il-leg-al
adj.

1. Prohibited by law.
2. Prohibited by official rules: an illegal pass in football.
3. Unacceptable to or not performable by a computer: an illegal operation.

n.

        An illegal immigrant.

It would seem that some DISD trustees aren’t quite up on the whole concept of illegal aliens.

Dallas’ school district has a shortage of bilingual teachers.

DISD trustee Joe May knows where he can find a lot of people who speak Spanish fluently and are already in the country. And he’d like to put them to work.

But there’s at least one big hurdle: The school district cannot knowingly hire illegal immigrants because it’s against federal law.

Mr. May wants to amend that so the district can hire illegal immigrants who are college-educated and can qualify for the district’s emergency teaching certification program. The issue will be discussed at the school board’s policy briefing today.

This is the sort of fuzzy-headed nonsense that we get for putting up with PC phrases like “undocumented immigrant.”  Language matters.  If one considers an “undocumented immigrant,” one is likely to conclude that this person somehow forgot to stop off at the office on the way into the country to pick up some papers.  It’s all just a formality.  It glosses over the fact that this person deliberately and knowlingly broke United States federal law by entering this country without permission.  It doesn’t matter now nice they are or how productive they are, they’re CRIMINALS.

Now, having said that, I understand that large parts of our economy rely on people willing to work for very low pay, and that most of these jobs are filled by illegals.  I’m not completely unsympathetic to people who are just seeking a better life for themselves and their families.  Regardless of that, though, we need to get a handle on this and establish a system that lets them come here to work while allowing us to control who crosses our border.  No one who breaks the law should be rewarded.  An “amnesty” program simply rewards people who have broken the law.

I also strongly oppose bilingual education.  If a student doesn’t speak English, that student needs to learn it before coming into the school system.  It galls me that the taxpayer has to pay for teaching English to students who live in this country.  I don’t have a bias against Spanish, so much as I have a bias against people who don’t assimilate to our country.  Further, we simply can’t afford to teach students in every possible language.  That way lies madness and the destruction of our way of life.

Anyhow, in the here and now, DISD already has programs to recruit bilingual teachers abroad, in a legal fashion.

Some districts, including DISD, go abroad to recruit bilingual teachers and help applicants obtain their work visas.

But getting a work visa isn’t an option for illegal immigrants already here, said Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, regional communications manager for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“While we empathize and sympathize with these individuals, there is an orderly fashion in which one can immigrate to this country,” Ms. Garcia-Upson said.

Given the current threats to this country, we simply cannot tolerate our leaky southern border any longer.  I don’t care whether we build a physical wall or an electronic one, but it’s time to close it up and get control of who’s coming into the country.