INTERVIEW – STEVEN CAMAROTA – Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) – discussed his research on the impact of immigration in public schools.

• Mapping the Impact of Immigration on Public Schools. (CIS / By Bryan Griffith, Karen Zeigler, Steven Camarota) — The number of children from immigrant households in schools is now so high in some areas that it raises profound questions about assimilation. What’s more, immigration has added enormously to the number of public school students who are in poverty and the number who speak a foreign language. This cannot help but to create significant challenges for schools, often in areas already struggling to educate students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Percentage of students from immigrant hosueholds in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, 37 percent: Among the findings: Almost one out of four (23 percent) public school students in the United States came from an immigrant household in 2015. As recently as 1990 it was 11 percent, and in 1980 it was just 7 percent. In 2015, between one-fourth and one-third of public school students from immigrant households were the children of illegal immigrants; the remainder were the children from legal immigrant households. Immigrant households are concentrated; just 700 Census Bureau-designated PUMAs account for two-thirds of students from immigrant households, these same PUMAs account for nearly one-third of total public school enrollment.  In these 700 immigrant-heavy areas, half the students are from immigrant households.