Posted on 04/22/2008 5:03:52 PM PDT by antonia
Town Hall
Report Uncovers Hidden Cost of Immigration
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, April 21, 2008
Are you having a hard time paying your bills, making your mortgage payments, or putting your kids through college? You need to know how much of your hard-earned income the government is skimming off and diverting into handouts to immigrants and illegal immigrants.
You can read the depressing details in the new 70-page document called "The Economic and Fiscal Impact of Immigration" by Edwin S. Rubenstein (www.eagleforum.org/sources). A Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow with a mile-long scholarly resume, he has been doing financial analysis ever since he directed the studies of government waste for the Grace Commission of 1984.
The bottom line, which you need to know for your own bottom line, is that U.S. taxpayers are giving more than $9,000 a year in cash or benefits to each immigrant, a third of whom are in the country illegally. That's $36,000 for each immigrant household of four.
Because the U.S. has 37 million immigrants, legal and illegal, the national cost was more than $346 billion last year, which was twice our fiscal deficit. The cost of immigrants is so high because, as Rubenstein writes, "Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax and are more likely to receive public benefits than natives."
Big Brother hasn't told you this bad news, perhaps because the government doesn't want you to know why your paychecks are shortchanged. Even the huge amnesty bill that was defeated last year didn't contain one word about its budgetary consequences.
The financial burden immigrants impose on education starts with the 3.8 million K-12 students enrolled in more-expensive classes for the non-English-speaking. When we add up the costs of hiring specialized teachers, training regular teachers, student identification and assessment, and administration costs, the total amounts to an estimated $1,030 per pupil, or $3.9 billion.
Of the 48.4 million public-school children, pre-K through 12th grade, 9.2 million or 19 percent are immigrants or the children of immigrants. In the next few years, immigration will account for virtually all the increase in public school spending.
Look at the $1.5 billion cost of incarcerating 267,000 criminal aliens in federal prisons. That's not the worst of it; prison capacity is limited, so 80,000 to 100,000 other criminal aliens have been prematurely released to prowl our streets.
Criminals also impose heavy private costs on their victims. Rubenstein estimates the losses of income and property, hospital bills and emotional suffering at $1.6 million per assault- or property-crime offender.
Rubenstein's report includes all sorts of costs that other observers conveniently ignore, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. EITC gives an average cash payment of $1,700 per year to 25 percent of immigrant households.
The emergency medical treatment given free to illegal immigrants is another enormous cost, causing some hospitals and emergency rooms to close. Emergency means any complaint from hangovers to hangnails, gunshot wounds to AIDS.
Even after some restrictions were imposed in 1996, 24.2 percent of immigrant households receive Medicaid, whereas the figure for native-born Americans is 14.8 percent. Rubenstein calculates that Hispanics account for 19.2 percent of Medicaid enrollment, while they are 13.7 percent of the U.S. population.
The FHA has had a policy of increasing home ownership among low-income immigrants and therefore approved FHA mortgages on homes with a down payment of only $200 to $300 and marginal income. Because buyers have so little invested in the house, they can walk away from it when they can't meet the payments, and this has resulted in neighborhoods of abandoned, boarded-up housing.
Refugees are a large and growing fiscal burden because they become immediately eligible for generous taxpayer-paid benefits. Evidence shows they stay dependent on these programs and start chain-migrating relatives under the "family reunification" law.
The Interior Department spends millions of dollars to clean up the mountains of trash discarded by illegal immigrants crossing into California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Some immigration advocates peddle the notion that immigration will solve the future financial burdens of Social Security. Rubenstein shows how foolish is this prediction because today's low-wage workers will surely become tomorrow's expensive retirees.
Another cost that few talk about is that immigrant workers depress the wages received by native-born Americans, and that causes a $100 billion shortfall in federal tax revenue. Harvard University Professor George Borjas found that each 10 percent increase in the U.S. labor force from immigration reduces wages of native-born Americans by 5.25 percent.
Some liberals are trying to tell us to fight a recession by bringing in more immigrants, but that would only raid the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to support more millions of non-taxpayers. It's hard to say which is more outrageous: the diversion of Americans' personal income into cash handouts to foreigners, or the federal government's policy of concealing the fiscal impact of immigration.
Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.
Wonder how long it will take our open borders enthusiasts to find and attempt to trash this thread?
I best not verbalize my solution to this growing problem...
I welcome them.
But it's embarrassing to have battles of wit with unarmed persons...
I think state and federal officials are aware of all this. For some unknown reason they have elected to destroy this nation, and there’s little the average guy can do about it, except continue to work so they don’t come and get him.
I’m so disgusted right now. We are at least another five years away from any relief, and truth be known, we can most likely add another four years at least on to that.
Good by USA. It was nice while it lasted.
Hell, another 15 to 25 million illegals and we can hoist the red white and green over a good portion of this nation, as they sway more influence than citizens do.
I once had a Cambodian student whose family had been in the U.S. for two years. No one in the family had a job during that time. She wrote a bitter essay about the government’s pending withdrawal of funds to pay their rent and other benefits. Her parents couldn’t work, she said, because they spoke no English. TWO YEARS!
I have the greatest sympathy for immigrants who are truly strangers in a strange land, but we all have choices, not all of them pleasant.
I might be more liberal on this issue if I hadn’t seen hundreds of such cases.
By the way, she hated this country. She felt that her family did not receive enough benefits to be comfortable.
Well, thanks to the last purge, there are far fewer of them to battle now.
I am the son of an immigrant — a LEGAL immigrant. My mother played by the rules, respected our laws, studied American history and civics, and became an American citizen. I remember her studying for her citizenship test, sneaking little moments here and there when she had a free moment from raising three kids and maintaining a household, and helping out my father at his office as he was developing his company. We would quiz her in the evening after dinner, and she would answer with confidence, and pride. She has been an American citizen for almost fifty years. She would not want to be anything else.
“But it’s embarrassing to have battles of wit with unarmed persons.”
laughing here, great response
mrs
If it's any consolation, my solution would probably be similar to yours.
Would it help to think of that $24 billion as a tax sent home to Mexico?
This “study” is puzzling. As they all are. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that we are all paying the $2,500 x 1,100,000 medicaid bill ob/gyn for the hundreds of thousands of anchor babies born each year to illegal immigrants...
BUT WHY DO THEY INCLUDE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN THIS “STUDY”?
My family came here legally 39 years ago and we have never taken one red cent in gubmint handouts or even one bite of gubmint cheese. (unless you count my mothers pension and free medical courtesy of the generous taxpayers here in the Democratic People’s Republic of NJ, but she slaved for 35 years driving around in a state car with no AC or radio to earn it).
WTF?
There are lots of highly educated legal immigrants who add a lot to the country. Go to any of the McMansion developments here in the DPRNJ and the only people who can afford the houses are Russian, Chinese, or Indian immigrants who are doctors, dentists, engineers or scientists.
Why not just limit the study to illegal immigrants? I don’t get it.
I wonder how the people losing their homes, and struggling to survive feel about this?
My family came here legally 39 years ago and we have never taken one red cent in gubmint handouts or even one bite of gubmint cheese.
Good for you and your family. However, we have NO supportability test like most countries. Many immigrants are sponsored which means the sponsors signs papers saying they are financially responsible. Immigrants sign papers stating they will not collect any benefits for 5 yrs. It is NOT enforced.
I wish we had a means test for immigrants. There is absolutely no reason to let people in who cannot or will not support themselves.
If only all immigrants were like your family but I don’t think most are. The welfare state siren calls.
Since my parents retired, my Dad has taken up free lance social services as a hobby. He signed those support agreements when my uncles came here years ago. You’re right, they are meaningless for Gubmint purposes but they mean something to people with honor. His older brother put him through school after my grandfather died.
It runs in my genes I guess. We can’t stop trying to help people even if it hurts us. And they say only libs care about people.
Having said that, I am a little but taken aback by your seemingly callous attitude towards legal immigrants.
I thought this was a war against ILLEGAL immigration. Am I wrong? What am I missing?
Now Phyllis says the legals are twice as much of a problem as the illegals.
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