Get this through your thick skull: Legalization is inevitable. We can either gain from it as Sarah wants or we can allow it to destroy our party. And legal immigration is a hallmark of our country. To even suggest otherwise is down right anti-American.
In analyzing the 2007 CIR bill, Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation stated, “The main fiscal impact…will occur through two mechanisms: (1) the grant of amnesty, with accompanying access to Social Security, Medicare and welfare benefits, to 12 million illegal immigrants who are overwhelmingly low skilled; and (2) a dramatic increase in chain immigration, which will also be predominantly low skilled. The bottom line is that high school dropouts are extremely expensive to U.S. taxpayers. It does not matter whether the dropout comes from Ohio, Tennessee, or Mexico. It does matter that the Senate immigration bill would increase the future flow of poorly educated immigrants into the U.S. and grant amnesty and access to government benefits to millions of poorly educated illegal aliens already here. Such legislation would inevitably impose huge costs on U.S. taxpayers.”
Heritage research has concluded that the cost of amnesty alone would be $2.6 trillion. And the number of additional LEGAL immigrants who would join those who were the recipients of amnesty through chain migration, i.e., family reunification, would approach 70 million over a 20-year period, assuming there are only 12 million illegal aliens. We cannot assimilate such numbers. An amnesty would destroy the United States of America with the stroke of a pen. Amnesty is forever.
And legal immigration is a hallmark of our country. To even suggest otherwise is down right anti-American.
We need a pro-immigrant policy of low immigration. We take in too many legal immigrants, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and unskilled. 53% of immigrant headed households are on welfare. 34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989. Milton Friedman said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.
The U.S. adds one international migrant (net) every 36 seconds. Immigrants account for one in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in more than 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. In a decade, it will be one in 7, the highest it has been in our history. And by 2050, one in 5 residents of the U.S. will be foreign-born. Currently, 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year; 350,000 immigrants leave each year, resulting in net immigration of 1.25 million. Since 1970, the U.S. population has increased from 203 million to 309 million, i.e., over 100 million. In the next 40 years, the population will increase by 130 million. Three-quarters of the increase in our population since 1970 and the projected increase will be the result of immigration. The U.S., the world’s third most populous nation, has the highest annual rate of population growth of any developed country in the world, i.e., 0.975% (2009 estimate), principally due to immigration.
Immigration, legal and illegal, has had and will continue to have a major and far-reaching impact across a broad spectrum of existential challenges that confront this nation, e.g., national security, the economy/global competitiveness, jobs, health care, taxes, energy independence, education, entitlement reform, law enforcement, social welfare programs, physical infrastructure, the environment, civil liberties, and a continued sense of national identity/shared sense of endeavor. Immigration is the defining issue of our time with enormous implications for the future of this nation and the preservation of our patrimony. Yet, seldom will you hear immigration mentioned by our political and intellectual elites in connection with these challenges.
The Republican Party must take the lead on the initiation of a dialogue with the American people on immigration. The status quo is not an option because the demographic changes wrought by immigration will slowly strangle the Republican Party and an amnesty will just hasten the process putting the final nail in the coffin of this country and the GOP. Americans should have an opportunity to decide whether our immigration policies are to serve the long-term interests of all Americans or the short-term interests of corporate and special (often political, religious and ethnic) interest groups. Legal immigration is a controllable variable that can be adjusted in the national interest if we have the political will to do so. And illegal immigration can be stopped and reversed if we as a nation make a resolute commitment to secure our borders and enforce our existing laws.
Your tagline says it all. I will never cast a vote for Palin after reading your post.
And no, I won’t get used to it with Obama or Palin.
You best get thinking. If amnesty is granted in the next 2 years, you candidate would have no prayer of getting the Oval Office. These will be newly minted Dem voters. All of them.
Illegals are not the Hallmark of our country.