Tweet
By TAWNELL D. HOBBS, GARY JACOBSON and KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News
In Texas, nobody asks, nobody tells, but a whole lot of people would sure like to know.
How many illegal immigrants attend the state's public schools, supported by taxpayer money?
While the answer is unknown because schools do not track students' legal status, estimates from top researchers and a Dallas Morning News analysis of little-known state data provide a range that is lower than many people might expect.
•At the lower end, researchers estimate between 125,000 and 150,000 illegal immigrants attended Texas public schools in 2009, making up 3 percent of Texas students and costing taxpayers more than $1 billion a year.
•At the top end, the analysis provides a solid ceiling. State records show 92 percent of the state's schoolchildren have Social Security numbers on file, indicating they are legally in the United States. That means Texas cannot have more than 8 percent – about 400,000 illegal immigrant students – or spend more than $3.5 billion annually to educate them.
The precise numbers are almost certainly lower because school districts cannot require parents to provide Social Security numbers, though most ask for them.
"Eight percent is a ceiling, but it's a high ceiling," said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
A bill has been filed for the next Texas legislative session, which begins in January, that would require districts to ask for proof of legal status and report the number of illegal immigrants who attend their schools. Similar bills have failed in the past, but the political climate has changed, raising the odds of success this time.
Plyler vs. Doe.
In Plyler vs. Doe, a Tyler case, the court struck down a Texas law denying public education funding to illegal immigrants and attempts to charge them tuition.
There is disagreement about whether the court's decision also prohibits counting illegal immigrant students. That's why school districts currently avoid the issue by not asking.
State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, said nothing forbids districts to track illegal immigrants, as long as they aren't denied admittance. Berman said illegal immigrants cost Texas billons of dollars a year in services, including the building of additional public schools.
"The illegal aliens aren't paying for those school buildings," Berman said.
"Enough is enough," echoes Dallas resident Shirley Daniels, who has grandchildren in Dallas ISD. "They're taking away from us."
Talk like that worries relatives of students in the country illegally and their advocates, who point out that some illegal immigrants do pay taxes.
"What's the point in knowing whether they're here legally or illegally?" said Alicia Luna of Dallas, who has nieces here illegally. "To me it would be to kick them out."
David Hinojosa, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that asking a student's status could violate the Supreme Court ruling because it might make parents, already fearful of authorities, hold their kids out of school.
"There's no educational purpose. It's very mean-spirited and leads nowhere," Hinojosa said.
Dallas teacher Diane Birdwell said the proposed law would send kids here illegally into hiding and increase school dropout rates.
"If this law is to destroy some of our public schools, then that is what it would do," said Birdwell, who sits on the board of directors for NEA-Dallas employees association. "If you don't want these kids in school, then get the people who hire their parents."
The idea of counting illegal immigrant students, while controversial, has received support from the U.S. General Accounting Office. In a 2004 report, the audit and investigative arm of Congress said it was relevant for states to know the exact number. A possible future federal reimbursement of costs related to illegal immigrants is one reason cited.
Texas state Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, fears that the bill requiring school districts to determine citizenship and other bills targeting immigrants could pass next year because of large GOP majorities in both the state House and Senate.
"They'll be able to pass anything – and anti-immigration is a top priority," Farrar said.
That would be a mistake, she said. In the long run, not educating immigrants will cost more.
Social Security test
Students who don't submit Social Security numbers when they first enroll in Texas schools get a state-approved alternative ID from their school district. Both numbers are used for tracking purposes.
The state reviews the Social Security numbers, but the numbers are not verified with the federal government.
In The News' analysis, higher concentrations of alternative IDs were found around the largest cities. Dallas ISD and Houston ISD issued alternative IDs to about 18 percent of their students.
The percentage of students without Social Security numbers in Dallas ISD is close to an estimate of illegal immigrant students that Superintendent Michael Hinojosa provided: about 15 percent, or 23,000 students, accounting for more than $200 million in annual costs.
In The News' analysis, some suburban districts, like Plano, Denton and Katy, near Houston, had surprisingly high proportions of students with alternative IDs.
But that does not appear to mean they have large numbers of illegal immigrant students.
School officials at Plano and Katy said their communities have a lot of foreign workers, here legally, and their children don't have Social Security numbers. The officials also said some parents don't provide Social Security numbers because they worry about potential identity theft.
Denton ISD, where nearly 26 percent of the students were using alternative IDs, doesn't change an alternative ID number even if the student later produces a Social Security number.
Hinojosa thinks that alternative IDs provide the best ballpark maximum for illegal immigrant student figures. But he found the maximum of only 8 percent "a little surprising."
Lew Blackburn, currently DISD's longest-serving trustee, had guessed that the proportion of illegal immigrant students statewide would be 15 to 25 percent. Regardless of the number, he said, schools should not be "immigration policemen."
"You're going to have parents that are afraid to have their kids in school," he said.
Ana, who is in the country illegally, has a son, also in the country illegally, who is a senior at W.T. White High School in northwest Dallas. She said she never felt threatened when enrolling him in school, but she's concerned about what could happen now.
"They'll try to place more restrictions," she said.
Some say schools have already gone too far in efforts to collect Social Security numbers.
The News found that 41 of 50 districts reviewed in North Texas listed a Social Security card as an enrollment requirement on their websites.
Civil liberties groups say posing what should be a request as a requirement is against the law.
"It's not that they can't ask for it, but they can't require it," said Lisa Graybill, ACLU Foundation of Texas legal director. "They should be concerned about the accuracy of what's on their website. It's definitely something to be concerned about."
FAIR and some Republicans in Washington say it's time to end birthright citizenship.
Berman has proposed a bill for this session that would prohibit the state from giving a birth certificate to a child whose parents are here illegally. He said if the bill passes, he expects a lawsuit to be filed in protest – which he hopes will get the issue before the Supreme Court.
As the estimates and debates continue, Dallas-area Latinos don't want people to overlook the social aspect of the issue – and its possible effect on schoolchildren.
"It's unfair for them to involve a school with immigration issues," said Luna, the Dallas resident who has nieces here illegally. "Kids have to be here because of their parents."
ABOUT PLYLER VS. DOE
•In 1975, Texas lawmakers changed the education code to prohibit using state funds to educate illegal immigrants after complaints arose about the cost to the state. Some school districts banned the students outright, but many charged tuition – effectively blocking poor children from enrolling. Two years later, the Tyler school board voted to charge illegal immigrant children $1,000 tuition annually.
•Civil rights attorneys quickly filed a federal lawsuit in Tyler on behalf of four illegal immigrant families from Mexico who had been told they would be charged tuition. U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice quickly ordered the school district to readmit the children. In a decision he would call the most important of his career, Justice found that the children were entitled to a free public education and had civil rights and equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment.
•Texas appealed the decision, and it eventually reached the Supreme Court. In 1982, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of the children. It has resulted in thousands of illegal immigrant children nationwide receiving a public education in American schools – even though many have no path to legal status once they graduate and complete their educations.
•U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in the court's decision: "It is difficult to understand precisely what the state hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare and crime."
•Tyler Superintendent Jim Plyler in recent years said he now agrees with the court's decision, though he once referred to the children as a costly "burden."
Comment