Social services come into play because once here for a seasonal job they are stuck and often must find a way to dig in and wait for the jobs to return.
You are making good solid arguments in this discussion, but the facts of illegal immigration have evolved recently. Your contention regarding medical crossings may be true elsewhere, but not in Cochise County AZ. I have personal knowledge here, and the hospitals are being crushed by medical crossings. In a county the size (land mass) of the State of Connecticut, we have 5 hospitals. Only one has a maternity ward, and we have 16 beds. The others have had to close because of the payment default rate.
Many illegals are moving into the manufacturing sector and are not reliant on social services to tide them over as you suggest. However, when an employer finds out they are illegal and they get fired, they need those services. Again, personal knowledge, it's happening to my sister's company in Phoenix. They hire in good faith based on apparently valid documentation. Then the SSA tells them a social security number is bogus, and they fire the illegal.
On several occasions, my sister has had former (illegal) employees come to her to validate their employment history so that they can get, among other things, 'baby insurance'. Yep, that's right. "I want the insurance so I can have my baby, please tell the Department of Economic Security that I worked for you." And the AZ drivers' license the young lady handed my sister had a bogus name on it. I don't know how she paid for her baby, but it didn't happen based on employment with my sister's company.
Our immigration code is rife with nuanced regulations that illegals and advocates can use to game the system.
I have always advocated that we jerk it all up by the roots and toss it.
we need to rewrite it around a new paradigm so that these unintended and multiple levels of abuse are cleared up.
To start, business regs are allowing the hiring of illegals because business cannot be held liable for fraud on the illegals part. It is rampant, but that does not address the millions of small operation that operate totally dark and under the radar.
this needs to be cleared up and stppedbefore a single immigration reform can ever be passed.
No reform will succeed until the sugar is removed that causes the ants to trail in.