Education in the USA: children of illegal immigrants are not taken to schools

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Immigrant children who are in the United States without legal status are not allowed to study in some American schools, according to researchers at the human rights center at Georgetown University.

It is reported that most often students are waiting for a decision on admission for a long time, after which they receive refusals from educational institutions on the basis of certain provisions in a number of states.

The researchers analyzed data from school districts in four states—Florida, New York, Texas and North Carolina.

''American law is very clear that no child in the United States can be denied an education. In practice, that’s not always the case,” says Michaela Harris, a Georgetown student and co-author of the advocacy center’s study.

According to the laws of all 50 US states of compulsory general education, all children, including those who are in the US illegally, have the right to study at least until the eighth grade, or until they are 16 years old.

But some school districts, according to Georgetown University, have turned away immigrant children because, due to so-called “translation difficulties,” families of undocumented immigrants were not fully informed about school admissions procedures.

In addition, the efforts of Barack Obama’s administration to find and deport tens of thousands of people from Central America, including unaccompanied adults, who arrived in the 2014 year during a sharp surge in illegal migration, also affected. Some students, according to the authors of the report, were afraid of possible deportation and avoided visiting educational institutions.

Since the autumn of 2013, more than 100 of thousands of children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, having arrived in the US unaccompanied, sought asylum and were sent to various communities in the country.

According to the researchers, many public schools did not stop at clarifying the issue of whereabouts of potential schoolchildren, and also requested immigration documents.

The authors of the report speak about both intentional and involuntary barriers created by various institutions in relation to 775 thousands of children up to 18 years who live in the US illegally (according to estimates of the Pew Research Center for 2012 a year).

An additional 1,6 million school-age immigrant children living legally in the United States in “mixed-status” families may also face similar barriers at times.

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