Costs of Educating Children of Illegal AliensThe largest public outlay for illegal aliens is paying for the education of the children of those illegal residents. This cost is borne largely by state and local governments. Under the 1982 Supreme Court Plyler v. Doe 5-4 decision, states are prohibited from denying K-12 schooling to these children. Many of them are born in the United States and are considered to be U.S. citizens, but, like their foreign-born siblings, they would not be in the country and a burden on the taxpayers if their parents were not illegally residing in the United States. Estimating the Cost of Educating Illegal Alien Students and their SiblingsThe table below provides FAIR’s estimates by state of the annual costs of K-12 instruction to the school-age children of illegal aliens. The estimates below (in $ millions) were developed for FAIR’s 2005 publication Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration Is Sending Schools into the Red.
* (Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming) The estimates were based on state-reported average per-pupil costs in 2004 and the estimated number of children of illegal aliens using FAIR’s estimate of the size of the illegal alien population in each state. These cost estimates do not include the costs of supplemental programs such as Limited English Proficiency instruction, which are expensive and heavily used by these same children. A fuller discussion of this issue and supplemental information, including an estimate of potential costs if illegal alien students are granted in-state tuition in state universities, is available in the FAIR publication cited above. Updated 12/06 |
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