Illegal Immigrants: Don’t Rock the Boat

rock the boat At breakfast this morning my daughter was relating a conversation she had with a neighbor-friend who is a third-grade teacher at a predominantly Hispanic public elementary school. They were discussing the problems caused by the extensive federally-required testing of third graders – the loss of instruction time, the stress for students and teachers, the declining scores. Then the teacher made a startling observation.

“It’s not just the testing that’s a problem, ” she told my daughter. “I have a room full of kids who don’t value education. That’s because they come from families who don’t value education.” She said nobody at home speaks English, so the children have no interest in learning English, or much of anything else, at school. They don’t see anything at home that connects education to success in life or anything positive. “They act out all day. Our classroom is chaos, and we are not allowed to discipline because the school is afraid of legal action.”

Another friend of mine is a kindergarten teacher who teaches entirely in Spanish. Her students receive no English instruction. She reports the same lack of discipline and respect in her students, and suffered a serious physical attack by one of them. Her administration warned her to not report the incident to police or other authorities.

Both of these talented young teachers are now questioning the wisdom of their career choices.

After breakfast, I flipped through the Sunday morning news shows, landing on the Fareed Zakaria GPS report about discrimination. He pointed out that many more schools are now segregated than were before Brown vs. Board, and went on to say performance and outcomes in these “minority” schools is much worse than in “desegregated” schools. He carefully avoided one critical detail. The segregation in today’s schools is English-speakers vs. non-English speakers. American-born vs. (mostly) illegal aliens.

The other Sunday news shows all had the obligatory segments with talking heads explaining how Donald Trump has no chance to be elected president because he offended Hispanic voters by saying Mexican criminals have come across our open border. The news producers shelved the video showing protesters at a Trump rally assaulting police while waving Mexican flags.

My sensibilities were a little bit rocked by all this turbulence before my third cup of coffee. I had to say: this is just not working.

We can not leave our borders unprotected any longer. We can’t continue to pretend that these are only poor “refugees” wanting to celebrate America, to do the jobs we won’t do, and to help raise the tide that floats all boats. The boats that were already here are taking on water. We don’t have enough jobs for our own citizens. Our schools and support systems are sinking under the weight of foreigners, many of whom have no intention of assimilating.

I’m not a bigot or a selfish meanie. I’m not broad-brushing Hispanics or any other minority as terrible people. I’m not saying no more immigration, ever. All I’m saying is, what we’re doing now – unfiltered, uncontrolled mass immigration driven by liberal public benefit programs – is not working. It has to change before the boats all tip over.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side