Posted on 08/01/2007 11:49:32 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Tab for Teaching English Put at $3 Billion
June Kronholz reports on immigration.
The cost of teaching English to 12 million legal and illegal adult immigrants now in the U.S. would approach $3 billion a year, says the Migration Policy Institute in a new report that’s likely to add fuel to an immigration fight that seemed to have cooled lately.
The Washington-based nonpartisan think tank said that bringing the 5.8 million legal immigrants to a level of English proficiency that would enable them to get involved in civic life would cost $200 million a year for six years. That would be in addition to the $1 billion currently spent by the federal and state governments on English-language classes for adults.
The bigger expense, by far, would involve teaching English to about 6.4 million currently illegal immigrant adults if Congress should pass a broad legalization program, like one that failed in the Senate this summer. That bill would have required immigrants to learn English as one step toward earning legal status.
Were that to pass, the Migration Policy Institute said English-language costs would increase by $2.9 billion a year for six years. It calculated that illegal immigrants would need 319 million hours of English classes a year, or about 660 hours each over six years.
The cost of integrating illegal immigrants was among many objections to the Senate bill, although opponents focused on health, education and social-security spending. Adding English-language classes to the cost will be only one more objection when an immigration bill resurfaces, probably after the 2008 elections.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
How about they can pay for English classes themselves before they apply to become legal citizens.
Yes, that’s what it would cost the government and therefore taxpayers. Of course if we could reclaim our educational system, and make it a local endeavor, a senior citizen volunteer could do the same thing with a child for free.
Cheap money!
Send em home!
They keep tossing this 12 million figure out there as if they really know how many there are. Try 20 to 30 million.
i remember when this started in lost angeles.
boomer teachers were taken with “feel sorry for the minority”
and out of white guilt
lowered the teaching standards,
instead of working hard to lift the minorities up to what
was then the educational level.
that’s the real racism imo.
and, it’s been a downhill spiral ever since.
i meet lost angeles high area grads that cannot do simple arithmetic.
Likely that at least 80% of the students never speak english after they leave/drop out of school. Let’s put a stop to this larceny by the political ruling class.
Let’s get this straight. An immigrant enters the country, and the government has the responsibility of paving the way to integration free of charge. Where does personal responsibility enter into this equation?
An adapted version of the socialists’ idea of “from the cradle to the grave”.
mind boggling isn’t it. We the taxpayer pay for this...
I was thinking the same thing, it has been 12 million for ever it seems, I am sure they have not stopped illegally coming in. and it is probably close to 30million..or worse
If they only printed things in english (as they should), the savings would pay for all these english lessons.
Take that 3 billion and add another 50 billion to round ‘em all up and send ‘em home! Most of the US Congress is worthless in my book! Let’s also clean House there too!
Don’t we VALUE our citizenship at all? We diminish its value by giving it away. It is a PRIVILEGE to be American or to be in our systems. It insults me greatly for my poor grandparents who had to teach themselves English to become citizens.
Other countries (and I know of this first hand) have private schools with intensive language programs for kids and adults wanting to become fluent in their language. Let’s do the same here and recoup some few of our costs from these illegals. You can’t go to school here until you can pass a grade-level English exam. Period.
Spending on English instruction must be quadrupled to more than $4 billion a year...
What will it cost if we don’t teach English?
The local C.C. has a 'gazillion' English as a 2nd Lang classes (I just looked). Its 4 credit hours and would cost $412 for the semester ($103 per credit hour).
If they can't pay screw em. Let them GTF outta here!!!
Illegal immigrants represent a wet dream for those in the public sector who ineffectively and unproductively make their living supplying entitlements for the social welfare state. Illegals are high maintenance and uneducated, in other words more foundation for the liberal Democrat base which supports the elite scum like Kennedy, Schumer, Durbin, et al. If they enhance their power, while bankrupting the country they could care less, fiscal bankruptcy is simply another name for a socialistic centralized government state in their mind. Government of the government, by the government and for the government is their motto.
“The cost of teaching English to 12 million legal and illegal adult immigrants now in the U.S. would approach $3 billion a year..”
Why teach them? Former immigrants picked the language up themselves. It was sink or swim.
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