Comment by omegaworks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by omegaworks | Hacker News Reader

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>How much does that have to do with its sanctuary status & high illegal immigration numbers.

Zero. It has zero to do with how California treats its most vulnerable immigrant population, and everything to do with how California funds its schools.

The Berkeley CA School board recently had to make hard choices in its yearly budget. Berkeley is one of the wealthiest cities in the state. It was forced to slash safety officers and special programs due to a $2 million dollar budget shortfall. Less than the cost of a house. [1] America funds its schools primarily via property taxes, so Proposition 13, a measure that freezes that tax revenue, keeps $2 million dollar properties taxed as though they were valued at ~$100,000. It ensures California schools will always be begging to meet the needs of the state's growing population. [2]

[1] http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/02/09/berkeley-school-board...

[2] https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/962425686039306240

Thereally are several examples of per pupil expenditure against student performance that suggest you are wrong. NYC for example spends about $22K per kid. Results are middling at best, even with a number of troubling things done to mask how bad things like attendance, test scores, and graduation rates really are. A similar situation exists in Washington DC. Money is simply not the answer to all problems.

That's a very common pattern. Look at any state with significant urban centers. It's very common for the city schools to have significantly higher per-student spend than affluent suburbs while simultaneously often being near the bottom in terms of test scores--which, while imperfect, are at least a reasonable proxy for the overall learning environment at a given school.

Money spent on education in the U.S has very little influence on test scores[1]. The top scorers on internationally standardized tests like Korea and Japan spend much less per student than the U.S. Countries that spend more have mixed results [2].

The education "debate" reminds me of the healthcare "debate" in which the sole issue debated is whether we should spend more money on it. The irony is is that we already spend plenty compared to other countries and in many cases get worse results.

We could adapt Japanese or Korean systems for teaching math and science, but that would be way too creative.

[1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.... [2] https://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/money-cant-buy-genius

Property taxes only make up 1/4th the school budget in CA.

Also let's do some math shall we. California has 12.3% illegal immigrant student population. Remove them and the same funds that currently exist would be funding 87.7% the current student population.

California currently spends $8,694/student. If you remove the illegal immigrants that becomes 8,694/0.877 = ~9913/student. Not great but a $1219/student gain in funds isn't shabby either. FYI california has ~6 Million k-12 students, or in other words the illegals are costing tax payers 6.66 Billion/year in k-12 education.

Now reducing our student population by 12.3% would also mean reducing the number of schools. There's likely even greater savings as not everything scales horizontally / sub-horizontally.

https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays https://edsource.org/2017/how-does-california-rank-in-per-pu...

1. The parents of those children contribute to the economy and pay taxes, and by deporting them you are harming the local economy, and also reducing your tax base. Thus the gain will be less than $1200/yr.

2. Some of the kids of unauthorized immigrants are US citizens, if they were born in the US, so your number 12.3% is not accurate. That is the number who's parents are unauthorized.

Edit: According to the source you cite, 80% of the children of unauthorized immigrants are US citizens, much higher than I expected. [1]

3. With proper education, these children will grow up to be productive, contributing members of society as doctors, engineers, etc. They will grow the US economy and pay taxes.

[1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/unauthorized-immigra...: "Children of unauthorized immigrants made up 7.3% of U.S. students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade in 2014, though the share varies by state. Most (5.9%) are U.S.-born children who are U.S. citizens at birth. The rest (1.3%) are unauthorized immigrants themselves."

> The parents of those children contribute to the economy and pay taxes

It's unlikely the parents pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits like free schooling for their kids.

And at the same time by working here they illegally decrease wages and jobs for the most marginalized Americans.

> Some of the kids of unauthorized immigrants are US citizens

They wouldn't be here in the first place if we enforced our immigration laws.

> With proper education, these children will grow up to be productive

Not with current levels of funding they won't.

And I don't see any political will in California to double the education spending per child.

> They wouldn't be here in the first place if we enforced our immigration laws.

A couple things to consider:

1) This is a nit pick, but remember that many of these children likely have a parent who is a green card holder or US citizen, and another parent who is an unauthorized citizen.

2) More importantly, these children are here, and they are citizens. You can't (or at least, modern societies should not) retroactively revoke citizenship. There are two separate questions here: first is how do we handle/regulate immigration into the country, and second is what do we do about people who are already here? These are related but separate issues. Figuring out how to educate children of unauthorized immigrants is part of the second question.

Edit:

> Not with current levels of funding they [children of unauthorized immigrants] won't [become doctors and lawyers]

It takes time. The America dream works across multiple generations. Studies show that 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants have much higher income than their parents: for example the median income goes from $45k to $58k from 1st to 2nd generation [1]

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/02/07/second-generation-...

> These are related but separate issues.

Without solving the illegal immigration problem any fix to the education problem only increases strain on the system.

California has shown no political will to solve the underlying problem of illegal immigration.

> Figuring out how to educate children of unauthorized immigrants is part of the second question.

We (royal we) know how - it will just take time and a lot of money.

Nobody wants to spend that money unless it's for a long term fix.

In the mean time the poor and middle class Americans in California get poorer (or in many cases leave the state).

> It takes time. The America dream works across multiple generations

The American dream is not magic or inevitable.

Like any complex ecosystem it's only sustainable up to a limit.

There is significant evidence we are well past that limit.

> It's unlikely the parents pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits like free schooling for their kids.

I think it's a mistake to assign the educational benefits people receive (whatever age they are at the time) to their parents.

Why?

The money has to come from somewhere.

It is a parents duty to provide for their kids.

We have a welfare system that can step in when the parents can't take responsibility and this system only works when those parents are a small minority.

I think it's valid considering it's usually parents who pay for their children's schooling if it wasn't free. The benefit here is monetary, not academic.

That's an interesting point. On the other hand, where education is free it is so, to a large extent, because it is considered a worthwhile investment into a society's future.

Cant upvote this enough!

Gentrification also impacts the public school system. The highly-acclaimed elementary school down the block from me is going to lose a ton of money as their Title I enrollment is going to drop below 55%. That’s code for the poor folk being pushed out by gentrification.

>most vulnerable immigrant population

This strategic description really grinds my gears.

In this sense, GP's references to "sanctuary cities" and "illegal immigrants" are also strategic: they betray an obvious bias towards one side of this debate. (This is leaving aside the barely coded racism - and, ironically, questionable grammar - of their other statements, such as "You're only as good as who you surround yourself".)

I see no problem in providing a counterbalancing perspective. After all, it can be simultaneously true that these people have immigrated illegally and that they are among the most vulnerable. Issues like this are complex, and there aren't easy answers. To wit: what about US-born children - do we now split up families in service of proving a moral point? What about the opportunities for children in diverse schools to learn from other cultures and viewpoints? There's also the longstanding "no human is illegal" debate.

(As you may have guessed by this point, my own bias is globalist / humanitarian. I'd argue we have a moral duty to help those in need, and that it is fallacious to argue this necessarily takes resources away from others because that presumes economics, aid, etc. are zero-sum games. I also think, in a practical sense, that many of our laws around residency, immigration, etc. ignore the reality of an increasingly mobile and globalized world, and that the sooner we can transcend nationalist bullshit the better. Finally: I believe that American prosperity has had a net extractive effect on much of the rest of the world for the past century, much like the colonial empires of yore. Moral / reparative dimensions of that aside, it certainly creates a less peaceful world.)

I agree with you on the term sanctuary city being strategic. I think these phrases get under my skin because we just parrot back what we hear on CNN/NPR/Daily Wire, without adding anything new to the conversation.

I'm not sure I could disagree with you more on a lot of what you said, but it doesn't grind any gears to read your opinion because I doubt you copy/pasted that from a VICE article. I really think you've thought about that, and that is your opinion. It does worry me that there doesn't seem to be any common ground though.

The common ground used to be the Dreamers. Children that came across the border without documentation, but have proven themselves contributing members of society through objective, conservative metrics and trust in our institutions. These people voluntarily gave their personal information to the government in a hope that has now proven itself false: that they would be granted some semblance of stability.

We have walked backwards as a society, by putting people in power that would consider even that level of humanity to be too great a political burden to bear.

> we just parrot

Not a parrot, by any means. These people are every bit as real as my neighbors and friends. It's far too easy to fall into a silo when you take a narrow view and consider only the past decade of migrant history. Consider that: before 2003, ICE did not exist. That the first of our immigration laws: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, was rooted in white supremacist ethnocentrism.

Consider: in pursuit of the foreign bogeyman, we have crafted a system of authoritative overreach that extends into a region occupied by 2/3s of our nation's population:

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

Hey, I'm with you on the "regurgitated thoughts are bad" front :)

On the rest, we likely have common ground somewhere; so far, I've stated my position without any nuance, to make its broad outlines relatively clear. Let's start with some extreme examples: we probably agree that no single country can support the entire world's population alone. We probably also agree that nationalism run amok can have terrible consequences, regardless of its potentially beneficial aspects. Most people would generally help out friends / relatives in need, provided they had the means (financial, emotional, logistical, or whatever else it takes) to do so - so we likely have some common ground there.

Other common points that come up in discussions like these...I would agree that some people contribute more than others to society. OTOH, I think we can't necessarily know ahead of time who will contribute more or less - in an immigration context, attempts to do so have a long history fraught with racism and xenophobia. (See: Angel Island near SF, Chinese Exclusion Act, refusing Jewish refugees during WW2, etc.)

Do you actually think California is trying so hard to keep these people out of altruism? This is clearly just an electoral strategy. And there’s no way that with such large numbers of a very poor foreign population that it isn’t going to disrupt institutions and daily life in California.

And that isn’t a moral judgement of any of those individuals, it’s just a reality that negative social conditions have a big impact on schools in particular. The wealthier schools aren’t just doing better because they have more money per student, they’re doing better because the kids that go there have a better social environment. You could pour 5x the money into the worst schools in the country and you wouldn’t be able to make a big improvement because the schools are not the root cause of the terrible social conditions in those communities.

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