When a Teacher is Pro-Amnesty for Illegal Aliens
Q. Our
daughter is a conservative young lady, a senior in high school this year. She
got a fairly liberal, strong-minded English teacher. She likes her, but says
she's a little intimidating. Well, this teacher brought in a guest speaker for
her two classes who spoke to the kids for an hour on all the reasons she
believes we should grant amnesty to illegal aliens in this country. She thinks
we should give them driver's licenses, free education for their kids, free
health care, let them vote, and on and on. Some of the more conservative kids
were a little upset at the one-sidedness of this. They asked the teacher if she
was going to bring in a guest speaker with the other point of view, to permit equal
time. She said no. What should we do?
It is very disappointing to hear
that a teacher would allow someone to advocate ignoring our laws to a classroom
full of impressionable young people. As if our laws don't matter! It's a sad
day in the teaching profession when this sort of thing goes on. But education
has become intensely politicized, and parents need to be ready to deal with
outrages like this quickly and effectively.
As high-school seniors, it's time
for these students to stand on their own two feet, stand up to that teacher
courteously but firmly, and demand a balanced presentation with both sides of
this issue. You and other parents should stand with them.
First,
students and parents should get together and do a little research (see below
for a good start), and select a spokesperson. You could just print this out and
bring it to the teacher. Make an appointment with the teacher at which students
and parents ask her politely to offer the other point of view, with equal time.
Have one of the students state two or three key reasons why this should be done
(see below for a strong list of reasons to get you started). Be
sure to find out in advance the names of people in your community who could
come in with credibility, facts and figures, and rebut the pro-amnesty side. Sources
might include the local newspaper, activist group, or an official of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
If this
teacher is halfway intelligent, and dedicated in the least bit to the teaching
profession, she will be proud of her students for their extra effort and
critical thinking, and probably will gladly agree to their request.
If the teacher refuses to give the
requested equal time, then you should go up the chain of command until you get
the response you deserve. That means bring your concerns to the department
head, the principal, the district's curriculum chief, superintendent, and, if
necessary, the final arbiter, the elected board of education. Invite the
teacher to these meetings as a courtesy and note that she will have probably
notified her union, which is fine.
If the educators cite the teacher's
"academic freedom" to teach the way she sees fit, ask if the teacher is free to
advocate censorship and lawlessness, which is basically what she did with her
biased, one-sided presentation. Does "academic freedom" extend to a teacher
advocating murder? Rape? Theft? Then why should she be allowed to advocate
breaking our nation's immigration laws and/or ignoring the crimes, expenses and
problems that illegal immigration is causing?
If you can't persuade the educators
to grant a fair "counterpoint" presentation, then ask a local news reporter to
do a story on your effort, write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper,
or bring the matter to the most popular local talk radio host, even though that
would be embarrassing to the teacher and the district. You could even create a
blog, put all your information on it, and publicize the URL at school and in
your community.
Why should you go to all this
trouble? Because there's a lot at stake here. And this can be a valuable
learning experience for all involved - including this teacher. She probably is
a sensitive and caring individual who might have a friend or family member who
is an illegal alien. Or she may have some other personal reason for promoting
amnesty for these noncitizens. Finally, she just may not have thought about the
other side of the story and doesn't know the facts, which are overwhelmingly
supportive of the anti-amnesty position. So it's high time she learned, and you
can reverse roles and do some important teaching!
Examples of the impact of illegal
aliens on the American society and economy could be divided up among the
students and parents for research to produce a few facts about subtopics like
these to make the case for the need for more information:
Fiscal burden on bona fide Americans. It has been estimated that the extra costs of
providing free education, health care and incarceration alone to illegal alien
families is over $500 per American
household per year, which in these economic times, families can ill
afford.
Irresponsible lending
to illegal aliens led to the recent gigantic bailouts and looming probable
Depression. The five
million bad loans that the quasi-governmental mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, made to illegal aliens in order to put them in their own homes -
which they couldn't afford -- was THE major
factor in creating the current credit crisis and consequent
coming great Depression.
Entitlement mentality
and wealth redistribution demands are dangerous. Illegal aliens have been treated so
well in this country that they now expect free health care, free maternity
service, free education, and all the other freebies that they get thanks to the
generosity, or maybe it's stupidity, of the American taxpayer. Their financial
demands could literally bankrupt us. Think about that astounding number of bad
loans to illegals, five million: it puts the lie to the notion that there are
"only" 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in this country in total. Five
million bad home loans x four or five or more people per household
. . . do the math.
Job displacement and enormous unemployment costs. Illegals take jobs that would
otherwise go to American citizens, especially young people, since many of the
jobs that illegals take are unskilled labor. Young adults often have to go on
government unemployment payments, because illegals, who will work cheaper, have
taken any available jobs. And then up go everybody's taxes to cover that
additional unemployment expense.
Small business displacement. Since illegals don't pay taxes, they underbid legal
businesses, take away their work, and drive them out of business. This happens
most often in the construction and landscaping fields. Then the former business
owners, who are workers with high skills, lose their independence as
self-employed entrepreneurs, and often have to take an enormous cut in pay just
to find a job. It can be personally as well as financially devastating.
Gang violence. Authorities are
unanimous in citing "MS-13" as the most dangerous criminal gang in our history.
This Hispanic gang's members customarily murder witnesses, meaning few will
testify, making it impossible in most cases to get convictions, and they're now
holding sway in upwards of 42 states. Plus the "Zetas," a gang
of Mexy-military-trained drug runners, have murdered who knows
how many Americans, in various locations. They perpetrate gang-style
"hits" and even execution-style killings, endangering innocent
bystanders and clogging our police, courthouses, criminal justice systems,
jails and prisons.
Disloyalty to American principles.
Illegal immigrants are already law-breakers, so that doesn't bode well for the
chance of them becoming good citizens. Aren't we supposed to be a nation of
laws, respecting the law above all else? Illegal aliens clash with that, just
by being here illegally. Also, the blatant parading of foreign flags in their
protests shows that they'll never be loyal enough to merit citizenship. Some
see the millions of illegal aliens as "invaders" whose voting preferences would
be strictly anti-American and Marxist in nature, a real threat to our
constitutional republic, democratic way of life, and capitalistic standards of
living.
Community turmoil. Coping with the language barrier, cultural differences, behavioral
differences, and the like can be very expensive and destructive in a small town
as businesses, churches, law enforcement, social-service agencies and civic
organizations try to accommodate non-English speaking people who don't often
appear to even try to make the effort at mutual understanding reciprocal.
Back-breaking public education costs. Because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, illegal
aliens get to enroll their children for free in American public schools. That's
even though they don't pay taxes to pay for those school services, which
increases the tax burden on bona fide citizens. The cost per pupil per year in
many schools is upwards of $9,000 per year, and that's given free to each child
in an illegal alien family - which often tend to be big families. Health is
also a major concern, since often the children of illegals lack the necessary
immunizations to prevent the spread of disease in our schools.
Classroom chaos. Ask any teacher how tough it is to teach a class when one or more
students don't understand English well enough to be able to learn. Dealing with
that problem just slows down the learning curve for all students. It's hardest
on low-income parents who are bona fide citizens or legal immigrants, and paying
taxes, only to see their own children's educations diminished because of the
pressure from these illegals, who AREN'T paying in to the system.
Pollution and environmental damage. Environmental laws are lax or absent in Mexico and
other Third World countries from which illegals are immigrating. You've
probably seen photos of the junk, litter and toxic waste all over those
countries. Now they're bringing those sloppy and unhealthful habits here. Illegal
aliens have left so many tons of garbage along the U.S./Mexico border that ranchers
living along the border are constantly faced with loss of cattle, repair of cut
or trampled fences, and water line damage.
Identity theft and medical theft. There have been countless cases of illegal aliens posing as
American citizens after stealing someone's Social Security number. Often, the
identity information of newborns or the newly-deceased is sold by dishonest
persons who work in a hospital or morgue, or those who get the data illegally from
government vital statistics offices, or harvest it from stolen laptops or
databases, to the illegal alien who needs the Social Security number to get a
job. Each time it happens, it can cause the innocent American thousands of
dollars to straighten out their credit and IRS problems. Even worse, the
theft of a person's medical history can cause misdiagnosis or refusal of
services because of past due bills, the denial of Social Security benefits, SSI
or other benefits, until the American can PROVE that, in fact, they are the
real person who the Social Security number was issued to.
National security threats. While 93% of illegal aliens are from Mexico, the other 7% --
hundreds of thousands of people - have snuck across our borders illegally and
stayed here "under the radar" from many other countries. And many of those
countries are not friends of the United States (see Tom Tancredo's book In Mortal Danger). How many illegal
aliens have been caught working at our military bases or nuclear sites? A lot.
It's pretty ridiculous that schools won't enroll a kindergartner without a
certified copy of the child's birth certificate and much other documentation,
and yet we have probable terrorists and saboteurs working at high-risk
locations with access to equipment that could cause incredible loss of life and
damage.
Exploitation of immigrant women and children. Many women and children are
raped or sold into slavery once their "mule" has brought them across the
border. Many of them pay right at the border, where the mules have "rape trees" -- after they are
raped, their bras or panties are hung on a tree.
Law enforcement punished for trying to enforce the law. Border Patrol agents, police
officers and sheriffs have been put on trial, found guilty and put in prison for
apprehending illegal aliens. There have been several cases of this happening after
the illegal aliens were found guilty and deported, then Amnesty International
brought them back to file suits and retry these cases. Border Patrol
Agents Ramos and Compean, MD Police Officer Stephanie Mohr and Texas Sheriff
Hernandez are names you can research to learn more about this.
Crime, especially drug-trafficking crime. This is the big issue. And it's not
only the despicable flaunting of American laws by officials and employers who
prevent the detection, capture, prosecution and deportation of illegal
aliens, who are felons for being here
illegally in the first place. Violent crimes, theft and automobile crashes are
major problems, too. Consider this example of crimes against American citizens
by illegal aliens, one of dozens of examples on the website, www.immigrationshumancost.org/text/crimevictims.html:
The murder of Kris Eggle (see the separate page
of collected articles), a park ranger in the Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument in southern Arizona on August 9, 2002, was little noted by the media,
although the press has paid considerable attention to the deaths of illegal
aliens on the border. By contrast, Ranger Eggle was shot down by Mexican drug
dealers who were using Organ Pipe as a
route for their smuggling. Only 28 when he was murdered, Eggle was a
valedictorian and an Eagle
Scout who joined the National Park Service because he loved the outdoors.
(Organ Pipe is considered to be the most dangerous of the national park system:
200,000 illegal aliens and 700,000 pounds of drugs were intercepted at the park
in 2001.) The Eggles have a family website,
www.kriseggle.org, to inform interested parties about what they are doing.
Homework: Other
good resources on the problems caused by illegal aliens are on:
www.fairus.org (Federation for American
Immigration Reform)
www.vdare.com/mann/status_report.htm
(List of places to report illegal aliens)
http://lamarsmith.house.gov/Read.aspx?ID=901
http://www.illegalaliens.us/