Should Americans fund the education of illegal immigrants?

No

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by James Coles

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I guess it's because I'm a grumpy old guy, but I have a lot of trouble getting my head around the notion of 10, 12, 15 or 20-million people residing in this country illegally...Illegall y. Meaning that all or nearly all of these people made a conscious decision to break into this country...While it is true that the actual act of entering this country is a relatively minor crime, but many of the things illegal entrants to the US do in order to stay here are often serious crimes - felonies, which I am convinced disqualifies them from ever gaining a legal opportunity to get onto a citizenship track...

That said, the fact is that millions of people who entered the country illegally are here. Yes, they have committed serious crimes such as conspiring to obtain false identification, possession of false identification, obtaining driving licenses or other government documents by fraud, evasion of Federal and state income taxes...the list goes on; but they're here and it's clear that our gutless non-leaders in DC and most state capitals aren't really interested in finding reasonable, workable solutions to the issues resulting from the consequences, both predictable and unforeseen, of these people's presence among us. So, we have to deal these consequences. Lucky us.

Now, I like children; sort of. They're a necessary evil if we want to continue propagating our species. And we can't let the wee beasties grow up completely ignorant...they might become politicians. No sir, we have to educate them - all of them, or throw them out...and our non-leaders have not demonstrated any interest in throwing any of the illegals out, and certainly not the kids.

So, OK...they're here...the parents of these children are demonstrably rascals and scofflaws, but maybe; just maybe, if the kids get a good education they could become citizens in good standing when they grow up...but should I pay the bill to educate people who shouldn't be here in our country in the first place? And, dear readers, should you or your parents pay that bill?

I think not.

But there is a solution to this problem...actually, the solution is pretty simple: charge tuition for the privilege of attending our public educational institutions...Tuiti on for public schools? Yep. You see, in most states public schools are funded from formulas that take a percentage of property tax revenues, combines those monies with funds from state, county and, or municipal general revenue funds, plus various "colors" of Federal monies appropriated for "entitlement titles," special development programs, infrastructure improvement programs, special education, etc. to arrive at a 'per-pupil' expenditure...multip ly the per-pupil rate by the number of pupils in a district and you have the vast majority of that district's budget...there are other aspects to developing school district budgets, but this is the core of it.

And within the per-pupil expenditure amount there is a budget line called 'direct student cost.' And that, young people, is the tuition paid for you to attend a public school.

Per-pupil expenditures are interesting sums of money...somewhere between $5,000 and $11,000 per pupil per school year. In most states, the direct student cost runs to about 25% of the total per-pupil expenditure. For example, a district in which the per-pupil amount is $10,000 per school year, the tuition is about $2,500...the rest of the money covers things like personnel (faculty & staff, including wages, benefits and ancillary costs), buildings & grounds acquisition/construc tion/maintenance; headquarters management/administr ative personnel, classroom & office equipment & supplies; insurance and a host of other 'administrative' costs.

Of these total costs, tuition is the single largest line item...the rest of costs are shared on a prorated basis so that each per-student expenditure pays only a tiny share of macro amount.

As I noted earlier, the majority of public school costs are obtained from property tax revenues paid by home and land owners; business and commercial property owners, condo owners, factory owners, logging companies, farmers, ranchers...basically anyone who owns real property of some sort...even people who rent an apartment help to pay the property tax bill but each renter pays only a tiny part of the landlord's tax bill on the rental property...and if there are several times the number of people living in an apartment than the area average, each person's share of the tax bill becomes disproportionately smaller. In other words, renters pay less of the tax bill than do property owners and in situations where many people occupy an apartment they pay even less of the tax bill - yet those who have children expect to gain the full benefit of property tax-funded services.

Therein lies the inherent inequity of the illegal immigrant's demand for a 'free' American public education for his or her child(ren)...while illegal residents of this country make some contribution to the social-economic contract, they don't come close to paying their fair share of the costs incurred in the contract.

I recognize that most illegal residents of this country are not high income earners...many live almost at the subsistence level and don't have a lot of money, but that is a situation of their own making. Still, I wouldn't assess the full per-pupil expenditure amount - only the direct tuition cost...and I would allow a 'volume discount' for illegal residents who have more than one child in the system...

While this approach doesn't fully recover all the costs associated with educating the children of illegal aliens, it covers the major cost, gives the parent the right to become involved in the child's education & school activities, and helps the illegal adult become part of the community by becoming part of the social whole. This approach imparts dignity to the illegal resident, helps the illegal resident to more fully participate in his or her adopted community, and it reduces the taxation burden on those who are paying their way in the society.

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