach 55 million by 2020 and 60 million by 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Education. By 2100, the nation's schools will have to find room for 94 million students - practically double the number of school-age children the nation has now.

In California, where illegal immigration is concentrated, the California State Department of Education estimates that 16 new classrooms will need to be built every day, seven days a week, for the next five years - essentially one new school every day. The number of teachers will need to be doubled within ten years, requiring 300,000 new educators.

FAIR research shows that "the Urban Institute estimates that the cost of educating illegal alien children in the nation's seven states with the highest concentration of illegal aliens was $3.1 billion in 1993 (which, with the growth of their population to 1.3 million, would be more like $5 billion in 2000). This estimate does not take into account the additional costs of bilingual education or other special educational needs."