	Nov/Dec 2007
English Language Learners Feel Effects of Battle Over Illegal Immigration By Sarah Auerbach, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer Last summer, the city of Farmers Branch, Texas, passed an ordinance that made it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants. The ordinance has since been struck down by a federal district judge, but even so, it has unsettled the town's English language learners (ELLs) and complicated the work of their teachers and administrators. And it has raised questions about how the presence of ELLs in schools influences local immigration policies, and what unintended consequences those local policies in turn may have on English language learners and teachers. Back to School Though it no longer stands, the Farmers Branch ordinance has put its stamp on the 2007-2008 school year in the Carrollton Farmers Branch Independent School District (CFB-ISD). Before the school year started in late August, administrators were nervous about what effects the ordinance would have on enrollment. Dr. Annette Griffin, the superintendent for CFB-ISD, described herself as "sitting on pins and needles" because she was worried about losing 100 to 200 students, which would translate to a loss of as much as $25,000 of state funding for 2008-2009. The reality has turned out to be even more dramatic. Though overall enrollment rose 1% this year to remain above 26,000, enrollment of students designated as Limited English Proficient (LEP) dropped 12%, a loss of 824 students. That's in contrast to the year before, when LEP enrollment actually rose 8% while overall enrollment held steady. According to the state funding formula for LEP students, the loss of students this year translates to a funding decrease for 2008-2009 of nearly $100,000. (The school district has declined to comment further on enrollment or any issues relating to the ordinance.) The ordinance has not only dampened LEP enrollment and funding, it has also made more work for ELL teachers and coordinators. Isabella Piña Hinojosa, the ELL Coordinator for CFB-ISD, fields phone calls from reporters and concerned citizens on all sides of the issue. In an interview last spring, Hinojosa played down the cost to herself of acting as public relations officer to her district's ELL programs, but Superintendent Griffin said that teachers were definitely strained as the school year began. "It caused everyone a little angst because they wanted the kids to feel safe and we wanted them to feel great about being in our schools and to do their best, and so it was difficult." English language learners who have stayed to start the 2007-2008 school year have also felt the lingering effects of the ordinance. Students have, for the most part, treated each other well, said Griffin. "I didn't see tensions between kids in the school; the kids would sit down and talk it out. The kids respected each other. I just wish that some of us could learn from kids." Nevertheless, some English learners are scared, she added. Even students who are themselves citizens fear for their parents, friends, or relatives who may or may not be documented. Chris McGuire, the father of a Carrollton Farmers Branch student, told a story that illustrates students' unease. McGuire, an opponent of the ordinance, said that he was approached by the grandmother of a CFB student, who spoke through a translator. She told him that her five-year-old granddaughter went into uncontrollable fits of crying every time one of her parents went out the door. It turned out that the little girl's eight-year-old brother had come home from school and told his sister that kids at school had relatives who had been picked up off the street randomly and deported to Mexico. McGuire told the woman to tell her granddaughter that her parents would have to break the law first to be deported. But it's the general atmosphere, he said, not necessarily the truth, that dictates children's sense of danger. "These rumors start, and the kids believe them," McGuire said. "My nine-year-old daughter, who doesn't even speak Spanish but looks a little Hispanic, asked me and my wife if we were going to have to move to Mexico." There are incidents in the news that shore up kids' fears. On August 30, the Star-Telegram, a Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper, reported that in nearby Arlington, "[a] native Texan spent the night in the Arlington jail, missed her children's first day of school, and feared being deported after authorities mistook her for an illegal immigrant." The reason for the mistake? "Alicia Rodriguez, an accountant and mother of three, has the same name and date of birth as a woman deported to Mexico three times." Safe but Not Secure Children in school are safe, say educators and legal advocates. The 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe requires schools to educate all children, documented and undocumented. ELL Coordinator Hinojosa said that teachers follow the law to the letter and are blind to students' citizenship status. Nevertheless, the animosity that has developed in Farmers Branch in the wake of the ordinance does sometimes play out in the schools, according to Albert Ruiz, a lawyer who works with Let the Voters Decide, a group that opposed the ordinance in Farmers Branch. "I get calls once a week from parents or friends of parents who have children who are Latinos in school, who get harassed or made to feel bad." Ruiz related that just after school started, he got a call from a woman who knows of a Latino middle school student who was told by his teacher that he didn't fit in at school. She wanted to know if there was another school the child could attend, without having to move. The call was particularly striking, said Ruiz, because it didn't come from the child's mother. The mother was too afraid to call Ruiz herself. She did not want to expose herself or her child to retaliation by taking direct action. Fearful parents tend to shy away from getting involved in the schools, according to an educator who works closely with English learners in Farmers Branch (who spoke on condition of anonymity). He said that he used to work with family literacy programs in another state, and in less fearful times parents participated in his program as many as four days a week, sometimes up to three hours a day. But after raids began in factories across the country, the program, which had boasted waiting lists beforehand, experienced sharp drops in enrollment. This educator believes that Farmers Branch and other communities that pass local enforcement ordinances will see a drop in parental literacy efforts and a corresponding drop in parental involvement. (The federal No Child Left Behind Act has identified parent involvement as a key factor in schools' successes.) Provoking fear—and, ultimately, flight from the schools—is an intentional effect of local enforcement, according to William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), a supporter of local enforcement efforts. He said that when "illegal alien families fly the coop," teaching quality and teacher-student ratios improve. He believes that at least one important purpose of local ordinances is to redeploy taxpayer resources away from ELLs. "[Schools] will have to eventually start retracting their ESL courses... but that is a very small adjustment compared to the benefits," he said. Tim O'Hare, the city council member who introduced the Farmers Branch ordinance, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the ordinance would "make our schools better." In his own blog, he wrote, "It is not a school district's fault that many of the children within their boundaries are the children of illegal aliens. It is, however, a district's fault when programs and measures are implemented that make their schools, and subsequently the communities they serve, more attractive to illegal aliens. It is a school district's fault when they spend taxpayer's money to address the needs of the children of illegal aliens at the expense of U.S. citizens and legal aliens." And there's no doubt that O'Hare's views have struck a chord with at least some citizens of Farmers Branch; a comment to his blog from parent Barb Russell said, "Due to the educators having to serve so many children of illegal aliens, who are trying to learn to speak and read English, they cannot adequately challenge the gifted population here in the Branch." Nina Perales, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said that towns and states sometimes word ordinances to deliberately provoke fear of the schools. She pointed to a statewide bill passed in Oklahoma. The bill says, among other things, that school IDs can be used for school purposes only—not as identification elsewhere or to prove residency. Perales said that because the bill devoted a full page to the issue of school IDs—even though it wasn't imposing any legal requirement on schools—it planted fear in students and their parents. Indeed, according to Perales, one predominantly Latino school district in Tulsa saw an 18% drop in enrollment immediately following enactment of the law. Perales said that some towns have even looked into the possibility of barring undocumented children from local schools. Supervisors in Prince William County, Virginia (whose school district parent involvement program was covered in detail in the Mar/Apr 2007 issue of the ELL Outlook; see http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2007/mar_apr/ELLOutlookITIArticle2.htm) wrote a draft of an ordinance that would have barred undocumented children from local schools. That portion was amended out of the draft before a vote was taken, based on legal advice that it violated the Plyler v. Doe precedent. The Bigger Picture Ordinances in places other than Farmers Branch—including Escondido, CA, Valley Park, MO, and Hazelton, PA—have now been struck down by federal court judges. But they continue to spring up. While some ordinances are aimed at renters, towns have also tried to stop the influx of illegal immigrants by passing laws that allow police to ask for proof of citizenship and detain undocumented people. This second type of ordinance, said ALIPAC's Gheen, is less legally vulnerable, because it makes reference to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which Gheen said provides the legal authority for state and local enforcement to investigate, detain, and arrest aliens on civil and criminal grounds. Gheen believes that towns, cities, and states must continue to pursue these types of ordinances. "We need every state and city elected official moving on immigration enforcement, because our local and state officials are more likely to represent the American public," he said. But Farmers Branch attorney Ruiz said that immigration policy belongs at the national, not the local level. "We really don't want communities like Farmers Branch to try to create their own immigration reform. We want it at the high level of national priorities. ...It doesn't have to be a comprehensive decision; we want [Congress] to focus on parts of the bill as we go along so we don't waste all our hopes and dreams on something we know is too huge to grasp in one shot," he said. Teachers' Role Teachers of English language learners should participate in the dialogue about immigration, said the anonymous educator who works closely with Farmers Branch's ELLs, whether the dialogue takes place at the national or local level. "We are serving, after all, these children, all children, and so whenever safety of our children is threatened, whenever the emotional well-being of our children is threatened, I think we as teachers, we as educators, need to express ourselves and voice our concerns," he said. MALDEF's Perales said that teachers who are interested in opposing local enforcement should watch local newspapers for signs that an anti-immigration ordinance is in the works. Anyone who catches wind of such an ordinance should make certain to attend public meetings. "Show up and say your piece," said Perales. "These things can happen very rapidly. Down here, the open meetings law only requires 72 hours' notice for posting an agenda." But ALIPAC's Gheen doesn't believe teachers should get involved. "Teachers in general need to keep their politics to themselves," he said. "Because no matter what side of the issue you're on, public concerns about politics in the classroom are one of the reasons that so many people are leaving public schools." He admitted, though, that English language teachers will be affected if the ordinances are widely successful. "We do hope that there will be a lot less demand for ESL teacher services in the near future," he said. "Perhaps some of those ELL teachers can go on to become science, mathematics, or English teachers. We'd love to see a lot more ELL teachers become English teachers. And obviously they have a passion for the English language to be doing what they're doing; I'm sure many of them would find that prospect appealing." According to Gheen, ESL instructors are a mixed group when it comes to illegal immigration issues. "Some of them see [illegal immigrants] as the market for their employment, but [ALIPAC] has a surprisingly high level of supporters that are ESL instructors, because a lot of them are looking straight at many of the problems illegal immigration is causing in America," he said. He said that these problems include the desire not to assimilate, anti-American viewpoints, growing separatist movements, and racist and sexist attitudes. But the anonymous Farmers Branch educator sees the children of illegal immigrants as victims, not troublemakers. "[These students'] only sin is the fact that they were brought here by their parents," he said. Farmers Branch attorney Ruiz echoes this view. He said the ordinances send the message to all immigrants—not just illegal ones—that they're unwanted. "If we think the simple fact of being an immigrant is a bad thing, as we put pressure on that as young people develop, they grow up with this stereotyped mindset that maybe they're not good enough, maybe they don't belong, maybe they don't deserve their greatest dreams." MALDEF attorney Perales said that teachers who share his views can do many things to help reassure kids and parents about students' safety at school. She recommends that all schools, but particularly schools in affected communities, have bilingual or multilingual staff available to hear parents' concerns. If no staff is available, there should be someone appointed to whom parents can express concerns in their home languages. Staff, or their representatives, should make sure parents understand that children are safe in school, that the schools are required by law to treat and educate all students equally, regardless of citizenship status, and that children cannot be rounded up at school. Perales said that the most important thing that teachers in affected towns can do is to send home written materials that explain the ordinance and reassure parents that kids are safe at school. "Put it in Spanish, make it colorful, send it home with the kids." If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.
Copyright © 2007 Course Crafters, Inc.® All rights reserved.

Nov/Dec 2007

English Language Learners Feel Effects of Battle Over Illegal Immigration

By Sarah Auerbach, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

Last summer, the city of Farmers Branch, Texas, passed an ordinance that made it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants. The ordinance has since been struck down by a federal district judge, but even so, it has unsettled the town's English language learners (ELLs) and complicated the work of their teachers and administrators. And it has raised questions about how the presence of ELLs in schools influences local immigration policies, and what unintended consequences those local policies in turn may have on English language learners and teachers.

Back to School

Though it no longer stands, the Farmers Branch ordinance has put its stamp on the 2007-2008 school year in the Carrollton Farmers Branch Independent School District (CFB-ISD). Before the school year started in late August, administrators were nervous about what effects the ordinance would have on enrollment. Dr. Annette Griffin, the superintendent for CFB-ISD, described herself as "sitting on pins and needles" because she was worried about losing 100 to 200 students, which would translate to a loss of as much as $25,000 of state funding for 2008-2009. The reality has turned out to be even more dramatic. Though overall enrollment rose 1% this year to remain above 26,000, enrollment of students designated as Limited English Proficient (LEP) dropped 12%, a loss of 824 students. That's in contrast to the year before, when LEP enrollment actually rose 8% while overall enrollment held steady. According to the state funding formula for LEP students, the loss of students this year translates to a funding decrease for 2008-2009 of nearly $100,000. (The school district has declined to comment further on enrollment or any issues relating to the ordinance.)

The ordinance has not only dampened LEP enrollment and funding, it has also made more work for ELL teachers and coordinators. Isabella Piña Hinojosa, the ELL Coordinator for CFB-ISD, fields phone calls from reporters and concerned citizens on all sides of the issue. In an interview last spring, Hinojosa played down the cost to herself of acting as public relations officer to her district's ELL programs, but Superintendent Griffin said that teachers were definitely strained as the school year began. "It caused everyone a little angst because they wanted the kids to feel safe and we wanted them to feel great about being in our schools and to do their best, and so it was difficult."

English language learners who have stayed to start the 2007-2008 school year have also felt the lingering effects of the ordinance. Students have, for the most part, treated each other well, said Griffin. "I didn't see tensions between kids in the school; the kids would sit down and talk it out. The kids respected each other. I just wish that some of us could learn from kids." Nevertheless, some English learners are scared, she added. Even students who are themselves citizens fear for their parents, friends, or relatives who may or may not be documented.

Chris McGuire, the father of a Carrollton Farmers Branch student, told a story that illustrates students' unease. McGuire, an opponent of the ordinance, said that he was approached by the grandmother of a CFB student, who spoke through a translator. She told him that her five-year-old granddaughter went into uncontrollable fits of crying every time one of her parents went out the door. It turned out that the little girl's eight-year-old brother had come home from school and told his sister that kids at school had relatives who had been picked up off the street randomly and deported to Mexico. McGuire told the woman to tell her granddaughter that her parents would have to break the law first to be deported. But it's the general atmosphere, he said, not necessarily the truth, that dictates children's sense of danger. "These rumors start, and the kids believe them," McGuire said. "My nine-year-old daughter, who doesn't even speak Spanish but looks a little Hispanic, asked me and my wife if we were going to have to move to Mexico."

There are incidents in the news that shore up kids' fears. On August 30, the Star-Telegram, a Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper, reported that in nearby Arlington, "[a] native Texan spent the night in the Arlington jail, missed her children's first day of school, and feared being deported after authorities mistook her for an illegal immigrant." The reason for the mistake? "Alicia Rodriguez, an accountant and mother of three, has the same name and date of birth as a woman deported to Mexico three times."

Safe but Not Secure

Children in school are safe, say educators and legal advocates. The 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe requires schools to educate all children, documented and undocumented. ELL Coordinator Hinojosa said that teachers follow the law to the letter and are blind to students' citizenship status. Nevertheless, the animosity that has developed in Farmers Branch in the wake of the ordinance does sometimes play out in the schools, according to Albert Ruiz, a lawyer who works with Let the Voters Decide, a group that opposed the ordinance in Farmers Branch. "I get calls once a week from parents or friends of parents who have children who are Latinos in school, who get harassed or made to feel bad."

Ruiz related that just after school started, he got a call from a woman who knows of a Latino middle school student who was told by his teacher that he didn't fit in at school. She wanted to know if there was another school the child could attend, without having to move. The call was particularly striking, said Ruiz, because it didn't come from the child's mother. The mother was too afraid to call Ruiz herself. She did not want to expose herself or her child to retaliation by taking direct action.

Fearful parents tend to shy away from getting involved in the schools, according to an educator who works closely with English learners in Farmers Branch (who spoke on condition of anonymity). He said that he used to work with family literacy programs in another state, and in less fearful times parents participated in his program as many as four days a week, sometimes up to three hours a day. But after raids began in factories across the country, the program, which had boasted waiting lists beforehand, experienced sharp drops in enrollment. This educator believes that Farmers Branch and other communities that pass local enforcement ordinances will see a drop in parental literacy efforts and a corresponding drop in parental involvement. (The federal No Child Left Behind Act has identified parent involvement as a key factor in schools' successes.)

Provoking fear—and, ultimately, flight from the schools—is an intentional effect of local enforcement, according to William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), a supporter of local enforcement efforts. He said that when "illegal alien families fly the coop," teaching quality and teacher-student ratios improve. He believes that at least one important purpose of local ordinances is to redeploy taxpayer resources away from ELLs. "[Schools] will have to eventually start retracting their ESL courses... but that is a very small adjustment compared to the benefits," he said.

Tim O'Hare, the city council member who introduced the Farmers Branch ordinance, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the ordinance would "make our schools better." In his own blog, he wrote, "It is not a school district's fault that many of the children within their boundaries are the children of illegal aliens. It is, however, a district's fault when programs and measures are implemented that make their schools, and subsequently the communities they serve, more attractive to illegal aliens. It is a school district's fault when they spend taxpayer's money to address the needs of the children of illegal aliens at the expense of U.S. citizens and legal aliens." And there's no doubt that O'Hare's views have struck a chord with at least some citizens of Farmers Branch; a comment to his blog from parent Barb Russell said, "Due to the educators having to serve so many children of illegal aliens, who are trying to learn to speak and read English, they cannot adequately challenge the gifted population here in the Branch."

Nina Perales, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said that towns and states sometimes word ordinances to deliberately provoke fear of the schools. She pointed to a statewide bill passed in Oklahoma. The bill says, among other things, that school IDs can be used for school purposes only—not as identification elsewhere or to prove residency. Perales said that because the bill devoted a full page to the issue of school IDs—even though it wasn't imposing any legal requirement on schools—it planted fear in students and their parents. Indeed, according to Perales, one predominantly Latino school district in Tulsa saw an 18% drop in enrollment immediately following enactment of the law.

Perales said that some towns have even looked into the possibility of barring undocumented children from local schools. Supervisors in Prince William County, Virginia (whose school district parent involvement program was covered in detail in the Mar/Apr 2007 issue of the ELL Outlook; see http://www.coursecrafters.com/ELL-Outlook/2007/mar_apr/ELLOutlookITIArticle2.htm) wrote a draft of an ordinance that would have barred undocumented children from local schools. That portion was amended out of the draft before a vote was taken, based on legal advice that it violated the Plyler v. Doe precedent.

The Bigger Picture

Ordinances in places other than Farmers Branch—including Escondido, CA, Valley Park, MO, and Hazelton, PA—have now been struck down by federal court judges. But they continue to spring up. While some ordinances are aimed at renters, towns have also tried to stop the influx of illegal immigrants by passing laws that allow police to ask for proof of citizenship and detain undocumented people. This second type of ordinance, said ALIPAC's Gheen, is less legally vulnerable, because it makes reference to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which Gheen said provides the legal authority for state and local enforcement to investigate, detain, and arrest aliens on civil and criminal grounds.

Gheen believes that towns, cities, and states must continue to pursue these types of ordinances. "We need every state and city elected official moving on immigration enforcement, because our local and state officials are more likely to represent the American public," he said.

But Farmers Branch attorney Ruiz said that immigration policy belongs at the national, not the local level. "We really don't want communities like Farmers Branch to try to create their own immigration reform. We want it at the high level of national priorities. ...It doesn't have to be a comprehensive decision; we want [Congress] to focus on parts of the bill as we go along so we don't waste all our hopes and dreams on something we know is too huge to grasp in one shot," he said.

Teachers' Role

Teachers of English language learners should participate in the dialogue about immigration, said the anonymous educator who works closely with Farmers Branch's ELLs, whether the dialogue takes place at the national or local level. "We are serving, after all, these children, all children, and so whenever safety of our children is threatened, whenever the emotional well-being of our children is threatened, I think we as teachers, we as educators, need to express ourselves and voice our concerns," he said. MALDEF's Perales said that teachers who are interested in opposing local enforcement should watch local newspapers for signs that an anti-immigration ordinance is in the works. Anyone who catches wind of such an ordinance should make certain to attend public meetings. "Show up and say your piece," said Perales. "These things can happen very rapidly. Down here, the open meetings law only requires 72 hours' notice for posting an agenda."

But ALIPAC's Gheen doesn't believe teachers should get involved. "Teachers in general need to keep their politics to themselves," he said. "Because no matter what side of the issue you're on, public concerns about politics in the classroom are one of the reasons that so many people are leaving public schools." He admitted, though, that English language teachers will be affected if the ordinances are widely successful. "We do hope that there will be a lot less demand for ESL teacher services in the near future," he said. "Perhaps some of those ELL teachers can go on to become science, mathematics, or English teachers. We'd love to see a lot more ELL teachers become English teachers. And obviously they have a passion for the English language to be doing what they're doing; I'm sure many of them would find that prospect appealing."

According to Gheen, ESL instructors are a mixed group when it comes to illegal immigration issues. "Some of them see [illegal immigrants] as the market for their employment, but [ALIPAC] has a surprisingly high level of supporters that are ESL instructors, because a lot of them are looking straight at many of the problems illegal immigration is causing in America," he said. He said that these problems include the desire not to assimilate, anti-American viewpoints, growing separatist movements, and racist and sexist attitudes.

But the anonymous Farmers Branch educator sees the children of illegal immigrants as victims, not troublemakers. "[These students'] only sin is the fact that they were brought here by their parents," he said.

Farmers Branch attorney Ruiz echoes this view. He said the ordinances send the message to all immigrants—not just illegal ones—that they're unwanted. "If we think the simple fact of being an immigrant is a bad thing, as we put pressure on that as young people develop, they grow up with this stereotyped mindset that maybe they're not good enough, maybe they don't belong, maybe they don't deserve their greatest dreams."

MALDEF attorney Perales said that teachers who share his views can do many things to help reassure kids and parents about students' safety at school. She recommends that all schools, but particularly schools in affected communities, have bilingual or multilingual staff available to hear parents' concerns. If no staff is available, there should be someone appointed to whom parents can express concerns in their home languages. Staff, or their representatives, should make sure parents understand that children are safe in school, that the schools are required by law to treat and educate all students equally, regardless of citizenship status, and that children cannot be rounded up at school.

Perales said that the most important thing that teachers in affected towns can do is to send home written materials that explain the ordinance and reassure parents that kids are safe at school. "Put it in Spanish, make it colorful, send it home with the kids."

If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.