The Immigrant Child; Will Promising Future Citizens Be Assimilated or Excluded?

Kudos to those who worked on the informational conference in NY. As mentioned in this article, "Our public institutions are failing to meet the needs of immigrant families and their children."
We are an ever changing melting pot....
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NY: The Immigrant Child; Will Promising Future Citizens Be Assimilated or Excluded?
The Post-Standard,
October 2, 2008
By Stephen Yale-Loehr

Each year, about 65,000 undocumented immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools. Who are these students?

They are people like Martine Kalaw, who graduated from Hamilton College in 2003 and received a master's degree from Syracuse University in 2004. Martine's mother brought her to the United States on a tourist visa from the Democratic Republic of the Congo when she was 4 years old. After her mother died, Martine lost her immigration status. Despite her immigration woes, Martine excelled in school and now works as a financial analyst at the New York Public Library. Many immigrant children are not so fortunate. As Martine testified before Congress last year, undocumented immigrant children suffer "an immigration nightmare," and feel as if they are wearing "a scarlet letter 'I' for 'illegal immigrant,'" through no fault of their own. Legislation now pending in Congress would address this problem.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act would allow undocumented immigrant children who have grown up in the United States, stayed in school and kept out of trouble to legalize their status if they go to college or serve in the military for at least two years. By passing the DREAM Act, Congress would legally recognize what is de facto true: These young people belong here. Failure to pass the act will cause America to lose a vital asset: an educated class of promising immigrant students with a commitment to hard work and a strong desire to contribute to society.

The DREAM Act would reduce the dropout rate of immigrant students. Foreign-born students represent a significant and growing percentage of the current student population. From 1970 to 1995, the proportion of foreign-born students in grades 6-12 increased from 1.7 to 5.7 percent. Children of undocumented immigrants are far more likely to drop out of high school than are students who were born in the United States.Because the DREAM Act would lead more immigrants to graduate, it would increase tax revenues and reduce government expenses. Based on estimates in a 1999 RAND study, an average 30-year-old Mexican immigrant woman who has graduated from college will pay $5,300 more in taxes and cost $3,900 less in welfare expenses each year than if she had dropped out of high school -- an increased fiscal contribution of more than $9,000 per person.

Over the last 100 years, U.S. society has provided immigrant youth with access to education at public institutions such as the City University of New York. This accounts for the social mobility of many different ethnic groups. We need to continue that positive experience, not turn our backs on new immigrants.

Care to learn more? Come to a free, one-day public conference at the Statler Hotel at Cornell University on Saturday, Oct. 4.

The conference focuses on immigrant children in New York state and is aimed at everyone: families, students, educators and social service providers. The conference targets three areas affecting immigrant children: health, language and law. In each area, speakers aim to provoke dialogue with the audience about questions rooted in the fabric of U.S. society:

Is the experience of new immigrants the same as 100 years ago?
Is assimilation still the American ideal?
How should contemporary social, educational and medical services respond to the experiences of new immigrants and their children?

Why an Upstate conference on immigration?
Because the entire state of New York -- not just the large cities -- is experiencing a critical national demographic shift: First- and second-generation immigrants and their children total 55 million people, or one out of five Americans.

It is time to revise the old "melting pot" mythology to reflect current social and economic realities and address problematic immigration policies. Our public institutions are failing to meet the needs of immigrant families and their children. We need to develop best practices to help immigrant children. The conference aims to contribute to all these goals and elevate the public discourse about immigration.