Posted on 02/14/2003 8:15:11 AM PST by Republic of Texas
High cost of immigration
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 14, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
SAN YSIDRO PORT OF ENTRY – Each day during the school year scores of Mexican children bearing backpacks and school books trek back and forth across the border to be educated in American public schools.
Daily as well, Mexican ambulance crews transport uninsured south-of-the-border citizens to American hospitals because they know laws here forbid U.S. medical providers from turning them away.
Migrants – legal and illegal – returning to Mexico at the port of entry near San Diego
Meanwhile, U.S. and Mexican politicians are plotting to merge both nations' social security systems, even as the economic impact of immigration – legal and otherwise – is dooming budgets in some states, like California.
Add to this mix a high (and climbing) unemployment rate among legitimate U.S. citizens – many jobs that have been taken by illegal aliens – and indeed, in many respects, American taxpayers find themselves not supporting one country but two – at least.
According to a study done by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports immigration reductions, "the cost of immigration to our society is enormous." Based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, FAIR says "we are admitting over 1 million mostly poor people into our society every year – a society that is already challenged to deal with the poverty of its natives."
The most recent estimates, the group says, place costs of immigration – legal and otherwise – at $61 billion in 2000 alone. And before the chorus of "immigrant rights" groups counter that "even illegal immigrants pay taxes," this mammoth figure represents costs after immigrants' tax contributions are factored in. Indeed, legal immigrants are more expensive – they account for $35 billion of that figure.
These costs are repetitive and come from many sources – sources that grow more expensive every year. "As high as the cost is now, the rising tide of immigration will lift it even higher in years to come. By the end of 2002, the annual net cost of immigration will have risen $66 billion," said FAIR.
For example, the study said that, based on 1996 figures, total immigrant receipt of means-tested welfare benefits came to $180 billion, though "the real costs are probably even higher than these estimates, which do not take into account the effects of immigration in displacing American workers from their jobs and depressing wages," FAIR said.
And analysts say poverty-stricken immigrants will continue to be the norm. "… Immigrants arriving in the past decade or so are earning less compared to native-born Americans than immigrants who arrived in earlier decades," said a 1995 National Bureau of Economic Research study, "Immigration and the Welfare State."
Here are a couple more quick figures, again based on 1996 estimates:
The cost of educating legal and illegal immigrants, aged K-12, in the nation's public schools is more than $20 billion – most of this burden is borne by states bordering Mexico (one of which is California, which is teetering on economic meltdown);
"ESL," or English as a second language, and bilingual education alone costs more than $4 billion;
Immigrants collect more than $26 billion in Social Security benefits annually;
The nation spends greater than $15 billion a year on immigrant-related Medicaid expenditures
Immigration costs local governments $20-21 billion annually.
In all, while immigrants pay around $95 billion in taxes, they consume about $145 billion in public services. That's a net cost about $50 billion, or one-sixth of the Bush administration's projected budget deficit for fiscal year 2004. Economically speaking, therefore, America derives no benefit by continuing its "open borders" policy.
Yet, even as local and state governments fight to find ways to trim services because of, in part, extra immigrant-driven costs, American citizens will suffer because few of the same people seeking the budget cuts want to do much to trim immigration.
FAIR says: "Americans should demand that Congress reduce the immigrant flow and alter the criteria for admission to ameliorate the cost of immigration to our society … Immigration creates an enormous fiscal burden on America and its citizens – a burden that Congress has levied upon us through short-sighted and haphazard immigration policy."
Yet on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his economic report to Congress, said just the opposite, to explain how the administration can reduce its deficits: "Short of a major increase in immigration, economic growth cannot be safely counted upon to eliminate deficits and the difficult choices that will be required to restore fiscal discipline."
Adding costs will trim deficits, Mr. Greenspan? Only in Washington is this called sound policy.
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Jon E. Dougherty is a staff reporter and columnist for WorldNetDaily, and author of the special report, "Election 2000: How the Military Vote Was Suppressed."
Repeated letters to the ?senators and ?representatives go unanswered. Simply stated, we're being outnumbered.
While I agree strongly with FAIR's position on immigration, I take exception to invoking "the poverty of its natives". Poverty in the U.S. is primarily behavioral. Doing your best in school (even a poor one), being an honest and willing worker, staying clean and sober, continuing to upgrade your skills and education through life and being willing to relocate for work virtually guarantees your escape from poverty. There's no guarantee you'll get rich that way, but you'll be better off than 90% of the worlds population.
These are the very things that attract the "good" immigrants here (so the RATS in the senate can filibuster them).
I hope you aren't waiting for those apologists to show up here...
bears repeating
There is cool-aid that has NEVER been matched in the history of the U.S. going around and the FR has the biggest cup. This situation is here to stay. If anyone every gets a platform for this issue he will be labeled a racist and he will be demonized so bad that no one will every open their mouth again.
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