Posted on 08/22/2005 4:17:49 PM PDT by Happy2BMe
In recent decades, millions of working-age Mexicans have entered the United States. Most of them have done so illegally, taking jobs on the bottom rungs of the American labor market.
While much of the attention remains on the persistent inflow of illegal workers, a new question is beginning to worry some analysts and policy makers on both sides of the border : What will happen when the 10 million Mexicans living in the United States become too old to work?
Will they retire in the United States or will they return to Mexico?
As they age, the choices these old-timers make could fray the social fabric on both sides of the border.
Mexico is not prepared to receive them back. With a fast-aging population living in Mexico and virtually no system of social security or health insurance, Mexico could hardly cope with millions of returning immigrants who spent their working lives in the United States.
But the United States is also unprepared to deal with millions of poor, aging immigrants, eking out a living without recourse to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or most other forms of federal assistance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2003, an estimated 710,000 Mexicans older than 60 lived in the United States, 63 percent more than a decade earlier. About a quarter lived below the poverty line.
The International Herald Tribune (Aging immigrants could strain 2 countries ; 04/08/2005) writes that those numbers are expected to swell for the current generation of illegal immigrants. Unlike earlier migrants – many of them now legal residents in the United States – illegal immigrants of today are likely to see Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as little more than mirages. While most have paid taxes over their working lives to these programs, under current law they are not entitled to benefits.
According to data from the Mexican Migration Project from Princeton University and Mexico's Universidad de Guadalajara, family ties are perhaps the most powerful forces. But they can pull either way : the probability of return is much higher for the 58 percent of immigrants older than 50 who left spouses in Mexico than for the 24 percent who have spouses in the United States.
In the past ten years, crossing the border has become much more difficult as immigration restrictions have been tightened.
Unwilling to face the border patrol and the desert crossing more often than is absolutely necessary, illegal immigrants are returning home less often than they used to. Instead, they are taking their wives and children to the United States, becoming more settled in their new land
How special.
HJ...ping to #18.
Half a million more…just sneaked in today
I called INS…to see what they’d say
They said they're not worried…it will all be okay
California’s screamin’…why aren’t they sent away
I went to a store…I go to everyday
And I couldn’t understand…a word the clerks would say
Please tell me what is going on…do it without delay
California’s screamin’…why aren’t they sent away
(musical interlude)
Gangs are in the streets…everywhere I go
While La Raza screams…”This is Mexico!”
I am really startled…I am in dismay
California’s screamin’…why aren’t they sent away
Why aren't they sent away…why aren't the sent away
I am already paying for healthy citizens lives over the age of 65 in the us anyway. Every young crabby geezer expects me to fork over more of my hard earned money to pay for their arthritis and blood pressure meds when they are plenty healthy to continue working on their own. What harm is a few more non-americans gonna do.
By the way, it doesn't have to be just mexicans. It's also the East europeans and vietnamese.
We are paying dearly for Mexico's unrestricted breeding policies. Why should Americans be forced to subsidize Mexico's uninhibited unprotected screwing? I'm sure Mr. President and the Catholic Church leaders have a good answer.
the fiery ritual of carousel
>In the past ten years, crossing the border has become much more difficult as immigration restrictions have been tightened.
You can tell from that line the authors are clueless.
Birth control is widely available in Mexico and is promoted through the government-run health care system. I hate illegal immigration as much as the next person on this site, but this idea that the "Mexicans are devout Catholics who have too many children" is one that doesn't seem to die.
They are not coming here because their country is overpopulated, they are coming here because their country is an economic basket case.
Well they've reved up the breeding since they came here, every Mexican family I see here has at least seven little anchor babies running around. Mexican women have 40 percent more births than Americans.
If Mexico is an economic basket case, it is because of their criminal politicians, who get all the money for themselves and make slaves out of their citizens.
I'm sure Vincente Fox thanks God for George Bush every night of his life. Bush has saved him from a bloody revolution. Now America will have it instead of Fox.
And our President Bush is in thrall to the cheap labor lobby.
You guys oughta get together and perform LIVE at THIS gig!
They will retire in Garbage Grove.
cry me a river!!!
then send their illegal butts home and let mexico worry about supporting them i have no sympathy for them whatsoever
I am a 60 year old crabby geezer and I and the insurance company pay for my own B.P. meds.
I don't have arthritis yet.
(You're giving us self respecting crabby geezers a bad name.)
Freaking amazing.
The begining of the end was the Moter Voter law--the Dems engineered it as a back door way to give illegals the vote. First, let illegals get drivers licences and then automatically register them to vote.
There is an agreement to allow Mexican Nationals to claim SS after only paying into the system for 8 quarters. You have to pay in for 40.
Nope. I don't have my rabies shots. So sorry.
Hey!
Don't forget Santa Ana!!!!!
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