Our recently presumed Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump has suggested as a start to correcting our growing immigration problem is to suspend all immigration for a period of time. During this suspension period we examine ways we might change our current failed policy to be more in line with the needs and capacity of our country and reinstate a new one.
Regarding the Southern border’s ongoing crisis we have been experiencing over the past decades. The unabated and in fact increasing numbers entering our country illegally and of late of younger age. This influx of school age persons which have and still are being spread all over the country without regard to health issues or capacity at their destinations. This huge increase without having increased the taxpayer base has been very detrimental to a system that was coming under increasing pressure to perform better. Our system of free K thru 12 is sized according to the local population and taxed accordingly. Traditionally our schools were financed solely from property taxes within the district, taking about 70 percent of the total. In recent years the states have been forced to contribute increasing amounts. Once the Federal government established a department of education, which started funneling in monies with the provision that the schools do it their way. All this extra money carried strings with it. Add to this outside influence the union factor, which certainly hasn’t helped matters.
We find our schools in decline, having lowered standards to accommodate all the new entries. Having to establish bi-lingual classes, and furnish remedial training as well, put additional strain on the system. Add to this programs like Common Core and other government mandates requiring reams of paper work and reports. The teachers are to be admired for attempting to struggle through it all.
This is just one factor in the out of control immigration from the south.
Among these crossing our Southern border into the USA are Mid-easterners en route via Bolivia and Peru. These people are not coming to help us they are programmed to destroy our culture and our society. So much for the Southern incursion, what about the open invitation to people from the Middle east? The current administration has opened the borders to them as well. We know nothing about their ideological bent and no way of ascertaining it. Their origin is from a terror prone area and religion with a history and are or are easily influenced into becoming jihadists waging a religious war against our western culture.
See next Wednesday’s edition of the Item for the second part of this column.

By Paul Ingram