…for the Immigration Policy Center…

In a somewhat meandering August report, Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools Into the Red, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) attempts to make the argument that the cost of educating undocumented immigrant students in public elementary and high schools is a major cause of the budget deficits currently facing most states and precipitating cuts in school funding.  However, the report’s own statistics do not support this claim.  Even if the report is correct in its assertion that the cost to states was $7.4 billion in 1999-2000, this represents only 1.9 percent of the $381.8 billion spent nationwide on public elementary and secondary education and a miniscule fraction of the roughly $1 trillion in total spending by state governments…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Those victims of persecution fortunate enough to make it to the United States and successfully run the legal gauntlet required to prove they merit asylum from their persecutors find themselves in a Kafkaesque predicament.  U.S. immigration law provides that individuals granted asylum must wait only one year to become lawful permanent residents.  However, an arbitrary limit on the number of asylees who are in fact allowed to do so each year, combined with mismanagement of the entire process by federal immigration authorities, has created a situation in which asylees must wait at least 12 years to become permanent residents – and 4 more years to become U.S. citizens…

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