Replies

I can't believe what I'm reading here. Illegal immigration is driven by the laws of supply and demand? Have those in favor of mass unskilled and illegal immigration ever heard of a SUBSIDY, which artificially increases demand for a product or service, in this case unskilled immigrant labor?

How is unskilled immigrant labor subsidized? Well, let's first look at education. It is typical for an unskilled immigrant family to have 3 to 4 kids, and education generally costs around $7,000 to $9,000 per kid, per year. That works out to around $20,000 to $30,000 or more a year, more than many unskilled immigrant families may make, much less pay in taxes (and many illegal immigrants pay zero in taxes). That doesn't include other heavy costs, including health care, housing assistance, food stamps, and law enforcement costs (I believe illegal aliens make up around 25% of California's prison population in spite of "only" being around 10 to 15 percent of the state population). Unskilled legal immigrants are also disproportionately involved in crime (at least Hispanics, a crude proxy for unskilled immigrants, are disproportionately involved in crime).

High levels of population growth in general (population growth is heavily driven by immigration and almost solely driven by immigration in California) can also strain resources such as power and water, increasing prices and worsening environmental problems...if environmental problems get worse, it is likely that stricter (and thus more expensive) environmental controls will be enacted.

I really think we should crack down on illegal immigration, which can be done relatively easily by enforcing employer sanctions (which would become much more possible if Republicans stopped selling out to big business and/or capitulating to the multicultural left). Of course the feds should also come down on illegal alien sanctuary laws and driver's licenses for illegal aliens, which give local/state sanction to violation of federal law.

When it comes to legal immigration, I think we should enact a merit/skills-based immigration policy and restrict the numbers to a few hundred thousand a year. People may consider such a policy "elitist," but is it any less fair than a system based on nepotism ("family reunification") and geography? (Mexico, due to its geographic proximity to the U.S., is able to send a vastly disproportionate number of immigrants compared to other countries).