High Hopes : Many Immigrants, Unlike Many Natives, Still Look to America as the Land of Opportunity--for Education

Nidia Calles wanted very much to be an independent, working woman when she grew up.

But a 12-year-old girl living in the small town of Santa Barbara, Honduras, was not supposed to have such thoughts. Yes, it was the 1980s, but in the part of the world where she was living, social customs proscribed that girls marry, have children and settle down to avoid becoming teen-age spinsters.

So Calles jumped at the chance to come to America at 16, although it meant leaving her mother and siblings behind.

“My parents were divorcing at the time, and my father’s mother was living in the United States. She was sponsoring him to be here,” said Calles, now 25.

Calles came to America, and got an education afforded her by Los Angeles High School and subsequently Santa Monica City College.

Now she is the working woman she always wanted to be, teaching English as a second language (ESL) classes to about 175 students at L.A. High.

“I want to be part of an education process that these kids can turn to,” she said. “I want to make an impact on their lives the way my teachers did on mine, so they can become productive members of society.”

As school districts throughout the state graduate another class of seniors this month, the nation continues to debate the cost of public education, especially when it comes to immigrants--documented and undocumented.

Last year, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which would, if its constitutionality is upheld by the courts, put restrictions on health and social service benefits and education for illegal immigrants.

“We recognize the impact of the value of education for all young people. That has never been at issue. For students new to this country, education is an investment this country is making to assist new Americans,” said Maureen DeMarco, California’s child development and education director. “But the governor has always felt strongly that the failure of the federal government to enforce the border and compensate the state for that failure causes a diminution of services provided for those who came here legally.”

Politicians and lawmakers may argue the relative merits and costs of educating immigrants, but among immigrants, especially recent arrivals, there is in general a consensus: Getting a public education in the United States is a dream come true. As Calles and tens of thousands of other immigrants see it, the open door of American schools is the ultimate symbol of democracy. And many U.S. educators agree.

“Schools are the one institution that is best equipped to introduce students to American values, American culture, the kinds of ideals we stand for--tolerance, independence, liberty,” said Lorraine McDonnell, a professor of political science and education at UC Santa Barbara and a researcher at Rand, a nonprofit institution that seeks to improve public policy through research projects. “It wasn’t that much different at the turn of the century.”

Nationally, about 820,000 students who immigrated in the last three years are enrolled in public schools for the 1995-1996 school year as part of the Emergency Immigrant Education Assistance Program (EIEAP). Of that number, 277,000 are enrolled in California public schools. About 51,000 (of 636,416 students) are enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District. EIEAP tracks and provides extra English classes for immigrant students who have been in the United States for three years or less.

The State Department of Education estimates that the 277,000 figure includes some of the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 students who are illegal immigrants.

Nationally, funding for EIEAP comes to about $50 million annually, said Harpredt Sandhu, EIEAP’s national director. For the L.A. school district, the cost breaks down to about $47 per student, said Lila Silvern, coordinator of the L.A. school district’s EIEAP. That is in addition to the nearly $4,300 that each student in kindergarten through 12th grade presently costs the state per year.

About 90% of the EIEAP students in the L.A. school district are from Mexico or Central America, she said. The balance is from South Korea, China, Armenia, Russia, Haiti, Vietnam, Cuba, the Philippines--just about anywhere in the world.

“I generally feel upbeat about these kids, because there’s a seriousness about them,” Silvern said. “They know they are not going to get things handed to them. They still feel that education is going to pull them up. For them, education may mean jobs.”

For them, education may also mean hope.

“We came here because we know we needed a better life,” said Berenice Castellanos, who emigrated from Mexico with her parents, two sisters and a brother in 1992. “We just decided to come here to have a better future, a better education.”

Castellanos, 20, will graduate today from Belmont High School and is planning to go to college. She has started the process of attaining citizenship, but is not yet not a legal resident. The high cost of non-residency tuition is preventing her from attending a four-year university. Rather than going straight to UCLA to study biochemistry, she will first attend Los Angeles City College, she said.

“I would like to be an example to my brothers and sisters. That’s one of my reasons for going to college,” she said.

Castellanos, like Silvern, said she considers immigrant students to be more dedicated than American students are to the learning process.

“So many students who are born here, of any race, just feel an obligation to come to school. They don’t pay attention to the learning,” Castellanos said. “People who come from other countries look more forward to education, maybe because we are here to succeed and do our best, to try to be something.”

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Steve Austin, head of the Limited English Proficiency program at Los Angeles High School, said immigrant students tend to have higher hopes for their future than do American students.

“The average [American] student is discouraged. They are already giving up on education. They don’t have faith in the value of education for themselves, or their ability to master a subject,” Austin said.

“When we talk to ESL students, they don’t argue or fight the wisdom of what they should be doing. They embrace the notion of an education.”

Austin said 1,600 of the 3,400 students enrolled at Los Angeles High School this year are ESL students. About 800 of those students have been in the country three years or less.

“The numbers increased steadily from the early 1980s until last year,” Austin said, “with the El Salvador civil war, problems in Nicaragua through the ‘80s, and the last wave of Vietnamese boat people in the early ‘80s.”

Kevin McCarthy, coordinator of California Research for Rand, said many state residents don’t believe it makes fiscal sense to use money to educate immigrants.

“At a time of fiscal crisis at the state and local levels, they feel there just isn’t enough money to cover payment for the services we’ve traditionally supplied,” he said. “Immigrants, because they are low-income, use more services than they pay in taxes.

But, he said, that is a short-term view.

“If you think about it,” he said, “low-income native-born people don’t pay their way, either.”

Which is why McCarthy and many other experts believe that a long-term view is more appropriate. In such a view, the public school system would not only educate immigrants, it would be doing a better job of it.

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A 1993 study conducted by Rand criticized the American public school system for falling far short of preparing immigrants to function in American society. The study cited such factors as unstable leadership within the school system, shrinking school funds, and a limited number of bilingual instructors and materials.

While educators were doing their best, “the issue was that neither the federal government nor the state government was paying attention to these students,” said Lorraine McDonnell, a co-author of the study.

In the two years since the study, McDonnell said, things have gotten worse.

“Before there was official indifference,” she said. “Now, with added politics, they’ve brought hostility into the issue. People are caught up in the short term--that immigrants are causing overcrowded schools, they can’t speak English, they cost us money.”

But in the long term, McDonnell said, an educated immigrant population will mean a more stable America.

“[Immigrants] are the people who are going to have to sustain the society, both economically and politically,” she said.

Fellow Rand researcher McCarthy agrees.

“Investing in education of immigrants is absolutely essential to the state’s long-term economic advantage,” he said. “We don’t expect kids to be net revenue contributors to the economy now, but we can educate them and pay for them now, so in the longer term we will have net benefits.”

It remains to be seen whether all immigrants will have continued access to the public school system. Meanwhile, recent immigrants continue to view the United States as the land of opportunity.

“I think it would be difficult for me to tell all immigrant students to come here because many can’t come legally,” said Agustin (see accompanying story, E1), who will graduate from Los Angeles High School on Thursday and hopes to attend Los Angeles City College in the fall. “If they could, I would like to tell them America is the greatest place to study. It’s the country of opportunity. They’ll get whatever they want, whatever their goal is.”