Here is a 24.5 year-old LA Times article discussing this issue:
INS to Begin Student Visa Crackdown : Border: Starting Monday, Mexican students crossing the border daily to attend U.S. schools will be refused entry unless they have the proper visa.
January 11, 1992|DAVID SMOLLAR | TIMES STAFF WRITER
An unknown number of Mexican children may be refused entry to the United States at the Tijuana and Mexicali border crossings Monday morning when the Immigration and Naturalization Service begins strict enforcement of student visa regulations.
Any potential effect is likely to be felt most in four South Bay public school districts nearest the border, in which the INS believes a number of Mexican nationals are enrolled.
However, administrators in those districts said Friday they do not expect any major attendance reductions because they do not believe there are large numbers of Mexican students illegally in their schools.
But administrators have no statistics to know definitely whether or not there will be a major disruption until after the enforcement is under way next week.
Although the INS estimates that 5,000 to 10,000 children living in the Baja California border areas regularly attend all types of schools in the United States, its figures include children who hold American citizenship or permanent resident status but whose parents choose to live in Mexico.
Those children will not be affected by the stricter enforcement, nor will those who cross to attend parochial schools in the United States and who already have student visas.
INS inspectors at the Tijuana border have been seeing “carloads of schoolchildren, books in tow, bound north from Tijuana every (U.S.) school day, with no documentation other than border crossing cards,” James B. Turnage, INS district director in San Diego, said.
Turnage said this amounts to a “free ride” for those students attending public schools because they are not paying tuition otherwise required of out-of-district students.
The new enforcement, which will cover ports of entry along the border from San Diego to Texas, will mean that a Mexican national student must have a student (F-1) visa to cross and will no longer be able to use border cards, which are issued for short-term shopping and visitation of relatives.
The INS said it will seize such cards if they are used in lieu of required student visas, noting that that it has been publicizing the “phased enforcement policy” since July. . . .
To enroll a student in a public school, a family need only show the school attendance office a rent or utility receipt containing a valid address within the school district. Schools generally do not double-check for proof, and the California Constitution requires public schools to educate free any child living within their boundaries.
“Officially, we have not received any requests from students to submit information” for visa forms, Deb Baker, public information officer for the South Bay Union School District, said.
“Unofficially, we may have a few students attending who come from Tijuana, but we really don’t have any idea. We do see a couple of Baja plates on cars in front of a school from time to time, and we hear stories of a student or two late because of problems coming across the border. But we don’t think that the numbers are large.” ….
Of course, the “anchor baby” border crossing students who were residing in MX with their parents were left out of the INS “sweep” of January 1992 (even though the INS had known for years that hordes of schoolchildren crossed the border into the US every morning dressed for school with their backpacks on and that it was illegal for non-residents to attend public school in the US) without paying tuition :=0
Since then, South County school districts have built approx 30% MORE schools for daily border-crossing students to choose from! After choosing where they want to attend, their parent sets about locating a willing resident in the district and even school attendance area where they would prefer their kids attend school for the purposes of having them execute their “guardianship affidavit!” The city of Chula Vista alone had a population of ~90K in 1992 and ~52K in 1986. Today the city’s approximate population is 277K!
Notice that the spokesperson from SBUSD, (one of the two public elementary school districts closest to the border) stated in the article to the Times reporter that they don’t think (daily border crossing students) are really a “problem.” A second administrator from the SYESD told the reporter that she suspects that “a few” (students living in MX) probably slip through but she (personally?) checks every student’s residency.
Yeah, okay . . . sure.
After adding at least 6K students to Calexico’s ~2-3K public school student population in 1992 (for a total of approx 8500 students today) to South SD County’s 85K+ students (totaling ~94K current public school students on the US side of the border of Baja CA, we can multiply that 5-10K INS “ball-park estimation” in 1992 by at least 3 today. If the INS’ rough estimation was low, the daily border-crossing public school student population could be much higher than 3x 5-10K today.
At South County’s current ~85K public school student population, just over 21K students would equal 25% of the overall current student population (in 4 elem school districts plus one HS district).
I posted here that my estimate of current daily border crossing public school students in South County was currently approx 25% of the total enrolled student population.
The article has an error in that a parent cannot submit receipts for rent or utilities to establish residency. They must submit a copy of a lease, deed, or utility bill of a qualified address in their own name.
Ha, ha, the “public administration officer” for SBUSD also stated to the Times reporter, “`Officially, we have not received any requests from students to submit information’ for visa forms.”
Of course not! Why would any of their students residing in MX (especially “anchor babies”) request a visa when it would cause their families to have to pay tuition to the district??
