The aliens are coming! In fact, they’re already here. They’ve infiltrated your neighborhoods, your businesses -- they’re even in your schools. But don’t worry: members of the Virginia General Assembly are on patrol. In fact, they’ve introduced more than 100 immigration-related bills to deal with the invasion.

Among the Virginia offerings: one bill to prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public colleges, and another requiring K-12 students to present valid birth certificates before enrolling. But my home state isn’t the only one getting into the border enforcement business. In Oklahoma, for example, State Rep. Randy Terrill has introduced a bill requiring schools to report how many illegal immigrant children are in their classes and the cost of educating them.

“Show of hands, please. We can just report that with our AYP.”

As you can imagine, illegal immigrants everywhere are flocking to turn themselves in.

Actually, no. In fact, according to a New York Times article last week about the city of Waukegan, Ill., near Chicago, much of the community is living in fear, avoiding public places, cancelling school meetings, bypassing downtown. The crackdown has even hurt legal immigrants, whose ethnic businesses are failing because customers are too afraid to shop. (To which, I, a loyal Know Nothing, can only say: “Who’d have thunk?”)

I could go on, but you get the point. Yes, we have an illegal immigration problem in this country. But the answer is not to victimize children and families and young people who want to better themselves (and, in the process, America) by getting a college education.

The Urban Institute (www.urban.org) touches on a small part of the issue in its 2007 report Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children. One of the communities studied -- Grand Island, Neb. -- was also featured in 2007’s Education Vital Signs.

I haven’t had space to even mention the presidential campaign and the contest, on the Republican side, to see who can sound the toughest on a group that represents some of America’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. Maybe later.

But it’s going to get ugly, if it hasn’t already; and educators better be prepared for the impact of all this turmoil on their students.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor