One of the many controversies occurring in America today is immigration. According to conservative commentator on Fox News Tomi Lahren, apparently “immigrants are going to areas that are already under served,” and that leads to a large disadvantage towards impoverished kids already living in those areas. The main point Tomi Lahren was trying to make is that immigrants do not have a positive impact to American society. Although, there is a different take on the issue Tomi Lahren does not point out, which leads to misconceptions about immigration.
Tomi Lahren constantly focuses on the negatives on the immigration issue making it a larger issue than it really is. Insinuating that there are no positives to immigration is misleading when considering the overlooked fact that a large percentage of undocumented immigrants pay their fair share in taxes. According to an article done by Vox, in 2015 alone the IRS stated undocumented immigrants paid $23.6 billion in income tax. The article goes on to explain how undocumented immigrants are unable to obtain the benefits such as social security and Medicare, despite them already paying for it. This goes to show why conservatives such as Tomi Lahren never point out these facts, and always focus on the negatives. When they only focus on the negative impacts on immigration it just ends up proving their point.
When Tomi states that when illegal immigrants flood to poor neighborhoods, such as Compton "those [American] kids are at the most disadvantage" when it comes to the topic of education. She is suggesting that the more immigrants that fill our education system the worse off they will make it. Although, an article done by U.S. News begs to differ. The author of the article, Lauren Camera, explains how not only are a large majority of schools underfunded, but schools with high rates of poverty in America are currently lacking adequate funding to address their issues. This means poverty stricken schools will face problems such as outdated textbooks, outdated technology, lack of funding to fix broken equipment, no advanced placements/higher level courses, little to no essential school supplies, crowded classrooms, low amount of teachers, and low quality underpaid teachers. America is punishing “poor neighborhoods" not immigrants. Tomi goes on to assume that immigrants are only focused in high poverty rate areas, when in fact they are spread throughout the country no matter the amount of wealth.
Ultimately, illegal immigrants are not the ones to blame for a low quality school systems nor do they make it relatively worse for the education system and society. I agree undocumented immigrants is a problem, but not at the rate Tomi insinuates it is. Instead of conservatives sliding the blame to immigrants (like Tomi Lahren does) they should help solve the issue. In fact, the government can begin solving this issue by reducing the already outrageously over funded military, which takes up more than half of our national budget. In addition, government can utilize that money to solve larger issues that lie within our society such as student loans, the Flint water crisis, the Puerto Rico hurricane disaster relief, increasing prescription drug prices, opium crisis, and of course education funding.
References:
“Tomi Lahren: Poorer Neighborhoods Are the Ones 'Really Losing Out' With Illegal Immigration” https://insider.foxnews.com/2019/04/08/tomi-lahren-illegal-immigrants-affecting-lower-class-communities-urban-america
Campbell, Alexia Fernández “Trump says undocumented immigrants are an economic burden. They pay billions in taxes.” https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17229018/undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes
Camera, Lauren “In Most States, Poorest School Districts Get Less Funding” https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-02-27/in-most-states-poorest-school-districts-get-less-funding
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