No ‘Papers,’ No School for Illegals

One of these days, President Clinton is going to have to sit down at his desk, pen in hand, and decide whether he cares more about illegal immigrants or American taxpayers, about lawbreakers who should be escorted out of the country or the citizens saddled with providing them a free public education.

Two months ago, 333 members of the House answered this question when they voted in favor of an immigration bill containing an amendment, which I sponsored, that would allow states to decide for themselves whether to educate illegals. States that wish to provide this public benefit could continue to do so. States not interested in so rewarding those who have entered the country illegally would have the right to make that decision.

All of this seems simple enough to the average American, but President Clinton’s decision-making process on this issue will likely be anything but. That is because in the days and weeks since the House vote, and now in anticipation of reconciling the House and Senate immigration bills, advocates, editorial writers and apologists for illegal immigration have taken issue with the reform legislation on a whole range of fronts. Nearly all have characterized my original amendment as one that would “deny” education to illegals, the clear implication being that we are withholding something that is somehow deserved, that we are isolating a group of people from a public benefit they have rightfully come to expect.

I find it truly interesting and illustrative that no one has chosen to describe this legislation as what it actually is: an attempt to give states the ability not to reward illegal immigrants by offering them a free education in exchange for violating federal immigration laws.

Another curious element of the public discourse on this issue is that it has been overwhelmingly focused on the illegal immigrants themselves: What would happen if they couldn’t get an education? How would it affect their job prospects and earnings later in life? Would they just join gangs and become criminals?

None of the people so vexed by the potential impact on the illegals has had even one kind word for the taxpayers who are forced to pay for all this goodwill and social engineering. As far as I know, no one who has assessed the impact of this legislation has commented on the sorry state of California’s public schools, overcrowded and overburdened by--you guessed it--illegal immigrants.

Many critics have defined this issue in terms of our supposed desire to “punish” illegals into the next generation. Well, what about the generation of legal immigrants who are today being punished because of the illegal immigrants who are crowding the public schools and degrading the quality of education? Don’t they count? Or does the fact that they are legally entitled to attend our public schools somehow render their fates secondary to those of the illegals we seek to so philanthropically embrace.

As a product of Los Angeles public schools, I remember a time when California was a model the rest of the country aspired to. Today, California’s schools are in crisis, an example to be avoided instead of emulated. Ask yourself how bad things have to be for the National Education Assn. and the California Teachers Assn. to undertake a statewide ad campaign, as they have recently done, lamenting the effect of overcrowded classrooms on our public schools. The CTA/NEA ads document the fact that California now ranks worst in the nation in terms of class size. This is a direct result of the estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants occupying public school classrooms.

Any discussion of illegal immigration must begin with the premise that folks who break our laws should not be rewarded with jobs, public benefits or free education. Even immigrant rights advocates concede the logic of this basic point, although they are as unwilling as ever to support changes in the law that would serve to apply it. Everyone is against illegal immigration, but try to actually do something about it and you will find no shortage of people willing to characterize reasonable, rational proposals as the wrong approach.

I say, and 332 of my colleagues in the House have agreed, that the only wrong course of action would be to preserve the status quo.