U.S. Spends $6 Mil On Migrant Education

On the heels of sparing nearly 1 million young illegal immigrants from deportation, the Obama Administration is doling out nearly $6 million to cover the education costs of “migrant students” or the children of “seasonal farm workers” in the United States.   

It’s almost as if the president is on a mission to stick American taxpayers with the exorbitant tab to educate illegal aliens or, as the administration likes to call them “young people brought to the United States through no fault of their own as children.” A handful of states— including Texas, California, Utah, Washington and New York—already subsidize their college education and the feds want to help out.

The Department of Education (DOE), the brilliant creation of Jimmy Carter, will give nine states $5.9 million to support high school and college students who are migrants or seasonal farm workers, or the children of such workers. The money will “help hard working farm workers and their families obtain the quality education that they need to compete in the 21^st century global economy,” according to Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The generous allocation will also help migrant youth gain employment at a time of record-high unemployment for American youngsters. Thanks to Uncle Sam, around 5,000 migrants will benefit from this particular program with free counseling job placement, healthcare and housing. An additional 2,000 will get their undergraduate and graduate college courses paid for. Sweet deal!

It’s all part of the Office of Migrant Education, a special division within the DOE that administers programs that provide academic and supportive services to the children of families who come to the U.S. to find work in the agricultural and fishing industries. The programs are designed to help migrant children, who are uniquely affected by the combined effects of poverty, language, cultural barriers, and the migratory lifestyle, to meet the same challenging academic content and student academic achievement standards that are expected of all children.

Among the division’s most popular programs is a Binational Migrant Education Initiative between Mexico and states with a “student population that migrates regularly between Mexico and The United States.” The goal is to work with Mexico to improve primary, secondary and postsecondary education in both counties. There is also a college assistance migrant program, a high school equivalency program and a project designed to help break the cycle of poverty and improve the literacy of participating migrant families by integrating early childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and parenting education into a unified family literacy program.