Posted on 03/27/2015 7:10:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sen. Ted Cruz launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination this week by promising to "finally, finally, finally secure the borders" and put an end to unauthorized immigration. This will warm the hearts of restrictionists, no doubt. But it should scare Americans who love their pocketbooks and liberties more than they hate undocumented Latino immigrants.
Restrictionists accuse many of these immigrants of being welfare queens who come to America illegally and live off taxpayers. Cruz has contributed to the hysteria by proposing bills barring undocumented workers from ever receiving any means-tested benefits, presumably even after they become legal.
Accusations that undocumented Latinos strain the welfare system are a red herring. If anything, immigrants, legal and illegal, constitute something of a welfare windfall. How? By coming to this country during their peak working years, after another society has borne the cost of raising and educating them, they save our system a ton of money. Studies generally don't take this windfall effect into account, and still find that the economic contributions of low-skilled Latinos far outpace their welfare use. For example, a Texas comptroller study found that although unauthorized workers consumed about $504 million more in public services than they paid in taxes, without them, the Texas economy would shrink by 2.1 percent, or $17.7 billion. A full accounting of these folks would likely be show them to be an even bigger economic boon (especially since the employment participation rate of Latino men is higher than the native born, and their overall welfare use is lower).
Meanwhile, as Cruz and his ilk whine about the (exaggerated) welfare costs of immigrants, they act as if their own plans to erect the Great Wall of China on the Rio Grande would be costless. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cruz wants to establish "100 percent operational control" of America's southern border by completing a double-layer fence on the entire 2,000 miles, tripling the size of the border patrol, and quadrupling the number of helicopters and cameras.
This is beyond ill conceived. First of all, 45 percent of all illegal immigrants are visa over-stayers. So Cruz's efforts are totally irrelevant for nearly half of America's illegal immigrants. What's more, even the Berlin Wall, the most fortified border in modern history, was successfully breached 1,000 times every year. That rate will be a gazillion times greater on America's southern border, which is not a barren, open expanse of land. In fact, it has a varied and rugged terrain with mountains and valleys and national parks (one the size of Rhode Island) and rivers that the wall will have to hop, skip, and jump around.
The Rio Grande has myriad tributaries that feed millions of people on both sides of the border. If Cruz's wall is anything like the current 18-foot-high structure with rust-red hollow posts sunk six inches apart in a concrete base, it will have to stop several miles short on each side to avoid damming the watershed, leaving major openings for people to walk through.
And what would a double-wall cost taxpayers?
It is very difficult to get a full grip, but the construction cost alone of a single-layer fence on the 1,300 or so unfenced miles would likely be upwards of $6 billion (assuming, as per a CBO study, pedestrian fencing costs of $6.5 million per mile and vehicle fencing costs of $1.7 million per mile). Annual maintenance costs would be hundreds of millions more.
Tripling the number of boots on the ground wouldn't be cheap either. President Obama has already deployed 20,000 border patrol agents, over twice more than he inherited. Tripling this number would cost a whopping $7 billion or so more a year since, according to the CBO, the annual cost of an agent is about $171,400.
And the bill in dollars pales in comparison to the price Americans will have to pay in lost liberties.
Conservatives are outraged when the government confiscates private property for environmental or other ends. Indeed, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, a vile man with retrograde views on race, became an instant conservative hero when he stood up to Uncle Sam and let his cattle graze on land that the federal government had, in his view, illicitly obtained. Yet Cruz and his ilk have no qualms about authorizing Uncle Sam to perpetrate an even bigger property grab in the name of their Swiss-cheese wall.
Over half of the recently constructed 700 miles of fence was on private property that Uncle Sam deployed blatant strong-arm tactics to obtain. It confiscated ancestral land that had been in families for over 200 years and offered virtually peanuts to Texas landowners who couldn't afford to hire expensive lawyers to duke it out with Uncle Sam in court. Oscar Ceballos, a part-owner of a small trucking business, recounts how a government lawyer went so far as to figure out how much his assets were worth to dissuade a free legal clinic from representing him in his fight against the government's ridiculously low-ball initial offer. Cruz's even grander wall ambitions will only compound such abuse.
Nor would Americans on the border be the only ones affected. The vast majority of undocumented workers are here because there are Americans, especially employers, who benefit from their presence. Hence, Cruz and his fellow anti-immigration fighters want to force all American employers to verify the work eligibility of potential hires — American or foreign, legal or illegal — against a federal database through E-verify. Should this program become mandatory, all Americans will be effectively required to obtain a government permission slip to work.
What's ironic about Cruz's crusade to build a wall between two free — and friendly — people, divert billions of taxpayer dollars to militarize the border, and abrogate the civil rights of Americans is that he is doing so while vowing to "stand for liberty."
If this is his idea of liberty, what would tyranny look like under President Cruz? (Don't answer that — I hope to never find out!)
And does she not realize that Senator Cruz is Hispanic?
Found it.
Bill Richardson: Ted Cruz should not ‘be defined as a Hispanic’
Liberalism is a mental disorder cuase by Birth defect.
From that article:
While Richardson had tough words for Cruz, on the regular “This Week” program Democratic strategist James Carville praised Cruz’s political skills, calling him “the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years.”
Well, that part's right. The only way to effectively control illegal aliens in the interior of the country is to require everybody to carry papers showing their status with regard to residence or citizenship.
IOW, controlling illegal immigration is at least partially in conflict with keeping the government out of our business.
More Ministry of Propaganda brought to you by the Cheap Labor Express. The cheap labor imporation disguised as immigration could also be viewed as colonization.
It is definitely not immigration, without authorization or assimilation.
Must be one of those white hispanics
I already have to supply a social security number to work.
Then again, immigration IS one of the few legitimate functions of government...
Again with the stupid Berlin Wall garbage...
The Berlin Wall was built to keep people IN, not OUT. The comparison might have at least some semblance of relevance had West Germany built it to keep East Germans out.
My idea of securing the border is a nice simple Ma Deuce pit every 300 yards, manned in shifts, and no rules of engagement. We have been in a war, and a few bullets to secure our NATIONAL border from invaders, is a small cost.
Remember, republics point their guns out and away from their borders, to secure their freedom.
Communists keep the guns pointed IN to secure the populace from obtaining their freedom.
[And what would a double-wall cost taxpayers?]
If a President TED CRUZ would just say the word, an army of volunteers would descend on the border and have that double-wall built in no time.
One argument used is that we can’t bus eleven million people back to Mexico. Well, close the border well and attrition will do the rest. Commit a criminal act, bye bye. Hire illegals to work and bye bye. Slowly and surely we will have immigration for those who want to be Americans.
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