Speech #980096983

President. I am pleased to join as a cosponsor of S. 1630. a bill to provide general assistance to local education agencies for making educational services available to alien children. S. 1630 authorizes $68 million over the next 3 years to assist districts that provide educational services in areas with disproportionately large numbers of refugees and illegal alien students. Classrooms across the Nation. confronted by the biggest influx of immigrant students since the turn of the century. are struggling to absorb hundreds of thousands of youngsters each year. This assistance is essential to local districts that cannot fully underwrite the cost of providing such services. The presence of large numbers of limited English speaking students has generated new demands for equipment. materials and supplies. classroom space. and bilingual staff. These increasing demands constitute a growing burden of State and local tax resources. The Texas Education Agency estimates that an average of $2.600 was spent on each Texas schoolchild during the 198283 school year. While alien students costs are higher because of the special needs cited earlier. using the baseline figure of $2.600 for the estimated 29.170 undocumented aliens in Texas schools indicates that communities are being asked to assume more than $75 million per year in additional obligations. These costs place an enormous strain on existing educational resources. For example. the Ysleta school district superintendent recently testified to the State Education Subcommittee that his district has been unable to employ sufficient bilingual and English as a second language teachers. According to the superintendent of Dade County. Fla.. nearly $12 million has been expended over the last 3 years to purchase portable classrooms for refugee students. While some might argue that Federal funding available through the chapter 1 program for educationally disadvantaged children should be sufficient to defray such costs. assistance under this program is allocated on the basis of the 1980 population census which undercounts the number of undocumented aliens. thereby underfunding States responsible for educating large numbers of alien children. Devaluation of the Mexican peso in 1982. which reduced the peso to onesixth of its previous buying power. has severely curtailed the flow of commerce from Mexico into the United States communities along the border are affected disproportionately by plummeting retail sales. a rising number of bankruptcies. declining tax bases. and high unemployment. In Joint Economic Committee hearings over which I presided on August 1. witnesses reported unemployment rates of 12 percent in El Paso. 16 percent in Brownsville. 27 percent in Laredo. and an unprecedented 47 percent in Starr County. Sales tax receipts in Laredo and similarly hardhit cities fell 44 percent last year. Improvement in the economy of the region is projected to be several years away. meanwhile school board members and superintendents dependent on local tax revenues are experiencing difficulties in collecting sufficient funds to meet either operating costs or longterm bond obligations. A host of related problems has emerged. caused in part by the ravaged local economy and Congress inability to enact a coherent immigration policy which would regulate the influx of aliens from outside our Nations borders. The problems center around provision of basic services. such as health care and emergency food and shelter. As unemployment increases. the number of persons not covered by unemployment insurance and health care similarly increases. The cost of caring for indigents. many of whom are illegal aliens. is expensive-$2 million per year in Cameron County alone. according to testimony provided by local officials at the JEC hearing. The circumstances exacerbate the difficulty which local jurisdictions experience in attempting to respond to demands for education services. I have long supported Federal legislation to respond to the special needs of areas disproportionately impacted by large numbers of aliens. On two separate occasions. I introduced and guided through the Senate bills to provide assistance for construction of classrooms in schools affected by economic dislocations and overcrowding due to legal alien immigration along the United StatesMexican border. I have supported the SimpsonMazzoli immigration legislation as a means to control the flood of aliens into this country. But neither initiative has been enacted. and the citizens of communities all along the border need assistance now in response to present. severe conditions. This bill is the first necessary step toward redressing those needs in the area of education.