Posted on 12/28/2003 10:49:51 AM PST by mrustow
Legend has long held that illegal aliens give American citizens cheap lettuce and cheap child care. Excepting for agribusiness and the upper classes, that legend is, in reality, a nightmare, in which the American middle and working classes pay and pay and pay for illegal immigration, and get nothing but grief in return.
In states with heavy illegal alien populations, the budget of a middle-class family is full of hidden illegal alien surcharges. As a result, today’s middle-class American family with two full-time working parents has less discretionary income than its traditional forebear, in which the father alone was breadwinner. (Conditions are that much worse for families torn apart by divorce or the death of a parent.) And things are only getting worse. In California, for example, immigration writer Ed Rubenstein estimates that legal and illegal immigration combine to cost American-born California taxpayers $21.7 billion per year, for a 6.6% annual surcharge. And as Rubenstein points out, legal immigrants also have a voracious appetite for social services: “California immigrant households received a net subsidy from combined federal, state, and local programs averaging $6,145 in 1996.”
Compared to previous generations, middle-class Americans today pay outrageous prices, as a proportion of their incomes, for homes, in order to be able to protect their children from “bad schools.” So say the mother-daughter writing team of Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, and journalist Steve Sailer.
In Warren and Tyagi’s new book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke, they write that "The brunt of the price increases has fallen on families with children. Data from the Federal Reserve show that [after inflation] the median home value for the average childless individual increased by 23 percent between 1983 and 1998 … For married couples with children, however, housing prices shot up 79 percent—more than three times faster."
And yet, the white American working class can only dream of such headaches. For its members, home ownership - in any neighborhood - is increasingly an impossible dream. And when economists talk about what illegal immigration costs the typical American worker, the averages (see below) include millions of workers who have been locked out of entire industries by employers who refuse to hire Americans, or by illegal immigrant workers who will not tolerate Americans in their midst. This is the ugly truth behind the propaganda of immigration enthusiasts, who insist that illegal aliens are doing "Jobs that Americans won't do."
In 1968, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act (aka Title VII), which mandated teaching Hispanic children in Spanish and English, which in practice has meant in Spanish only. (The BEA was officially “eliminated” by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, yet NCLB did not eliminate bilingual education, which radical U.S. Department of Education officials force more aggressively than ever on the public schools.)
In states buffeted by high levels of illegal immigration, including the entire American Southwest, Florida, New York, and Illinois, the public schools are being inundated by unassimilable, illegal immigrants and the children of illegal immigrants, including foreign street gangs. Such schools are typically dominated by incompetent, racist, Hispanic (in Florida, often by Haitian) nationalists at the staff, faculty, and administrative level, who increasingly dispense with the teaching of English. And the foreign nationalist “educators” get paid more than do their English-speaking counterparts!
In California, which has approximately four million illegal immigrants (out of 9 million-13 million nationally), illegal immigrants have destroyed a public school system that for generations was the envy of the nation. For middle-class, American parents to leave their children in such hostile environments would constitute neglect. And so, while some parents have placed their children in often expensive private schools, others have sought safe public school districts. Realtors have cashed in. Thus must middle-class Americans pay exorbitant taxes to maintain public schools from which they have been disenfranchised, or buy overpriced homes, while people who are here illegally use the schools for free.
Throughout the American Southwest, public and private hospitals alike face the prospect of shutting down, because of the onslaught of illegal immigrants. State and local laws prohibit hospital emergency rooms from turning away any patient, based on his inability to pay, or from inquiring into a patient’s citizenship status. Exploiting such laws, illegal immigrants use emergency rooms for primary medical care, including for the common cold, so as to get out of paying for their care. Meanwhile, American patients with real medical emergencies, whose taxes maintain those hospitals and who pay for their own medical care, are turned away.
News reports tell of Californians with medical emergencies who are forced to drive from hospital to hospital, since facilities close their emergency rooms to new patients as early as noontime. Bizarrely, such reports never mention the role of illegal immigration in causing the medical crisis. Instead, one hears only of “uninsured” patients, amid suggestions that the system needs massive transfusions of tax dollars, and that America needs European or Canadian-style socialized (“universal”) health care. None of the stories this reporter has seen, has told of illegal aliens ever being turned away from medical facilities, no matter how trivial their complaint. Thus are Americans disenfranchised by the very medical system they pay so much to maintain.
And Americans pay higher auto insurance rates, to make up for illegal aliens who drive illegally and without insurance, and cause accidents.
Illegal immigrants’ defrauding of California’s generous welfare system has long been a scandal. Such welfare fraud is now a national scandal, as state and local governments operating stealth amnesty programs violate the Constitution, in negotiating directly with Mexico and other foreign governments, to accept the “matricula consular,” an insecure form of ID used exclusively by illegal aliens, and in issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Illegals may then use either the matricula consular or state driver’s licence to receive welfare benefits from officials who are not permitted to ask an applicant his citizenship status. Meanwhile, a driver’s license can be used to illegally register to vote.
Increasing numbers of states are following New York’s example, and granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens, at the same time that they charge law-abiding, American citizens from other states two and three times the in-state rate. And as illegal aliens are taking the initiative, suing colleges in Virginia for the right to break the law, illegals in the other states will surely follow suit. Thus do those who, as a matter of law, have no civil rights, demand and receive such rights at the expense of Americans, who are robbed of theirs. Meanwhile, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) seeks to make the lawsuits moot, as his DREAM Act would repeal the federal law prohibiting the granting of in-state tuition to illegals.
Again, it is the citizens who must pay for the illegals. And via affirmative action, unqualified, illegal college applicants are admitted ahead of qualified Americans, foreclosing on the already limited opportunities for the children of the white, working poor to improve their lot. (A multitude of programs exist for such children's black and Hispanic counterparts.)
But that isn’t the half of it. As columnist Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, unqualified immigrants – including illegals – enjoy affirmative action privileges, in getting jobs in place of qualified, American citizens.
It is no wonder that for years, Americans have been fleeing California, whose population has been buoyed exclusively through incoming illegal immigrants.
But flight is just a stopgap. Today, California; tomorrow, Idaho.
As economist George Borjas has shown, America’s immigration policy costs every American worker an average of $2,578 in annual income, in the form of depressed wages, in addition to all the hidden surcharges I listed above. And with every stealth amnesty, more illegals stream across America’s borders to all her states. And as the unfortunate American residents of far-flung Lewiston, Maine have learned, the federal government is inviting foreigners to come here LEGALLY, to partake of welfare programs that disenfranchised Americans must pay for.
Finally, as Steve Sailer has reported, illegal immigration is disenfranchising Americans through the unconstitutional creation of “rotten boroughs,” in which only a small portion of the populace may legally vote. Rotten boroughs arise because congressional districts are created based on numbers of “residents,” rather than citizens.
Unlike the wealthy liberals who support every sort of handout for immigrants, Middle Americans who actually have to work for a living, cannot afford an unlimited number of hidden, illegal immigration taxes and surcharges. Like the classic science fiction movie, the current situation could be called, Invasion of the Citizen Snatchers. Or simply, as in the title of Michelle Malkin’s book, Invasion.
I'm not an immigrant --- neither were my parents --- but what many forget is that even with Homesteading of land where there was so much available land they were giving every immigrant 40 acres, and the Industrial Revolution which was creating millions of low-skilled factory jobs, a third of the immigrants from Europe returned home within a short time. People like to think the boats were empty heading East --- but they were often filled with disillusioned un-immigrants which isn't the case today with Welfare around to make sure no one fails. Now 35-45% of our immigrants end up on welfare programs.
So any foreigner not only has the right to completely ignore our immigration laws, they can ignore our laws on what can be brought into this country? They can bring any drug, food, medicine --whatever they wish? Can they bring over pirated CDs? Any law at all that inconveniences, they are free to break?
Find that in the US Constitution. Or did you find that in Vicente Fox's "The Whole Enchildada"? Where does it say only all able-bodied persons can invade the USA? Even the able-bodied who will end up on Welfare handouts because they aren't so able-minded?
The ER costs the same whether its busy or quiet and regardless of who is being served. Every ER I have ever heard of uses a triage system, taking the most critically ill patients first, then working down to those with their colds and flu. That later group is worked through in the order in which they show up. I find it hard to believe that ER's are turning away people who have had heart attacks or been in auto accidents because they have a room full of people with sniffles. That doesnt happen. So if you have a case of sniffles too and are seeking treatment at the ER learn you are supposed to go to your doctor, not the ER for your non emergency needs.
Of course, no one is stopping you from following up on the writers the author cites. Someone who demands such Herculean effort of others must be willing to do some work himself, if does not wish to be outed as a hypocrite.
I didnt ask you or anyone to do any footwork for me. I only questioned the gullibility of those that accept as true a piece that doesnt offer any evidence for its thesis other than the "estimates" of other so-called "experts".
If you don't mind, I think I will have to remember and restate this remark on some occassions. I've never heard it put that way before and I think it's quite apt.
I had appendicitis and I was sent home three times, after being sent there by my doctor. The ER was busy looking at illegals with the sniffles, so they didn't actually have time to confirm that I had appendicitis and instead decided that I must just have cramps. They let me wait, curled up in agony on the floor, for six hours, though. While they took illegals with the sniffles. I had a long time to watch their supposedly "sick" kids playing around and eating Chicken McNuggets. Emergency-room-sick people do not generally eat, laugh, and play. I know this since I hadn't eaten for about a week. The room was literally full of people who were not having emergencies, and while I didn't inquire as to legal status, most of them were speaking in Spanish (which I also speak).
Luckily, on the fourth time (now days after the doctor first said it was really serious), I was about ready to die and my appendix was leaking, so my husband called an ambulance, and they had to take a closer look and perform some emergency surgery.
Good point. I've seen alot of urban sprawl around where I live and I don't like it. Alot of good farmland will be gone forever. I don't put the full blame on immigration here in the St. Louis area but anyone can figure out that the more people you bring in, the less land there will be to enjoy for future generations. Where will we go to hunt, fish, or even grow food?
As Dan Stein of F.A.I.R. was said "This isn't 1850 anymore".
Congress 202-224-3121
White House 202-456-1111
Thanks, I will!
you say we don't need em, I say we do. who are "we"? don't speak for everyone.
First things first. Let's get the illegals back home and then regulate their entry. We are a nation of immigrants. Controlled immigrants that are given a fair chance to assimilate rather than simply move their poverty.
What you call scare mongering is actually a probably highly accurate prediction of our dilemma if immigration continues to be unregulated. It's an ugly picture isn't it?
Oops. Your bigotry is showing.
No what you're talking about is chaos. Governments are sovereign for a reason. Sovereignty is required to provide an ordered society and an order society is necessary for survival. It's a successful formula. There has never been a successful society without control of it's boarders.
Yes our national policy does grant to almost everyone on this earth a shot at the American dream but in a controlled manner.
no chief, it's your lazy thinking that's showing instead. re-read my post and the one I was answering and try to understand what I really meant.
Wrong again bucko. The prejudice is against illegal aliens, not a particular cultural group.
Most on this forum see illegal alien. You see Mexican. How unfortunate. I suspect your cultural prejudice is showing.
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