Byrne: Americans Billed $60B a Year to Educate Illegal Aliens, Anchor Babies
American taxpayers are being forced to pay about $60 billion to educate illegal alien students, as well as refugees, the United States-born children of illegal aliens, and legal immigrant children, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) said on Wednesday.
During a congressional hearing where opponents of President Trump attacked his “America First” immigration agenda, Byrne noted that the burden of the nation’s mass illegal and legal immigration system — where more than 1.5 million are admitted every year — falls on U.S. taxpayers who have no choice but to subsidize the cost. Byrne said:
In 2016, the Pew Research Center estimated that 3.9 million – or 7.3% – of kindergarten through 12th grade students in the United States were either here illegally or were the children of at least one parent illegally present in the United States. Can anyone tell me how much we spend on public education for that population of students? It’s around $60 billion.
Byrne said that while the federal government mandates English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for the roughly 9.6 percent of all U.S. students who are considered Limited English Proficiency (LEP), it is states and local residents who have to endure the cost.
“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.” Bryne went on:
So, we require it and we push 99 percent of the costs on state and local school systems. 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.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, towns across the U.S. have had to brace for mass illegal immigration pouring through the southern border where thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) enter every year and are resettled in American communities.
Most recently, the small town of Worthington, Minnesota had to hike taxes on their residents to expand their overcrowded school system due to the surge of UACs and illegal immigration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.