Posted on 05/26/2008 7:21:46 AM PDT by kellynla
Many arguments, pro and con, about how to deal with illegal aliens have been passionately debated over the past couple of years, but there are still other arguments that need public exposure. Mark Krikorian presents a new argument in his forthcoming book called "The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal."
The pro-more-immigration crowd argues that today's immigrants are just like immigrants of a century ago: poor people looking for a better life who are expected to advance in our land of opportunity. Krikorian's new argument is that while today's immigrants may be like earlier ones, the America they come to is so very different that our previous experience with immigrants is practically irrelevant.
The essential difference between the two waves of immigrants was best summed up by the Nobel Prize-winning advocate of a free market, Milton Friedman. He said, "It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state."
The term "welfare state" does not just mean handouts to the nonworking. Our welfare state encompasses dozens of social programs that provide benefits to the "working poor," i.e., people working for wages low enough that they pay little or no income taxes.
Immigrants of the previous generation were expected to earn their own living, pay taxes like everybody else, learn our language, love America and assimilate into our culture. Today's immigrants likewise come here for jobs not welfare.
During those prior major waves of immigration, the United States didn't have a welfare state. Native-born Americans survived the Great Depression of the 1930s without a welfare state.
The Social Security retirement system was established only in 1935. Most other agencies that redistribute cash and costly benefits from taxpayers to non-taxpayers started with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the late 1960s.
Today's low-wage immigrants and lower-wage illegals can't earn what it costs to live in modern America, so they supplement with means-tested taxpayer benefits. And many immigrants don't learn our language or assimilate into American culture because of the multicultural diversity taught in our schools and encouraged in our society.
Today's immigrants fit the profile of the people who benefit from our welfare state: the working poor with large families. Krikorian sets forth some dismal figures.
About 30 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. work force in 2005 lacked a high school education, which is four times the rate for native-born Americans. Among the largest group of working-age immigrants, the Mexicans, 62 percent have less than a high-school education, which means they work low-wage jobs. Nearly half of immigrant households, 45 percent, are in or near poverty compared with 29 percent of native-headed households. Among Mexicans living in the United States, nearly two-thirds live in or near the government's definition of poverty.
Costly social benefits provided to the working poor include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (now called TANF, formerly AFDC), food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid, WIC (nutrition for Women, Infants and Children), public housing and Supplemental Security Income.
The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the most expensive parts of income redistribution. Twice as many immigrant households (30 percent) qualify for this cash handout as native-headed households (15 percent).
Health care is another huge cost. Nearly half of immigrants are either uninsured or on Medicaid, which is nearly double the rate for native-born families. Federal law requires hospitals to treat all comers to emergency rooms, even if uninsured and unable to pay.
Hospitals try to shift the costs onto their paying patients, and when the hospitals exhaust their ability to do this, they close their doors. In Los Angeles, 60 hospitals have closed their emergency rooms over the past decade, which imposes another kind of cost.
Immigration accounts for nearly all the growth in elementary and secondary school enrollment over the past generation. The children of immigrants now comprise 19 percent of the school-age population and 21 percent of the preschool population.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that in order to reduce government payments to the average low-skill household to a level equal to the taxes it pays, "it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half." Obviously, that is not going to happen.
Attempts to limit welfare eligibility for illegal aliens by provisions added to the 1996 welfare reform law, SSI, food stamps, Medicaid and TANF all failed. Krikorian concludes that "Walling immigrants off from government benefits once we've let them in is a fantasy."
As Americans are pinched between falling real estate values and the inflation of necessities such as gasoline, they are entitled to know how their tax dollars are being spent. The big bite that social benefits to immigrants (one-third of whom are illegal) takes out of taxpayers' paychecks should be factored into any debate about immigration or amnesty policy.
This is something that we as taxpayers should demand.
Technology is capable enough to allow the entire budget to be available to the taxpayer for download. And we have every right to download and examine it.
I will grant that there is much about it that when interpreted by someone like me, could be misinterpreted negatively but when the specifics are spelled out, makes sense of some sort.
I don’t think they could do this in a spreadsheet, it would have to be in a database.
Perhaps there is a way they could do it online. You know, you can drill down into it.
There might be 20 Major Categories (DOMESTIC INFRASTRUCTURE, DOMESTIC SOCIAL SUPPORT, DEFENSE, EDUCATION, FOREIGN SUPPORT and so on.
Selecting DEFENSE might very well give you subdivisions like NAVY, ARMY, AIRFORCE, SF etc.
As you drill down, you might be able to click on buttons that would give increasing amounts of information, automatically updated graphics and graphs or different ways of looking at the data. You could drill into descriptions of the part of the budget, legislation it was passed under, who voted on it, things like that.
I know it is a bit of a pipe dream, and there are persuasive arguments that the government really does not want you to know where your money is going.
There is also the argument that this not only creates more bureaucracy to assemble and maintain, but that the infrastructure needed to implement it would be significant and costly.
Of course, I could see a common piece of modular software that would need to be distributed to the far reaches of government, and all areas would have to submit information in a more concentrated pyramid as it gets closer to the collection and collation into one major document or body of software.
For example, Norfolk Naval Base might have to have various modules submitted by entities involved in operations at that base. The base, in return, would have to submit the collection of integrated modules to the Department of the Navy, which in turn submits them to the Department of Defense which is near the top (but might not be) of the main category MILITARY.
These modules would be designed in such a way to plug seamlessly into other modules as they are passed up the chain and get bigger and more complicated. They would be designed in such a way to make the entry of the necessary information into the module understandable and required at each level. No area would be able to submit their module up the chain until it has been completed, because plugging the module into the larger one will fail and explain exactly what is missing.
Once collated and finalized, it is accessible via web or download, and offers a wealth of information.
I understand there are many in government who do NOT want this level of transparency to the budget. So yes, it is probably a fantasy. But this is how I would like to see it.
Check a map, LA county has way more coyotes than people.
http://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge30ba.htm
It seemed that way to me, but I got this from the US Census pages.
You may be thinking of Los Angeles Country, which in 2006 had an estimated population of 9,948,081. Cities always have a lower population than you think...check out the links at:
LOS ANGELES CITY:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0644000.html
LOS ANGELES COUNTY:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html
LOS ANGELES, CA
Mayor: Antonio Villaraigosa (to June 2009)
2000 census population (rank): 3,694,820 (2); % change: 6.0; Male: 1,841,805 (49.8%); Female: 1,853,015 (50.2%); White: 1,734,036 (46.9%); Black: 415,195 (11.2%); American Indian and Alaska Native: 29,412 (0.8%); Asian: 369,254 (10.0%); Other race: 949,720 (25.7%); Two or more races: 191,288 (5.2%); Hispanic/Latino: 1,719,073 (46.5%). 2000 percent population 18 and over: 73.4%; 65 and over: 9.7%; Median age: 31.6.
2005 population estimate (rank): 3,844,829 (2)
See additional census data
Land area: 469 sq mi. (1,215 sq km);
Alt.: Highest, 5,081 ft.; lowest, sea level
Avg. daily temp.: Jan., 58.3° F; July, 74.3° F
Churches: 2,000 of all denominations;
City-owned parks: 387 (15,600 ac.);
Radio stations: AM, 35; FM, 53;
Television stations: 19
Civilian Labor Force (PMSA) April 2006: 6,447,3001;
Unemployed: 268,6001,
Percent: 4.21;
Per capita personal income (MSA) 2004: $35,1881
Chamber of Commerce: Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, 350 S. Bixel St., Los Angeles, CA 90017
Fine that you added your two cents but what Phylis wrote is absolutely true:
Social Security was established in 1935
and
MOST other cash distributing agencies were spawned under LBJ’s Great Society.
There is certainly a large difference in people per square mile...the city has 7,876 people per square mile, while the county has 2,344. That makes sense to me.
I cannot find any data anywhere on how many hospitals there are in the city boundaries of Los Angeles. But I do know that 60 closing their ER’s does not sound outrageous to me.
There is certainly a large difference in people per square mile...the city has 7,876 people per square mile, while the county has 2,344. That makes sense to me.
I cannot find any data anywhere on how many hospitals there are in the city boundaries of Los Angeles. But I do know that 60 closing their ER’s does not sound outrageous to me.
i had to take my son to the er a few years ago. the family ahead of me spoke no english. the children were translating saying they were there for a cough.
THAT IS NOT AN EMERGENCY.
my son and i were there because my son required surgery,
I work in healthcare, and I can confirm to you this kind of a thing IS a problem, and is one component of what the superlative Ms. Schlafly is discussing.
Distance, density, congestion, and growing numbers of unassimilated
Even in the past you waited several hours - I once pulled Nortette out of one, and started over at a second to speed things up.
Even then I felt I needed handiwipes.
And, of course, everyone needs to note, that is the face of “free” government run healthcare.
so according to this, we pay with our taxes to cover non paying patients, then we pay when we u se the facilities again.
no wonder it costs so darn much. I freak out so much when I have to go to the hospital I cannot tell you
I worry more about the bill afterwards than I do about recovering from the accident or illness
Yes, I was thinking of LA County. And I was wondering (but did not check) whether this article wasn’t refering to county-wide closures.
Just posting a thot without thinking. hahah.
That’s okay, I was wondering myself as well. I thought it seemed low, but then, I am from Massachusetts, and while Boston is considered a major city, the actual population of people living there is not what one would think. They all live in the surrounding cities and towns like Roxbury, Dorchester and so on.
The welfare state should be our first target, IMO.
Good luck!
Half of all America receives some kind of government assistance.
Who says Communism is dead.
“Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.”
P.J.O’Rourke
You are correct, the federal agency was terminated did but the States took over with various names within a year. Some of them actually called them Freedmen’s bureaus for a time. The basic structure stayed in place as state agencies until this day.
In Los Angeles, 60 hospitals have closed their emergency rooms over the past decade
60 hospitals......in Los Angeles? Sheesh, how many hospitals do they need?”
There were hospitals of all sizes in LA when I lived there, and they all are counted.
Among the 60 closed are the ones with great trauma centers, where all the gan bangers bot patched up over and over again——for free, because they lie about their names and they disappear like cockroaches.
In a city of over 5 million, 60 doesn’t seem like that many, but what the article doesn’t tell- more of those good libs reporting— is how many hospitals there were 40 years ago, which 60 closed, and how many are left.
I have always been VERY PRO-LEGAL immigration. This article has me rethinking my beliefs...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.