Illegal Border Crossings Today:

Oklahoma Knows You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

Migrants, Money, Cracked Flag, School Bus

Any business owner – at least any successful one – knows that inventorying is crucial to managing supply and demand, maximizing profit, minimizing loss, and otherwise ensuring efficiency. Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of the State Department of Education, understands that and is now asking Oklahoma school districts to get a handle on the number of illegal aliens occupying classrooms statewide.

In a recent State Board of Education meeting, Walters announced, “What we will be doing in the upcoming weeks, is issuing guidance to districts where they will be helping us to find accurate and effective counting of the cost and burden that illegal immigration has, not only on their school, but the taxpayers in the state of Oklahoma. It’s incredibly hard to know how much illegal immigration schools are dealing with [sic] financial impact.”

Walter’s plan faces challenges by political opponents, and some school districts who argue that Plyler v. Doe guarantees children can attend public schools regardless of their immigration status. They also refer to U.S. Department of Education guidance stipulating that schools cannot ask about a student’s or family’s immigration status or take other actions that could discourage students from seeking enrollment.

What they’re ignoring, however, is that the superintendent has expressed no intent, whatever, of wanting to discourage or restrict access to education to illegal aliens; he simply wants an accurate count to responsibly manage public resources for the upcoming school year. The specifics of Walter’s guidance to school districts is forthcoming and unknown — as is whether school districts will ultimately comply — but in the meantime, FAIR’s 2023 cost study data for Oklahoma is timely.

  • An estimated 136,000 illegal aliens live in Oklahoma along with an additional 47,000 of their U.S.-born children.
  • Illegal alien households add 41,766 students to Oklahoma public schools.
  • Illegal immigration costs Oklahoma taxpayers $782.9 million annually, with public education representing the largest portion of expense at $474.9 million.

Like all states, Oklahoma is feeling the rising pressures of the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policies and is doing its best to identify problems, quantify costs, and take preventative measures. To that extent, in May of this year, the Oklahoma Legislature passed House Bill 4156, which established “impermissible occupation” as a crime.  The law makes it illegal to willfully enter the state without authorization to be in the country. Those found guilty could face imprisonment, fines or expulsion from the state. A judge has put enforcement on hold pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.

Likewise, Walters, Oklahoma’s top school official, is recognizing a problem and acting responsibly. As he says, “The federal government has failed to secure our borders, our schools are suffering over this, and where the federal government has failed to act, Oklahoma will step up. So we will step in, we will make sure that we understand the cost to taxpayers so that our kids can get the best education possible.”