A not-so short anecdote that may illustrate the insidious effects of Trump’s policies.
My wife works for Fairfax County, a very populous and extremely prosperous region abutting DC. The county has just over a million people living in it – we’re still largely “suburban”, but it’s a very dense suburb.
We also have a hugely cosmopolitan and diverse population: if you have a Hispanic family living next to you with thick accents, it’s even odds that they are recent immigrants or the family of a functionary at the Ecuadorian embassy.
My wife is an ESL Teacher: English as a Second Language. I think they have a new acronym, actually, but I always forget it. Most schools in the county have between one and five ESL teachers (who act as in-class assistance for the regular teachers) because the non-English population is so huge and diverse here.
My wife doesn’t work in a school though – she’s one of the cadre of ESL teachers who work in a central office evaluating kids who are new to the county and whose parents indicated that a language other than English might be spoken at home. The kids come in and the specialists (like my wife) determine if the kids are “Level 1” (no English whatsoever), a “Level 5” (absolutely fluent in English with no accommodations needed), or something in between.
OK, that’s a long introduction. Here’s the point: My wife and her colleagues get kids from all over the planet, but there are some language concentrations: something like 20% of the kids speak Korean, 20% Hindi, 10% Arabic, and close to 40% speak Spanish.
After Trump’s election and especially after the last week’s massive raids, the proportion of Spanish-speaking kids coming into the center has dropped to a trickle.
A Trump supporter may cheer - that’s good, they’d say, fewer illegals are coming in! The raids are working!
But that’s not true. It’s almost inconceivable that the raids have actually deported a vast number or stopped the flow, it’s just that these people are afraid to come in to the centers because they fear they’ll be rounded up and sent back. So instead they are not submitting their kids to the school system.
But that’s good, says the hypothetical Trump supporter! These illegal kids are no longer a burden on our people and taxes! The raids are working!
Yeah, not so much. First, these kids may or may not be American citizens. Many of them may have been born here, but they don’t speak fluent English because they only speak Spanish at home. Secondly, what is the absolute BEST outcome of this crap situation? The kids never go to school and skulk around trying to avoid being noticed until they are adults? Adults with no schooling and no skills?
I’m preaching to the choir here on Qt3, but it really sickens me. My wife told me about this little kid the other day: She’s going to be a 2nd-grader (so about 7 years old) and her parents were educated/brave enough to know that the school system would not turn them in to ICE, so they brought her in to be tested. One portion of the test has to be administered without the parents in the room, so you have to take the kid away. When the teacher gently told the little girl that they needed to go in the other room to take the test, this little kid turned pale and started trembling violently. She was honestly convinced that she was quite literally never going to see her parents again.
Fuck Trump and his hatred of brown people. And fuck the idiots who put this monster in charge.
