[quote=deadzone]BG, while I agree that it is a fact that lot of kids cross the border from TJ to go to South Bay schools, the numbers pale in comparison to the number of illegal immigrant kids (or anchor babies of illegals) who are also attending said schools and actually live in San Diego. But given they are here illegally, how is that any better than the border crossers?
I guess you can argue that at least the illegals are physically here and most likely paying some taxes that theoretically go into the community, sales taxes for certain and probably payroll taxes in many cases.
But in terms of degrading the quality of the schools, I would think the illegals are the bigger problem, in either case they are requiring disproportional amount of ESL learning among other things.
Why is it that you are so concerned with the border crossers more so than the general illegal population living here sending their kids to your schools? I agree with you in principal that border crossing students shouldn’t be allowed free rides in our public schools, that is obvious, but not sure how big a problem it really is in relation to the bigger gorilla in the room.[/quote]deadzone, “anchor babies” aren’t “illegals.” If they RESIDE in the US, they aren’t doing anything against the law to attend public school in the US. Nor are “illegal” US RESIDENT children attending school north of the border. See:
Kids who cross the border every day to attend public school in CA or TX (which have “residency laws” in place to attend public school) are breaking the law. It doesn’t matter whether they are “anchor babies,” “illegals” or even Americans of any race or Nationality. If one’s immediate family does not live in the US and the student does not live in the US, then they are NOT residents for the purposes of attending public school!
People of all races and Nationalities (even US born Americans) live on the MX side of the border solely for economic reasons. Many of them are paying $450 to $600 month to rent a 4 bdrm house in Tijuana when that same home rents for $2200 month and up in Otay Mesa (SD) just a stone’s throw north of the int’l border.
A family can’t have it both ways unless they pay tuition. And many families in MX DO PAY tuition for the kids to attend school in the US … mainly for Catholic (1-12) school north of the border. But these thousands of “seat stealers” enrolled in public school north of the border aren’t paying any tuition to any school district. Their parents are “faking” their addresses in order to enroll their kids because the school districts are too lax to do anything about it and that word has been out for decades. They all know they can get away with it indefinitely so their kids (all living in MX) can and will continue to “steal” public school seats in US border counties indefinitely.
In short, this HUGE group has been successfully skirting the public school “residency laws” for decades.
