Saturday, February 18, 2017
Taxpayers argue it is unfair to have to pay for undocumented immigrants to attend school
Some tax payers in Wisconsin have been complaining about paying taxes that go to the education of undocumented immigrants. One specific resident told a local reporter “If the school administration wants to have illegal aliens attending school at taxpayers’ expense, hey, take it out of your salary, Mr. Superintendent, and the teachers who want this sort of thing. … The law says they should not be here.”
The 1982 U.S Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Doe says that children of undocumented immigrants have the constitutional right to public education. The reasoning behind this is that children brought into this country are at no fault for their citizenship status and should not be penalized educationally. The law indicates that the refusal of education to a child of an undocumented citizen has to accomplish some specific goal.
In response to latest events regarding citizenship status, the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District in Madison, Wisconsin sent an email to parents ensuring them all students will be able to attend school, regardless of documentation status.
http://watchdog.org/288868/illegal-immigrants-taxpayers-education/
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I totally agree with this! It is of no fault of the child and they deserve education. We can not deprive them of this opportunity. I think it is interesting that these individuals are stating that they refuse to pay, and that they believe that the school administration should have to pay. This does not make sense to me and actually makes me kind of angry.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to read that the school district has no plans to these ignorant and cruel residents. Not just because it is unfair to blame and punish a child for the actions of their parents but also because to do so would feed into a myth regarding illegal immigration and undocumented workers. Opponents don't like to hear it but illegal immigrants actually DO pay payroll taxes, in addition to other forms of tax, such as sales tax. The rhetoric regarding illegal immigration is dangerous for so many reasons, including how much of it is based on falsehoods and half-truths. Neither should be used as a basis for depriving a CHILD of an education.
ReplyDeleteI find this extremely interesting because one (invalid) argument I often hear about undocumented adult immigrants is that they don't work and just want to collect all the benefits of being an American citizen. However now you are upset that they are receiving an education that would potentially give them the skills to be able to grow up and enter the workforce. It seems that people that make this type of argument are not aware of the contradictory messages they are sending to the undocumented immigrants.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of anyone's citizenship or immigration status, the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the U.S. has adopted and implemented) states that education is a fundamental right for everyone. That's it. Overcrowded classrooms has less to do with incoming immigrant families and more to do with a lack of government funding. Classroom sizes have been growing for years and the government has yet to catch up. Most teachers are still paying for things in their classroom that should just be available to them out of pocket. My issue with the argument of taxpayer's dollars going toward the children of illegal immigrants is that the money they're paying in taxes to support public schools isn't being used effectively in the first place in addition to the fact that no one has the right to take someone's education away from them no matter how that person ended up in the classroom.
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