NY Times on Corey Stewart, "hate-filled blogs," and a "foreign invasion"

Today's New York Times has a huge article on immigration, education and assimilation. It focuses on Cecil D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Prince William County. I thought the following discussion of Corey Stewart, particularly his claim that "We didn’t set out to pass a law addressing immigration," was fascinating. Also, I wonder what they're referring to when they talk about "hate-filled blogs" and a "foreign invasion." Hmmmmmmm. :)

Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the all-white, predominantly Republican Board of Supervisors, led the cause of those who argued that illegal immigrants — an estimated 30 percent of all those moving into the county — were an undue burden on taxpayers. It cost Prince William $40.2 million, about 5 percent of the school budget, to provide additional services to students with limited English last year, for example.

Mr. Stewart ordered his staff to identify services the county could deny to illegal immigrants. And he was a co-author of an ordinance that would have allowed the county police to check the immigration status of anyone they stopped whom they also suspected of living in the country illegally. (The authorities later backed off, limiting the police to checking the status of anyone arrested.)

“We didn’t set out to pass a law addressing immigration,” Mr. Stewart said in an interview. “We wanted to address issues involving problems in housing, in hospitals, in schools and with crime. And we found that when we looked at all those areas, illegal immigration was driving a lot of the problems.”

In neighborhoods, however, many people did not make distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants. Some residents complained of a “foreign invasion.” Constructive dialogue was often drowned out by hate-filled blogs, headlines and protests. And school boundaries were bitterly contested, with some families moving their children into schools with lower populations of immigrants, and others flexing their political influence to try to keep the immigrants out.

If you're not up to speed on the immigration issue and how it's played out in Prince William county, check out the New York Times article and also the superb YouTube channel, 9500 Liberty (by my friends Eric Byler and Annabel Park).