New Mexico “Learing” centers staffed by “many” undocumented workers

New Mexico’s ongoing experiment with “free” universal childcare (funded by taxpayers of course) is now in the midst of a debate over wage mandates and data collection, but what is most interesting to us is the following statement by one of the program’s biggest supporters:

Jacob Vigil of child welfare nonprofit New Mexico Voices for Children said that while the organization supported collecting the data, it urged the state Early Childhood Education and Care Department to put privacy safeguards in place, since many childcare workers are undocumented.

This statement raises numerous questions, such as:

What kind of background checks (if any) are being carried out on these people? It seems like none.

Are they being paid under the table or via fraudulent Social Security numbers? What accountability or enforcement will there be on how these people are being paid?

What accountability (legal or otherwise) is there in the case of abuse of the children in the program?

It’s crazy that New Mexico taxpayers are being forced to pay for a universal child care program for the benefit of the wealthiest people in New Mexico (if they choose to take advantage of it) as well as illegal immigrant parents and run by people whose documentation won’t be verified is just wild. It opens the system to not only Minnesota-style abuse, but more profound cases of abuse involving the children.