By: James Barrett
According to a new report by an immigrant advocacy group, a stunning 1 in 8 students in California schools have at least one parent who is “undocumented.” An estimated two-thirds of those students were born in the country and thus U.S. citizens, while the other third are illegally in the country themselves. The huge percent of students from illegal immigrant homes, officials say, is creating big “challenges” for educators.
Los Angeles Daily News provides some of the details from the study by the advocacy group, Education Trust-West:
Education Trust-West, an advocacy organization in Oakland, estimates that 750,000 students in California’s preK-12 schools have an undocumented parent, out of a total enrollment of 6.2 million. Some of these students may be undocumented themselves, but the vast majority of K-12 children with undocumented parents are U.S. citizens.
According to the Ed-Trust West brief, only 240,000 children between 3 and 17-year-olds are undocumented.
These figures do not include most of the teenagers and young adults who have received temporary protection from deportation through the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program. By far the majority of the 214,000 young people who were approved are of college-going age.
Later in its report, the LA Daily News notes that the numbers of students from illegal immigrant homes might be even higher than Ed Trust-West estimates. A recent study by the Center for American Progress and the University of California estimates that around 1.9 million children under 18 years old in the state live in homes with at least one illegal immigrant, roughly 1.3 million of those children likely of school-going age.
Ed Trust-West produced the report in part to underscore how significant a percentage of students in the California system are impacted by immigration policies. The group acknowledges that the sheer number of students from illegal immigrant homes poses major challenges to educators, but rather than highlighting issues such as language barriers and the lack of key information about the educational and health records of “undocumented” students, the group attempts to portray those challenges as mostly Donald Trump’s fault.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
School officials say that the children of illegal immigrants have been facing “heightened anxieties” for several years, under both President Obama and President Bush, but under President Trump, “those anxieties have reached new levels,” the LA Daily News states. The Trump administration has repeatedly promised that so-called “DREAMers,” those protected from deportation by Obama’s DACA executive order, will remain protected, but that only applies to students who are 15 years old or older.
The state of California has directed a lot of resources toward “undocumented” students, including Cal-Grants that cover college tuition costs, fee waivers for community colleges, and various counseling and advocacy resources. But LA Daily News lament that the state is not doing enough for preK-12 students with illegal immigrant parents, “in part because school officials may not even know who these children are.”
More from The Daily Wire on illegal immigration:
Despite Corrupt Courts And Paul Ryan’s Do-Nothing Congress, Trump’s Border Plan Is Working
http://www.dailywire.com/news/15910/how-many-students-california-have-illegal-james-barrett