BrainBlutton, Sorry for the delay, but I’ve been a little busy. I wanted to tighten this up some, but I’ll submit it now, as you’ve already had to wait so long. My apologies. My apologies also for the links. For some reason my links never work, so you’ll have to copy and paste.
I think it is a major problem. Here’s why:
**1) Loss of national identity. ** Unlike large immigration waves in the past, the current one from south of the border is not assimilating into our society the way previous groups did. The reasons:
•There exist large Spanish-speaking populations in many cities, so the need to assimilate in order to function is not so great as for say, Russian-Jews at the beginning of the last century.
•They are not as eager to be “American” as previous immigrants were. This is due to the fact that their native countries are so close, they plan to go back to visit, if not to live. This, combined with the previous bullet, means there is very little to gain and something to lose by embracing a new country fully and completely.
•Language: America, by virtue of it’s being a conglomeration of people from so many diverse places benefits from having one language. A very large group that adheres to their old language and culture too strongly begins to balkanize the country. This can be seen in many large cities where all signs for blocks are in Spanish.
Additionally, excessive accommodation of one culture leads to an argument for all cultures. Right now, Canada is having to make accommodations for Sharia law, as Muslim’s insist that their legal traditions be recognized along with those of other laws. While the existence of other cultures make for a rich societal experience, the society needs a dominant culture to unite all the diverse groups. (This is also one of the reasons I am in favor of the U.S. having an official language.)
2) Dilution of citizenship. It should be self-evident that the more “rights” and privileges the country bestows upon non-citizens, the less meaning citizenship has. In San Francisco (and, I think, other areas) this pendulum has swung so far that illegal immigrants are voting in school board elections.
**3) Cost. ** Illegal immigrants are a drain on services and our coffers. As of now, they are legally entitled to emergency medical care (which they abuse, treating ERs as doctors’ offices), education (with the added cost of language instruction), and welfare.
Although I have seen in stated on these boards that Illegal immigrants contribute more to the U.S. than they get out of it, the information I’ve found indicates the opposite.
General
In California during 2004, illegal immigrants were responsible for $10.5 billion in government outlays, while paying $1.7 billion in taxes, for a net drain of $8.8 billion. (FAIR)
In Florida during the same year, illegal immigrants were responsible for 1.8 billion in outlays, while paying .9 billion in taxes, for a net drain of $.9 billion. (FAIR)
The Center for Immigration Studies looked at the national picture for 2002. They found costs to the federal government to be $26.3 billion, tax receipts to be $16 billion, for a net drain of $10.4 billion.
Center for Immigration Studies:
California study:
http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/ca_costs.pdf?docID=141
Florida study:
National numbers
Education
Florida spends $1.5 billion a year to educate illegal immigrant children and their U.S.-born siblings. California spends $7.7 billion, enough to buy computers for half the legal school children in the state. (FAIR)
In 2004, illegal alien students and U.S.-born children of illegal aliens cost California $7.7 billion, Texas $3.9 billion, New York $3.1 billion. The bill to all 50 states is over $26.6 billion. (FAIR)
Healthcare
Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state’s illegal alien population cost Floridians about $165 million a year. In California, the number is $1.4 billion. (FAIR)
BrainBlutton, I was still trying to find specific information about hospital closings due to unreimbursed care given to illegals. The only information I have right now is that illegals are responsible for 84 hospital and emergency room closings in the past 10 years or so.
Wages
This from this article: http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/policy_cost.htm, (which has links to original research done by a Harvard economist and the National Research Council) states that:
“…The 1995 findings of Harvard economist George Borjas [George Borjas, “The Economic Benefits from Immigration,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring, 1995] were confirmed by the National Research Council’s 1997 report The New Americans: essentially all the increase in Gross Domestic product [GDP] brought about by immigration is captured by the immigrants themselves, in the form of wages. Virtually no benefit accrues to native-born Americans.
(And once transfer payments like welfare, education and healthcare are factored in, immigration becomes a net cost—for example, over $1,000 in annual extra taxes per native-born household in California. Americans are financing their own dispossession.)
Even less publicized: the Borjas model reveals the true economic consequence of immigration: a massive redistribution of wealth within the American native-born community—basically, from labor to capital, because of immigration’s impact on wages.
The key variable: the rate at which native-born wages fall as the total number of workers rises—the so-called “price elasticity” of labor. Borjas estimates that each 10% increase in immigrant workers reduces native wages by about 3.5%. About 14% of employed workers in 2002 were immigrants. So the reduction in native wages attributable to immigrants that year was approximately 4.9% (35% of 14%).
As our reader told his dinner companions, it’s true that immigrants don’t do work Americans won’t do—they just do it for less.
But, more importantly, immigrants do indeed do one dirty job: make it easier for Americans to exploit each other.
I’ve recalculated this immigration impact on the basis of the latest government data. This is how it came out:
Net economic gain from the immigrant presence to native-born Americans, before transfer payments: just 0.2 percent of GDP (that is, two-tenth of one percent!) in today’s 10.4 trillion economy – that comes to a mere $84 per native-born American.
Native-born capital-owners’ gain as a result of immigration: about 3.1% of GDP, or $323.8 billion. This goes to employers and, for example, upper-income owners of stocks and employers of servants.
Native-born workers’ loss as a result of immigration: about 2.9% of GDP —$302.9 billion in a $10.4 trillion economy, or a remarkable $2,578 for each native-born worker every year.”
Warning: the original research done by Borjas is true egghead economics. Not for the faint of heart. Admittedly, I was lost through much of it.
Other
Then there’s also money taken out of the economy and sent to the illegal immigrants’ native countries. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the amount, which does not capture all remittances to Latin America, will go beyond $18 billion for 2005.
Not all “costs” are monetary. The drain on services is creating major problems for our education and medical infrastructures. Schools in border states are becoming overcrowded and are saddled with the increased expense of language instruction. The general student population suffers, as well, because classes have to be slowed down to accommodate so many non-native speakers. Many parents find the need to move their children to private school, increasing the burden on them.
I’ll end with an interesting anecdote that illustrates the problem well. It is from this article: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43275
“Cristobal Silverio emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton, Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker.
He brought with him his wife, Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an “anchor baby” – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently.
But Flor was born premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And Felipa had yet another child, Cristian.
The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned $18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two ‘anchor babies.’”
**4) National Security. ** The more porous our borders are the greater the risk that terrorists can sneak across. In September 2004, The Washington Times reported that a top al Qaeda lieutenant had met with the Salvadoran street gang Mara Salvatruch (MS-13) to access their network of alien smugglers. In June of 2005, two Iraqis were apprehended in a border town near San Diego, along with two suspected alien smugglers.
Link (password necessary, but free): http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050630-124933-1494r
**5) National Health. ** In addition to being a drain on our healthcare system to the point that hospitals have had to close their doors, illegals are responsible for resuscitating deadly diseases we’ve eradicated, as well as bringing us new ones. From a report in the Journalal of American Physicians and Surgeons (http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf):
“Many illegals who cross our borders have tuberculosis. That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin. TB’s swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB). Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico. This Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to at least two major antitubercular drugs. OrdinaryTB usually is cured in six months with four drugs that cost about $2,000. MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs that cost around $250,000,with toxic side effects. Each illegal with MDR-TB coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later.
TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ascribed 42 percent of all new TB cases to “foreign born” people who have up to eight times higher incidence. Apparently, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam….
Chagas disease…is transmitted by the reduviid bug, which prefers to bite the lips and face. The protozoan parasite that it carries…infects 18 million people annually in Latin America and causes 50,000 deaths. This disease also infiltrates America’s blood supply. Chagas affects blood transfusions and transplanted organs. No cure exists. Hundreds of blood recipients may be silently infected. After 10 to 20 years, up to 30 percent will die when their hearts or intestines, enlarged and weakened by Chagas, burst. Three people in 2001 received Chagas-infected organ transplants.Two died.
Leprosy… was so rare in America that in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted. Suddenly, in the past three years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy. Leprosy now is endemic to northeastern states because illegal aliens and other immigrants brought leprosy from India, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Mexico.
Dengue fever is exceptionally rare in America, though common in Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Mexico. …
Polio was eradicated from America, but now reappears in illegal immigrants, as do intestinal parasites.
Malaria was obliterated, but now is re-emerging in Texas. About 4,000 children under age five annually in America develop fever, red eyes, “strawberry tongue,” and acute inflammation of their coronary arteries and other blood vessels because of the infectious malady called Kawasaki disease. Many suffer heart attacks and sudden death.
Hepatitis A, B, and C, are resurging. Asians number 4 percent of Americans, but account for more than half of Hepatitis B cases.”
**6) Crime. ** Illegal aliens are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime committed. (Mind you, even if it was at the same rate as native born it would still be a valid reason.) According to an article by Jim Kouris.
In the population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times… Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990. ??They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. …??More than two-thirds of the defendants charged with an immigration offense were identified as having been previously arrested. Thirty-six percent had been arrested on at least 5 prior occasions; 22%, 2 to 4 times; and 12%,1 time.?? Sixty-one percent of those defendants had been convicted at least once; 18%, 5 or more times; 26%, 2 to 4 times; and 17%, 1 time. Of those charged, 49% had previously been? convicted of a felony: 20% of a drug offense; 18%, a violent offense; and 11%, other felony offenses. Twelve percent had previously been convicted of a misdemeanor.?? Defendants charged with unlawful reentry had the most extensive criminal histories. Nine in ten had been previously arrested. Of those with a prior arrest, half had been arrested on at least 5 prior occasions. ??Fifty-six percent of those charged with a reentry offense had previously been convicted of a violent or drug-related felony. By contrast, under half of those charged with alien smuggling, a third of those charged with unlawful entry, and just over a quarter those charged with misuse of visas and other charges had previously been arrested. The criminal histories of these defendants were generally less extensive: more than 70% had been previously arrested fewer than 5 times."?
This article was also interesting, particularly the opening quotes from the Mexican press.
http://www.desertinvasion.us/articles/art2005jul12.html
As I said, I wanted to tighten this up, but it’s just as well to get it out. There is considerable more crime information I wanted to include, but haven’t gotten to.
I hope this explains my position more fully. Your other question will be answered shortly.