Analysis: Mass Immigration Spikes Share of Low-Income Students in U.S.

Decades of legal and illegal immigration has “disproportionately” increased the share of low-income public school students in the United States, analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data reveals.

The analysis, conducted by Steven Camarota, Bryan Griffith, and Karen Zeigler from the Center for Immigration Studies, shows that the share of public school students in the U.S. from immigrant-headed households has more than tripled to 11 million since 1980, when these students accounted for just seven percent of all public school students.

Of those students from immigrant-headed households, 83 percent were born in the U.S. and thus rewarded birthright citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Almost 30 percent of students from immigrant-headed households are from homes led by illegal aliens.

Most significantly, the analysis finds that the nation’s decades-long policy of bringing more than a million legal immigrants to the U.S. annually while continuously adding to the 11 to 22 million illegal alien population has “added disproportionately to the number of low-income students in public schools.”

“In 2021, 21 percent of public school students from immigrant households lived in poverty and they accounted for 29 percent of all students living below the poverty line,” the analysis states:

The lower income of immigrant households likely creates challenges for schools in some areas because tax contributions generally reflect income levels. As a result, immigration can cause a significant increase in enrollment without a corresponding increase in tax revenue. [Emphasis added]

The House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), issued a report last week that detailed mass immigration’s impact on public schools.

“The number of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students flooding American school districts is starting to overwhelm public schools,” the report states:

In Fairfax County, Virginia, LEPs made up nearly 20 percent of total enrollment, with the LEP budget increasing $1.5 million from FY19 to FY20. In Buffalo, New York, the LEP budget increased from $12.9 million in 2018 to $20.4 million in 2020. In Indianapolis, the number of “English learners” in the public school system in 2022 had increased by 27,000 from 2016. [Emphasis added]

Portland, Oregon schools are “scrambling” to place more than 800 new LEP students. And in Rockland County, New York, more than 1,000 children have been added to county school districts. One estimate has found that federal and state public school expenditures for illegal aliens or the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens may be as high as $75 billion. [Emphasis added]

Mass immigration has had a similar impact on overall poverty rates among children in the U.S. A study published by the New York Times, for instance, unveiled that the children of immigrants account for 40 percent of all impoverished children in the country.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.