Children of illegals remain uneducated

The next time someone argues that illegals should remain in the country because they work hard and their kids succeed, please show them this NY Times article:

About 41 percent of all Mexicans between ages 16 and 19 in the city have dropped out of school, according to census data.

No other major immigrant group has a dropout rate higher than 20 percent, and the overall rate for the city is less than 9 percent, the statistics show.

This crisis endures at the college level. Among Mexican immigrants 19 to 23 who do not have a college degree, only 6 percent are enrolled. That is a fraction of the rates among other major immigrant groups and the native-born population.

Moreover, these rates are significantly worse than those of the broader Mexican immigrant population in the United States.

The problem is especially unsettling because Mexicans are the fastest-growing major immigrant group in the city, officially numbering about 183,200, according to the Census Bureau, up from about 33,600 in 1990. Experts say the actual figure is far larger, given high levels of illegal immigration.

...educators and advocates say that unless these efforts are sustained, and even intensified, the city may have a large Mexican underclass for generations.

These problems extend throughout the swelling Mexican immigrant diaspora in the New York region. They have also afflicted the population of second-generation Mexican-Americans: While educational achievement is far higher among American-born children with Mexican ancestry, it still lags behind the rates of most other foreign-born and native-born groups, according to census data, which was analyzed by Andrew A. Beveridge and Susan Weber-Stoger, demographers at Queens College.

Syndi Cortes, 19, one of five children of Mexican immigrants in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, said she dropped out after getting pregnant at 16. She had already been cutting most of her classes, she said, and so had most of her Mexican and Mexican-American friends.

Last year, she tried to resume school, but her mother, who was working long days as a housecleaner, was opposed to day care and forced her to drop out again to look after her baby.

We are encouraging and protecting millions of illegal immigrants from countries that do not value education, view a woman's role as that of a baby factory, and live off the backs of taxpayers, while prohibiting people from better-educated countries, who are practically guaranteed success stories, from setting foot into the States. This is yet another Ponzi scheme that is costing Americans and legal immigrants big time.

Furthermore, the reason many of these folks can't learn English is not because they don't want to, it's because they never learned to read and write in their own language. When mom and dad pulled you out of school in 3rd grade so you could help them work, you don't have time for book learning. In turn, you can't help your own kids when it's their time to learn and don't feel the need to encourage them to study hard because it wasn't a priority where you came from. It's a sad situation, but one we can't and shouldn't be responsible for trying to fix.

Let's also realize that legalization means a guaranteed minimum wage. Which means the incentive for employers to hire illegals has been removed. This sets up a situation where they are now directly competing with Americans for retail and other low-level jobs rather than just the "jobs Americans won't do" like farm labor and slaughterhouse duties.

Damned if I know what the answer is, but neither amnesty nor the status quo are it.