San Diego Plan Moves Illegal Immigrants To The Front Of The Line For In-Person Education

 As if California hadn’t long since cemented its status as the most tone-deaf, irresponsibly liberal enclave in the nation, the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) last week announced it will be “providing the educational program for the unaccompanied migrant children” (emphasis added) staying at the San Diego Convention Center.

At least the Golden State is overachieving at something.

Using volunteer teachers, the plan is to instruct the youngsters in English language development and something called “social-emotional learning opportunities” (no doubt including the standard leftist indoctrination and a comprehensive overview of the myriad free products and services available to anyone able to shimmy over or under border fences erected specifically to keep them out).

And all of this will happen face to face. In a classroom. COVID be damned.

Meanwhile, the district’s 130,000 regular students — whose parents have the misfortune to live in this country legally and pay the taxes which fund its education system — continue to languish at home trying to educate themselves with a laptop computer as the union representing their teachers continues to wrangle with California’s governor over how many concessions will be needed to make them agree with the opinion of the federal Centers for Disease Control that it’s long past time to end prohibitions on in-class learning.

To put it mildly, the decision wasn’t warmly received.

“We have 130,000 kids who haven’t been allowed in a classroom for over a year,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said. “It’s great that there’s in-person learning for those unaccompanied minors from Central America, but I wish every child in San Diego County was allowed the same opportunity for in-person teaching.” 

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) continued, “For more than a year, parents and students in San Diego County have waited for educators to answer one question: When will our schools reopen with in-person instruction only? And for a year, they’ve been told to wait. The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”

Even provided one accepts the highly dubious (in the real world, at least) proposition that illegal aliens somehow have a claim not only to this nation’s Constitutional rights but also its taxpayer-provided privileges, it’s still incomprehensible that they should be moved directly to the front of the line when they’re being handed out.

Whatever rights “undocumented immigrants” have, they do not supersede those of American citizens — particularly in light of the latter’s documented suffering. 

New studies, in fact, show clearly that more than a year’s worth of state-imposed distance-learning has produced more than just millions of students who’ve learned little or nothing. It’s also resulted in epidemic levels of youth depression, obesity and even suicide.

Where’s the urgency to serve their needs?

We’re told the dithering that’s kept California’s legitimate students out of the classroom is about concern for the safety of the students and their teachers rather than an opportunity by the unions to exploit this non-strike to win concessions they have been unable to win in usual collective bargaining.

The unions have once again shown their hand. They do not care about educating our children, in fact, they care more about educating other countries children. The taxpayers of San Diego should demand a refund of their tax dollars when filing their taxes this year. And the majority of public school teachers (like my wife) that want to get back in the classroom should defund their union by joining the hundreds of thousands of other teachers and opt-out of their union today.

Aaron Withe is the CEO of the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that specializes in exposing and battling abuses by government employee unions.