PLATFORM : Why Persecute Kids for Inept Immigration Control?

Two former leaders of the Immigration and Naturalization Service are sponsoring a California initiative that would cut public funds for students unable to prove legal residency. As a former prosecutor for the INS in Los Angeles, I believe that trying to control illegal immigration by turning school-age children into truants is neither wise nor legal.

Almost everyone agrees that the federal government’s efforts to control our borders have been a miserable failure. It is strange that the sponsors of the proposed initiative, Alan Nelson and Harold Ezell, were two of the principal architects of the failed federal immigration policies. Is there any reason to suppose that their efforts at the state level would succeed?

What would the schoolchildren initiative accomplish? Would it decrease the number of illegal immigrants in California? Of course not. Only the INS has the authority to control immigration. California could attempt to deny education to the children of people who pick our crops, wait tables in our restaurants and take care of our children. But this would not result in the deportation of a single illegal immigrant. It would produce a generation of illiterates and contribute to truancy and gang membership.