Of all the disastrous consequences of the 10-20 million illegal border crossings over the past four years, one of the most overlooked – and perhaps most damaging long-term – is the impact on the American education system.
According to a shocking new report from researchers at Syracuse University, American K-12 schools have been burdened with at least 500,000 school-age migrant children since 2022 alone. Nearly all of these children speak no English and are crammed into already overcrowded classrooms which do not have the resources to handle the influx.
A 1982 Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, requires that public schools educate all resident children regardless of immigration status. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that this costs taxpayers about $80.5 billion per year.
In New York City, where per-pupil costs have ballooned to $38,000, the district was forced to take in 21,000 new migrant students last year – adding $800 million to the taxpayers’ bi