Illegal Mexican Students Get Free Education from Unwitting U.S. Taxpayers
by Jim Brown
February 16, 2004
(AgapePress) - It appears some Californians are paying to educate not only their children, but also students from a foreign country.Fox News recently reported that Mexican teenagers have been crossing the border to attend school at Southwest High School in San Diego during the day, and returning to their homes in Mexico for the evening. The Sweetwater School District admits the illegal crossings have occurred before, but says it has the strictest residency verification standards in the state.
However, Rick Oltman, western field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, believes greedy school administrators are picking the pocket of California taxpayers. "The motivation for all of this isn't going to surprise any adults," he says. "It's about money."
And FAIR's spokesman says in this case, since the Sweetwater School District collects more than $5,000 from the state from each child enrolled, it is about a school system wanting all the extra students it can get. "If those students happen to live in Tijuana, which is in Mexico, in another country, that's irrelevant to the administrators of the school, so long as the taxpayers of California are picking up the bill for the students in the school," he says.
But Oltman says the district has no business turning a blind eye to the illegal border crossings, just to get extra money from the state. "We want our tax dollars to benefit Americans and immigrants who are here legally -- not illegal aliens or people that are sneaking into the country," he explains.
Oltman says it is time for Californians to stand up and again point out the obvious to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and everyone else in the state government: "You're looking at these huge budget deficits and yet, here we have a freebie for illegal alien students -- or in this case, they're not even illegal aliens. They're just coming across [the Mexican border] to go to school."
