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Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
Illegal immigration and the further increase of the mommy-state
Another good reason to limit the size of the mommy-state
by StFerdIII
Governments dearly love to increase their power and scope. Illegal Hispanic immigration offers the US governing elite [and those in Canada as well], a windfall political and tax opportunity. Ignoring security, legal and cost concerns, politicians in alliance with the liberal media and left wing do-gooding groups will ensure that those breaking the law will be rewarded with amnesty and cash – in the form of welfare and social payments. The imbecility of such political opportunism will result in perhaps the greatest expansion in US history of the welfare state. Currently illegal immigrants cost the US at least $30 billion per annum in net costs. After amnesty this will increase by 5-10 x that level once extended families and friends join those given amnesty in the US. This says nothing about the political-cultural impact such a wave of immigration would entail as roughly 40 million Hispanics within 10 years, join the US as citizens.
Estimates have put the cost of immigration at more than $60 billion in 2005 – 50 % for legals and 50 % for illegals. One of the most common arguments used by advocates of open borders – analysts, politicians and political groups opposed to any immigration control and enforcement efforts – is that illegal migrants have a net positive effect on local, state and national economies. According to a growing body of research, the opposite is true: illegal immigrants consume far more dollars than they contribute to the nation, and what they do contribute is grossly disproportionate. Immigration costs the United States billions every year.
Most costs are borne by state and local governments, while most tax receipts paid by immigrants go to the federal government. Though illegals don't make much use of public welfare benefits from which they are largely barred by law, illegal aliens generate a huge amount of costs in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency and non-emergency medical care. The $60 billion or so in per annum immigration costs is after immigrants' tax contributions are factored in. These costs are also repetitive and not one time costs, including health and prison expenses which are only getting more expensive.
In addition, about two-thirds of illegal aliens lack even a high school diploma. Traditionally low education levels translates into low incomes and, hence, lower tax payments. This phenomenon also adds to the overall negative fiscal impact illegals have on the U.S. economy though the absolute cost of this is harder to measure. According to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR], a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports a reduction of legal migration, "the cost of immigration to our society is enormous." Based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, FAIR says "we are admitting over one million mostly poor people into our society every year – a society that is already challenged to deal with the poverty of its natives."
Worse, there is no reason to expect future immigrants – most of who are from Mexico – will not be as poverty-stricken as the millions who have come before them. Even immigrants who are granted legal status continue to cost the nation money; as legal residents they qualify for more tax-funded benefits while still only making modest tax contributions. In fact, one study shows, though tax receipts from legalized migrants would increase 77 percent, average costs would increase 118 percent. It also says that, on average, illegal households pay more than $4,200 a year in all forms of federal taxes. Unfortunately, they impose costs of $6,950 per household.
One of the sectors of the economy hardest hit by illegal immigration is the health care industry. U.S. law forbids any hospital in the country, whether private or not-for-profit, to refuse medical care to anyone regardless of their inability to pay for that care. Needless to say, illegal immigrants (and legal immigrants who have no health insurance) take full advantage of this law. So bad have some hospitals been hit that they have had to close their doors completely or, at a minimum, scale back or cancel services that are vital to the American communities those hospitals serve.
And, as immigration remains at record high levels, these costs are only going to get worse:
• Currently, one in four uninsured persons in the United States is an immigrant.
• While precise numbers are not possible, based on figures from four areas alone health care-related costs for immigrants easily surpasses $1 billion annually (Texas - $393 million; Florida - $40 million; Los Angeles - $350 million; U.S.-Mexico border counties - $300 million).
• Nearly half of immigrants either have no health insurance or have it provided by taxpayers.
• In some hospitals, almost two-thirds of operating costs are generated by illegal immigrants.
• More than half of Hispanics, the nation's largest immigrant group, are without insurance.
Because they lack insurance, a growing number of immigrants use hospital emergency rooms as clinics; E.R. care is among the most expensive. This problem is so pervasive some Mexican ambulance companies instruct their crews to take uninsured Mexican patients across the border to the United States.
Education is another area that costs the US money to service illegals. Each day during the school year scores of Mexican children bearing backpacks and textbooks trek back and forth at ports of entry into the U.S., to be educated in American public schools, all of which is subsidized by American taxpayers. "The level of immigration is so massive, it's choking urban schools ...It's bad enough when you have desperate kids with U.S. backgrounds who require massive resources. In come kids with totally different needs, and it creates crushing burdens on urban schools," says David Stewart, in discussing his book Immigration and Education: The Crisis and Opportunities.
Currently the U.S. school-age population is at an all-time high, a figure which has been inflated – especially in border state areas – by massive numbers of immigrants. In that past 30 years, the share of U.S. students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants has tripled. As a result, some 14 percent of American schools exceed their capacity by anywhere from 6 percent to 25 percent; 8 percent of these schools exceed capacity by more than 25 percent. The problem has become severe enough that there is now a federal Bilingual/Immigrant State Grant program to assist school systems that experience large increases in their student population due to immigration.
Forty years ago, the U.S. high school graduation rate was the highest – 80 percent – of all member nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But, the group says, the U.S. today has lost its lead, mostly due to immigration. U.S. graduation rates now hover around 70 percent, lower than rates in 16 other countries.
Prison costs are also skyrocketing. The U.S. government spent $5.8 billion incarcerating illegal aliens between 2002 and 2005 or about $ 2 billion per year. Advocates for immigration reform have said a large part of the problem with mass migration is that the U.S. often winds up importing much of the world's poverty. The same argument can be made regarding the world's criminal elements. Most of the cost of incarcerating illegal alien criminals falls to state and local governments. The federal government reimburses on average about 25 percent of these costs through the Department of Justice's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. The states are thus left with a huge fiscal burden thanks to lax Federal support in securing the border.
Political opportunism to buy the Hispanic vote; mollify business owners who illegally hire undocumented aliens; appease the Hispanic-illegal loving liberal media; and set up government for another round of welfare state aggrandizement might sit will with the ‘gay-feminist-no war for oil crowd’, but to anyone concerned about security, cultural virtues, legal processes and the rule of law, the granting of amnesty to illegal aliens is a dangerous and discomforting move. All it means is the further increase of government power and the welfare state and a radical change in political and social culture – for the worse.
Some sources:
-Borgias of Harvard and his many studies which calculate illegal immgraiton costs for the US, at about $50 billion
-1997 National Research Council report, "The New Americans."
-1998 Urban Institute study, which examined tax payments by illegal aliens in New York State.
-US Inspector General's Office of the Department of Treasury in 2004 study of Illegal immigration’s net cost.
-http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
-http://www.newsbatch.com/imm-illegalop.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States
