Mass. mayor: Public schools forced to enroll immigrants with ‘more wrinkles than I have’

[Kber]

2. Her story may be bullshit

An anti-immigration group's Imaninary Scapegoats

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But upon closer inspection, Kennedy’s tale of woe doesn’t quite add up. Those kids with wrinkles and gray hair? She admitted she hadn’t seen them herself. And the “surge” of unaccompanied minors Kennedy has felt? It predates the actual surge at the border, which has been building for a couple of years but exploded only in 2014.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which handles the placement of unaccompanied minors, says 135 unaccompanied Guatemalan children were placed this year through July 31 in Lynn, a city of 90,000 with a sizable Guatemalan population. Tallies weren’t kept for previous years, but the figures probably were a fraction of the current level — not exactly enough to cause mayhem in Lynn’s schools, which have 13,500 kids enrolled, or to swamp trash collection.

Of those Guatemalan children who have come to Lynn, the mayor acknowledged, she doesn’t know “how many are refugees, how many are illegal immigrants including unaccompanied minors, and how many arrived legally.” That’s an important distinction, because what’s going on in the city appears to have less to do with illegal immigration and the current border crisis than with long-term patterns of legal migration, which are economically beneficial.

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