Burnt Orange Report

Feds Cut Off Funds for Migrant Workers' Kids

By Andrew Dobbs

To crib (and paraphrase) an old joke from Saturday Night Live, Bush's score so far is conservative= 1,754 compassionate= 0. From the Associated Press:

Funding is being eliminated for a federal program that pays the children of migrant workers across the country to stay in school instead of working in fields.

The Department of Labor program pays some young people minimum wage to stay in school while migrating with their parents, who travel across the country looking for seasonal farm work.

Coordinators in 31 states and Puerto Rico were told there was no money to operate the program this year, leaving them to find alternate sources, petition Congress or drop the program. (...)

Repeated telephone messages left this week for Labor Department officials weren't returned.

The Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Youth Program is designed to combat extraordinarily high dropout rates among seasonal migrant youth workers and the children of adult seasonal migrant workers. It also attempts to end cyclical poverty and low socio-economic levels plaguing that population. (...)

Dropout rates among migrant youths are estimated at 60 percent, according to the federal Office of Migrant Education in the U.S. Department of Education. (...)

Despite the stipends, most of the young people still work because their families need supplemental income. The average income of an adult farm worker is less than $10,000 a year.

Nationally, more than 2,500 youth ages 14 to 21 participated in the program last year. Many came from California, Texas and Florida.

The program also provides job placement, tutoring, mentoring, vocational training and career counseling services. It also funds child care and health care.

Four years ago, programs across the country were dividing a healthy $10 million a year. This year, all funding was eliminated and coordinators were told to use money from last year until it dries up.

God, I have trouble wrapping my mind around Republican policy. This is a program which is successful at keeping poor kids in school so they can pull themselves out of staggering poverty. It provides necessary services to people who couldn't otherwise afford it. It serves only to help people who are among the poorest yet also most important workers in our society. And they want to get rid of it.

So much for being the "education president." Bush's administration has cut loose the poorest of the poor of our young people from the hope of a decent education. Now these kids have to choose between letting their families starve to death or dropping out. Which do you think they'll choose?

Great job, George. Quietly killed off a successful program in the name of promoting ignorance and poverty. Jesus I hate this president.