Immigrant kids crowd American public schools

Apart from being a hot button political issue in this year’s presidential election due on November 5, the impact of immigration on the American public school – state-run schools – system is both significant and challenging. There has been a rise in legal immigration touching a high of half-a-million since 2002.

Most of them are from Haiti – it has to be noted in passing that the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump apart from his opposition to migrants as such, dislikes the Haitians immigrants in particular – and their children who enter the first grade cannot speak English.

A teacher in a primary school in Charleroi in Pennsylvania tried to cope with the situation of teaching children who do not know a word of English with the phone app of translation. She found that it was too cumbersome and it has only added to her frustration. A questionnaire sent out to 10,000 school districts by the London-headquartered Reuters news agency could evoke response from only 75 school districts serving about 2.3 million people, which translated to five per cent of the public school student population in the country.

One of the major issues revealed by the survey was that the school authorities find that there is an increased need of English as Second Language (ESL) teachers, and that they need to be recruited and trained. A way out was the surprising route of French. Haitians speak French and the children found it easy when a French teacher, Bridget DeFazio, at Charleroi suddenly found herself in a new role when Haitian children went to her to communicate their problems to a teacher. Meanwhile, DeFazio got herself a certificate in ELS, and she is teaching English to the Haitian students apart from French.

American law provides that immigrant children, whether they are legal or not, have a right to free education in the public school system. Most of the Haitian children now entering the public school system are from the families of legal migrants.

It should not have come as a surprise that with the rise in immigration, there is bound to be an inflow of students who do not know English. And it is also natural that the public school system needs extra funds to deal with the situation of acclimatising the immigrants’ children who come from linguistic backgrounds that are not English.

It is also the case that the immigrants would need steady employment and wages so that the children can go to school and learn.

It is this obligation to provide employment to the immigrant parents and a place for the education of the children is what raises the hackles of the hardened conservatives.

And they believe with Trump that the best solution is to stop immigration, especially from poorer countries with low skills. But the economic reality is that the American economy needs migrants to keep growing and expanding. And the private sector should be allowed to employ the immigrants but on the basis of a fair wage.

The present system of the private sector players seeking to employ the illegal immigrants and pay them less than the statutory wages is what is creating a vicious cycle.

Frustrated by the emergence of the grey economy, conservative lawmakers feel forced to take strong steps to curb immigration per se. It is a fact that there is scope for expansion in the American population, and the American economy needs those new workers too. 

The mechanisms and procedures need to be worked out meticulously. But it is no easy task. Most of the time immigration rules become complicated and create knots and hurdles. America needs immigrants and it has to learn to deal with them.