State and Local (NL2411)

Oklahoma 

On the eve of the November elections, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction sent a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris demanding that the federal government reimburse his state for the cost that illegal immigration imposes on the school system. In his letter, Ryan Walters said the state has incurred a cost of at least $474.9 million, and says it’s the largest unfunded mandate in the country. In a 2022 report detailing the impact of immigration on the American educational system, FAIR estimated that there were some 60,000 Limited English Proficient students in the Oklahoma school system, costing state taxpayers about $630 million annually. 

Oklahoma’s own audit of costs associated with providing public K-12 education to illegal aliens was part of a statewide effort to ascertain the true costs to the state. Walters’ agency looked at the cost to educate every single child and the resources needed for English as a Second Language. “[W]hat we did is we went to districts and found students that do not speak English, come from another country during the school year and began to crunch those numbers to account for those who do not show residence in the country as the illegal immigrants that have moved over. And so, that is our best estimate is 474 million,” Walters said. 

As part of the statewide audit of the costs of illegal immigration to state taxpayers, FAIR’s director of research, Michael McManus, was asked to provide testimony before the State Powers Committee of the Oklahoma House. FAIR has long been recognized as the foremost authority on the costs of illegal immigration. In late October, FAIR’s national cost study, setting the total annual cost of illegal immigration at more than $150 billion, was featured in a front page story in the New York Post.