Ronald Reagan on Immigration (via Volokh Conspiracy blog)

Volokh Conspiracy ^ | 05/25/2007 | Ronald Reagan

[daviddennis]

The national creed, in my view, is that all people deserve a chance, even those from other countries who are suffering under oppressive or incompetent regimes.

It follows that those people should be welcome here, assuming our economy can handle them.

So far the economy is grabbing all the immigrants it can get, so I don’t see a problem. It seems like a win/win.

Certainly it’s possible that our policies regarding medical care might have to change, or we need to find better ways to provide medical care to those who don’t want to pay thousands of dollars a day for simple diagnostics, and tens of thousands for treatment.

I see no justification in the costs associated with our current medical system, so if having illegals around causes us to look for alternatives that are more cost effective, well, that might benefit me too when I get sick.

When I went to the hospital on the insistance of my business partner to check some vague symptoms, and they kept me overnight after running various tests, the bill came to $8,000. Insurance reduced it to $3,000, which they paid. I think that’s just plain absurd.

It should not take $8,000, or even $3,000 to put me in a room less comfortable than a Motel 6, shared with another person who was woken up at 3am for his medicine. It should not take that kind of money to do about an hour’s worth of diagnostic tests on fancy machines. And yet the machines aren’t THAT expensive, I spent very little time with a doctor (maybe 1-2 hours max) and I receieved no treatment other than a patch which i think cost about $20.

So when hospitals say that illegals cost them $x thousand, I assume the illegals don’t have the skill in negotiating down bills insurance companies do. This means that the costs we see associated with illegals are inflated, probably at least two or three times, over costs that are already absurd.

After receiving that bill and seeing what happened to it, quite honestly I don’t believe a word hospitals say. They had better become more efficient or bust. And I live in an area where the percentage of illegals is probably 1% or less - we just don’t see them.

Illegals are not to blame for high hospital bills; an incompetent and inefficient system is. We have to fix the system instead of blaming people who have little to nothing to do with the situation.

I don’t love illegals but I don’t hate them, either. I know that I liked life a lot more living in Los Angeles, a dynamic place with lots of growth, including illegals, than I do living in Pittsburgh, where the population is shrinking and there are hardly any illegals at all.

If illegals give us growth, and dynamism, and an expanding economy instead of a contracting one, I don’t see why people concentrate so much on the negatives and ignore the positives of having them around.

If we kick ‘em out we get stagnation instead of growth. As you said, fewer schools, fewer hospitals, less of everything. I’m just confused as to why you would find that desirable.

Aren’t we supposed to be the party of economic growth and hope?

We’re acting like the party of shrinkage, stagnation and depression, of decaying buildings and depressed economies.

Is this really what we want? There had better be some really powerful gains from it, and I don’t see a single one.

D

[TexasKamaAina]

I'm not negative about immigration. I am negative about ILLEGAL immigration. Capice?

Capice. But I'm negative against immigration, legal or illegal, for two reasons. One, as long as we piously invoke the distinction between legal and illegal as the basis for our concern the pols will just work on a way to legalize the current invasion. Two, I have concerns that go beyond economics. Let's grant that, in the long run, liberal and legal immigration provides us economic advantages. There are still social and cultural implications that should be considered. We are inheritors of a political culture that goes back to the Magna Carta. We need our immigration policy to protect that inheritance by ensuring that new immigrants arrive in numbers that can be assimilated and that they have a mind to do so. I think if we shut down immigration now it could probably take 50 - 75 years to fully assimilate our current immigrants.