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March 31, 2007

A Formal Response on Immigration Concerns

by Tina Grazier

I recently responded to “Angry Reader Says, ‘don’t blame illegals'” in the comments section of that post, but I felt the questions that Johanan Juarez asked were worthy of a more in depth treatment. Once again, I am not claiming ownership of the following words that started this conversation:

.

“"They are creating a big problem, because they sneak into America and that means they are making a mockery of orderly, controlled, immigration that has served us well for 200 hundred years."

I'm not an expert and so I'd like to take this opportunity to direct you to "USillegalaliens.com". It's filled with statistical information, news reports, and studies, complete with references to well known publications and educational and governmental sites. The information I reference below was taken from that website and will act as a formal response to Johanan’s excellent queries (noted in red):

…controlled and orderly? maybe in the past 100 years. but before that it was wide open to ANYONE, and things turned out ok. you really think all europeans came here legally? if you do, you're in denial.-Johanan Juarez

The basic problem with immigration of today is that it is not your grandparents' immigration. The situation is different, society is different, the country is not under-populated, and the illegal immigrants have different skills and motivations. And your grandparents didn't receive welfare payments.

As noted by Steven Malanga in How Unskilled Workers Hurt Our Economy:

"... Since the mid-1960s, America has welcomed nearly 30 million legal immigrants and received perhaps another 15 million illegals, numbers unprecedented in our history…. Increasing numbers of them arrive with little education and none of the skills necessary to succeed in a modern economy. Many may wind up stuck on our lowest economic rungs, where they will rely on something that immigrants of other generations didn't have: a vast U.S. welfare and social-services apparatus that has enormously amplified the cost of immigration. Just as welfare reform and other policies are helping to shrink America's underclass by weaning people off such social programs, we are importing a new, foreign-born underclass.

...all immigrants, legal and illegal, use welfare more than natives, uneducated immigrants use welfare even more, and if illegal immigrants are legalized through amnesty they will use twice as much welfare as they are currently using.

A Rice University study recently calculated that in 2006 the net annual cost of legal and illegal immigration will add up to $108 billion.

"Consider a new study of Mexican immigrants by Harvard economists George Borjas and Lawrence Katz. Mexicans are now the single largest group of U.S. immigrants, 30 percent of the total in 2000. Indeed, the present Mexican immigration "is historically unprecedented, being both numerically and proportionately larger than any other immigrant influx in the past century," note Borjas and Katz. In 1920, for example, the two largest immigrant groups - Germans and Italians - totaled only 24 percent of the immigrant population.

…you also insist that illegal immigrants in particular are to blame for closed hospitals across the coutnry. how does anyone know this…Johanan Juarez

As detailed in ”Illegal aliens threaten U.S. medical system” between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services were unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals are on the verge of closure. Both PA and NJ hospitals recently reported that they provided almost $2 billion in free emergency and short term care services, in large part to illegal aliens. Minnesota county commissioners say that the cost of medical care for uninsured immigrants is too high for local governments to bear and they expect a $4.2 billion budget shortfall over the next two years. NC has about $1.4 billion in un-reimbursed hospital expenses annually. The Texas Hospital Association directly spent $393 million treating illegal aliens in 2002. One third of the patients treated by the LA County Health System are illegal aliens and the system is facing a $300 million deficient. In AZ, the Southeast Arizona Medical Center had a $1 billion shortfall and recently filled for bankruptcy.

As noted in a March 2005 article by William LaJeunese, L.A. Emergency Rooms Full of Illegal Immigrants, on Fox News:

"Sixty percent of the county's uninsured patients are not U.S. citizens. More than half are here illegally. About 2 million undocumented aliens in Los Angeles County alone are crowding emergency rooms because they can't afford to see a doctor.

THIS INFORMATION MIGHT ALSO BE OF INTEREST:

Issues pertaining to the law:

As noted in “Arizona has tough fight ahead against illegal immigration:”

“Prosecutors are overwhelmed by immigration court cases. There were nearly 580,000 arrests of illegal immigrants in Arizona last year, and less than 170,000 spaces available to hold detainees at any given time. Even officials charged with reducing illegal immigration and border crimes have increasingly turned against efforts to secure the border, according to speakers at the Border Management Summit, organized by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement.”

"Many police officials in states along the U.S.-Mexican border say they are fed up with the number of illegal aliens populating American prisons, many of them incarcerated for violent crimes such as murder, rape and robbery….Almost one in six inmates in Arizona, for example, is a Mexican citizen.”

Issues pertaining to education:

A study by the California Dept. of Education of the state's public schools revealed that one student in four could not speak English well enough to understand what was going on in the classroom. The school districts of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville and North Carolina have student bodies in which 80, 85 and 150 languages are spoken respectively.

FAIR's report, Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools Into the Red”,estimates that educating the children of illegal aliens currently costs $28.6 billion per year, excluding the cost of the supplemental feeding programs. As noted in the EDUCATION section, the actual costs may be closer to $34.5 billion. If so, then just the education costs for the children of illegal aliens costs almost $121 for each and every citizen of the United States. Deduct the bottom 40% who pay no taxes and the per person amount doubles for the taxpaying Americans.

Issues of environment and utility

…all these additional people will require more water. In the arid and semi-arid states of New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, where much of the high growth is taking place, water supplies are already at the critical stage. Aquifers are rapidly falling and there is only so much water in the meager rivers.


*****

For interesting take on the impact of immigration, both legal and illegal, that ties a lot of these issues together, see the 1995 Testimony to House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration by Dr. Norman Matloff, The Adverse Impacts of Immigration on Minorities.

Posted by Post Scripts at March 31, 2007 12:49 AM

Comments

Thx for that great reply, I really hope the original poster reads it and takes it too heart!

Posted by: Jack at April 1, 2007 04:38 PM

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