Miami-Dade Superintendent: $3.4 Million Grant from Feds to Absorb Illegals Not Nearly Enough

The $3.4 million the federal government awarded Miami’s schools to absorb illegal immigrant juveniles is not enough. 

PBS’s Newshour recently looked at schools in Miami that were “already beyond capacity” as “more and more” students, many of whom are illegal immigrants, “kept showing up to enroll.”

According to PBS, “Miami-Dade is the fourth largest district in the country, and it estimates it costs an extra $2,000 per year to provide additional help to each foreign-born student.” The federal government gave “Miami-Dade a $3.4 million grant to address those costs” this year, “but Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says it’s not enough to fund special services for the thousands of new arrivals from Latin America.”

“They’re all arriving poor, facing English language limitations that are very serious, and many of them arriving are facing social and psychological needs, no doubt because of the conditions they left behind in their countries, as well as the very harrowing and traumatic journey through Mexico before crossing the border,” he told PBS.

As Breitbart News has reported, Miami’s schools are struggling to absorb nearly 1,400 illegal immigrant juveniles, nearly all of whom are from Central America. And according to a Federation for American Immigration (FAIR) analysis, “Florida, home to more than 3,800 unaccompanied minors, could see the cost of educating those of school age to be $56,773,589.” FAIR estimates that “the cost of educating this most recent influx of unaccompanied illegal immigrant migrants could top $761 million this school year,” as Breitbart News noted.

An immigration activist “estimated that there were 375,000 backlogged cases” and as the illegal immigrants wait for years for their hearings, “they go to school” since, as PBS noted, “according to federal law, schools are not allowed to ask about students’ immigration status.” Erica Paramore-Respress, the Riverside Elementary School principal in Miami, “says that the school will continue to welcome new students, no matter where they come from.”

At least 63,500 illegal immigrant juveniles have been apprehended since October of last year, and school districts in every state are struggling to absorb the newcomers, many of whom are traumatized and nearly all of whom lack sufficient English skills.