American taxpayers pay $60 billion for the education of children of illegal aliens, said U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-AL.
He cited statistics from the Pew Research Center that estimated nearly 4 million public school students from kindergarten through the 12th grade are the children of at least one illegal alien parent. “Can anyone tell me how much we spend on public education for that population of students?” He asked. “It’s around $60 billion.”
State and local taxpayers cover the lion’s share of costs for federally mandated “English as a Second Language” programs. “What percentage of ESL programs are paid for by the federal government that requires them? Just over one percent,” Byrne said. “Who pays for the rest? States and local school systems.”
Byrne added: “That costs a lot of money for these state and local school systems. Many of them like my state of Alabama just don’t have it. But because the federal government requires it, they have to put that money in there to the detriment of other programs.
“That cost is not being borne by those of us in Washington. It’s being borne by men and women and the states and local school systems around the United States of America. But really the cost is being borne by children who are being denied the programs that they should have. Children who are citizens of the United States, whose parents are citizens of the United States, they’re being denied programs because we’re forcing their state and local school systems to take on an expense that we should be taking on because we’ve failed to enforce our own laws.”