Monday’s San Jose Mercury News shows that the pro-alien news story [1] remains a popular #FakeNews genre. Plus, President’s tariff deal with Mexico may cut back the invader flood for a time, so the press must continue to pester the public with sob stories of suffering foreign lawbreakers who nevertheless are found to be admirable by liberal scribblers.
The Murky-News’ sympathy object is a Mexican student with a possibly pretend name of “Dafne” who is poised to steal a spot at UC Davis from some deserving American citizen. The alien is given the front-page treatment while pretending she has “a life in hiding” because of the meanie president who is defending law and borders.
The article is all sweetness and light, with no hint that there is illegality involved that actually harms other people, like the unknown person missing out on UC Davis and all the American high school kids who got less so foreigners could mooch an American education.
Make no mistake, the sudden influx of many foreign students into a school system requires a substantial addition and reallocation of resources [2]. Those needs include free food, tutors, Spanish-speaking teachers, psychological counseling and healthcare. So either taxes go up or American kids are short-changed.
The Supreme Court case of Plyler v. Doe guaranteeing public school for foreign kids was decided in 1982 when world population was 4.6 billion [3] — 3.1 billion fewer than today’s 7.7 billion [4] — so perhaps it was easier to be generous then.
Plus, when hundreds of millions of people across the world are planning migration to America or Europe, that means they are not reforming their homelands. That scenario does not work given world population growth,
The current story is a reminder that the California taxpayer is dinged for the high school education of many thousands of illegal alien students, 27,000 of whom are graduating this year.
A student and a teacher: The struggles of being undocumented in California [5], San Jose Mercury News, June 10, 2019
About 27,000 undocumented high school students will graduate in California this year. They face uncertain futures.
Dafne, a high school senior in San Jose, is one of a small fraction of the state’s estimated 27,000 undocumented students graduating from high schools and enrolling in four-year colleges this year.
Barred from federal financial aid and facing the gnawing uncertainty she’ll ever be able to legally work in the U.S. even after earning a degree, Dafne, 17, knows firsthand the hurdles undocumented students face to succeed in higher education.
The basketball player and cheerleader was 8 years old when her parents brought her from Mexico to San Jose. This news organization is not using her full name to protect her identity.
In middle school, she realized why her mother wouldn’t let her go on a school trip to visit the Capitol or why she couldn’t get a job at fast-food chains like her friends. She said she felt ashamed and limited by her immigration status.
But now she’s trying to break free. She will attend UC Davis in the fall.
“I think, for me, college is my ticket. It’s a ticket for me to do something greater, to be something else than just my status,” said Dafne, who hopes U.S. immigration laws will change so she can work as a high school teacher one day.
Eighteen years ago, another local undocumented high school graduate contemplated the same prospect as Dafne. Julio Navarrete also dreamed of becoming a high school teacher, but wasn’t sure he could be legally employed.
Now 34, Navarrete has been named “Teacher of the Year” at American High School, the largest in Fremont.
Six years ago, he won political asylum in the U.S. and a life-changing work permit. By then Navarrete had earned a master’s degree in education and teaching certificate at the National Hispanic University in San Jose.
“Every day I wake up feeling grateful,” said Navarrete, in his fourth year as a Spanish teacher at American High. “Just the fact that I’m able to step into a high school classroom and be with my students and teach and be part of this community. That’s all I could ever ask for.”
Dafne and Navarrete are at different points of their strikingly similar paths. They were born in Puerto Vallarta and grew up in East San Jose. Their parents worked hard to barely scrape out a living.
They navigated college applications without the Obama-era program that allows nearly 200,000 unauthorized young immigrants in California to temporarily work and be protected from deportation. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals has been closed to new applicants and tied up in the courts after the Trump administration took steps to end it.
As more undocumented students graduate from high school without DACA, Navarrete said he encourages students in his classroom to pursue their aspirations.
“I tell them that nobody can take away their education regardless of whether or not in the future they’ll be able to work,” said Navarrete. “Education is our freedom, and we need to educate ourselves. And, when they finish university, maybe things will be different.” (Continues)