Children of Illegal Immigrants and Education Research Paper

Children of Illegal Immigrants and Education - Research Paper Example 5). In turn, this has placed them at a disadvantage especially in the job market. A greater percentage of the 62% is of children whose parents are legal immigrants. A survey of five counties in 2004 revealed that 45% of US born children had undocumented parents and the studies further revealed that the education levels of children of legal immigrants were much higher than that of children of illegal immigrants born in US (Caps et al. 6). This has been attributed to the fact that children of illegal immigrants born in US are likely to be faced with higher levels of poverty, which hinders their academic progress as most of them are forced to drop out of school to work. This study seeks to explore medical, psychological, emotional and economic factors contributing to a wide gap in education between children of illegal immigrants born in U.S.A and children of the natives, in order to equip the illegal immigrant parents with a better understanding of what challenges these children are goi ng through so that they can help in bridging the gap in education between their children and those of the natives. ... Sometimes children are forcefully obligated to drop out of school to work in order for them to cater for their basic needs. Undocumented parents may also be reluctant to approach organizations that can aid in financing their children’s education for fear of deportation as opposed to the legal immigrants who can freely ask for financial aid (Capps et al. 12). The other contributory factor is that majority of the illegal immigrant women are less likely to work and because most of them are in the child – bearing age, they are more likely to have more children as opposed to the working class women. As a result, the parents of these immigrant children may find it difficult to finance the education of their many children (Tanakshi 24). Poor educational background of parents of illegal immigrants children Most illegal immigrant parents have less formal education as compared to the native parent. Studies indicate that thirteen percent of parents of immigrant children have less than grade nine educations and a greater percentage lack a high school diploma. The spectrum of higher education also indicates that parents of native children are better educated than the immigrants (Fix and Jeffrey 36). Therefore, this implies that the children of the natives are more likely to be inspired by their parent’s achievements and follow their example or the parents may also be of great assistance especially if the children are having problems with their homework. The studies further indicate that six out of every ten parents of immigrant children are not proficient in English and that a quarter of the immigrant children have at least one of the parents who speaks another language apart from English at