New U.S. Law ‘Ruins’ Way of Life Shared by Two Border Towns

COLUMBUS, N.M. —  Most folks say things were just fine until the federal government stuck its big nose into this small border town.

For decades hardly anyone complained about the open-door school policy that allowed Mexican children to learn alongside Americans, no questions asked.

The practice started in the 1950s, on a day like any other except for the 12 children standing at the door of Columbus Elementary School who had come three miles from Palomas, Mexico, in search of knowledge.

An irascible teacher named Phoebe Watson let them in. Today, because of a new federal law, she would have to send them back.

“I think it’s absolutely stupid,” says Watson, an 86-year-old widow who retired in 1974. “Every child deserves an education.”

Last year, Congress added public education to the list of services forbidden to those classified as aliens. So when the school year began here, 42 Mexican students were “disenrolled” from the Deming Public Schools, a district that stretches 35 miles from the border to Deming, N.M.

Those banished include 17-year-old Dora Luz Nieto, who was about to become the only child in her family to graduate from high school, and 11-year-old Alex Anaya, a physically handicapped boy attending special-education classes.

Now they sit in a windowless classroom in dilapidated Palomas, where there are too many children and not enough teachers.

Watson, who has also been school principal and mayor of Columbus, is furious. So are many others in the mainly Latino town.

“It’s hardly believable,” she says. “There were absolutely no problems with the schools. It worked for Mexico; it worked for us. Then the federal government came in and ruined it.”

The border has never meant much to Columbus, population 900, and Palomas, population 9,000. To these residents, the only thing separating them is three miles of dirt.

Desert isolation long ago taught them the value of being good neighbors. They have been marrying and befriending each other ever since. Until 1995, they shared a fire department. They still have the same Rotary Club.

Dozens cross the small border checkpoint several times a day for business, lunch and shopping, and return home at night.

Oscar Chavez is Columbus town clerk but lives in Palomas. Like hundreds of Palomas residents, he is a U.S. citizen because he was born in Columbus, which for years had the only hospital.

“There are more opportunities over there,” he says, pointing north. He is standing on Main Street, the only paved road in all of Palomas. Dust storms blow thick as fog, and neglect is jarringly present. In the dirt roads there are potholes big enough to swallow cars.

Chavez is talking to Dora Luz Nieto, who must now attend high school in Palomas. Her dreams of attending an American university and of becoming a chemist are gone.

The Palomas high school doesn’t teach chemistry. It is new and not yet accredited, so her studies won’t transfer to a U.S. college, and she has no idea what she will do with her future.

“It’s bad what they did to us,” says Nieto, a shy girl with an infectious smile.

Big yellow school buses still rumble to the border each morning at dawn, sent by the Deming school district to protect students from having to walk across the desert or ride in dangerously overcrowded vans.

But now the buses ferry only the 350 Palomas children who are U.S. citizens, leaving behind the “disenrolled” Mexican-born students.

“They are picking on us,” Nieto says.

The new law has split Dr. Alejandro Anaya’s family.

His 6-year-old daughter, Cindy, may attend kindergarten in Columbus because she is an American citizen, having been born in Columbus’ hospital when her mother required an emergency Caesarean delivery.

But her sister America, 8, was sent back. So was her brother, Alex, who is partially blind and deaf and had been learning sign language and receiving speech therapy in Columbus.

Palomas has no such classes.

“We are playing with the rights of children,” says Dr. Anaya, who complained to Mexican and U.S. officials but says he got nowhere. “No one can do anything. It is the law now.”

Worse than overcrowding and bad conditions, says Dr. Anaya, is the absence of English in Palomas classrooms.

“Without English, they cannot get jobs, they cannot move from here,” he says. “It is the most important language in the world.”

Just back from school, Dr. Anaya’s children stand next to him, waiting for help with their homework.

Asked what he misses most about his former school, Alex thinks for a moment. His sister America interrupts: “The food is better.”

The Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act was designed to prevent U.S. taxpayers from paying for educating foreign students in public schools.

The law gave one year’s grace to those who submitted nearly $4,000 in tuition--more than most Palomas residents earn in a year. Only two Palomas students, whose parents are wealthy, came up with the money.

But in New Mexico, the state funds public education by evenly redistributing tax revenue, making the cost to individual taxpayers negligible. Under state law, anyone who shows up at a public school is entitled to learn, regardless of nationality.

Also, Deming administrators say, they had already stopped enrolling new students from Palomas before the federal government intervened.

Not everyone here likes the open-door policy. Lured by cheap land, outsiders are moving in. To them, the border means a great deal.

“I don’t blame these people for trying to improve their education,” said retiree Merle Struhs, who moved to Columbus 14 years ago and by local standards is still a newcomer.

“They were bringing so many students over from Mexico . . . it ended up being mostly a Mexican school. Most of the teaching was done in Spanish. It wasn’t compatible for Anglo students,” Struhs said.

Columbus Elementary School Principal Janet Barney says nearly one-fourth of her 392 students are from Palomas. The school’s enrollment is 99% Latino, and classes are taught in English and Spanish, she said.

Barney lost nine students to the new law.

“The ones that really lost out were the ones who had been coming here since kindergarten and couldn’t come back,” Barney said. “Children don’t know that they’re crossing a border. It was just devastating.”

So to sobbing children who understood only one thing--they were being sent away--Barney struggled to explain the way of adults.

“I told them that sometimes bad things happen to good people,” Barney said.

She didn’t tell them what was in her heart.

“You’d think that educating a child, any child, would benefit everyone.”