Immigration Reform.

[blue]

Im not going to pretend this is a popular subject, and I know it isnt going to make me popular. I decided to see what it costs us, legal vs illegal aliens. Keep in mind this is done just now on an impulse, so I have only done a quick search.

From this link, it appears Buckshot is right, legal immigrants cost more for us tax payers. Provided the numbers have remained static over the past 11 years.

What promted this thread is I came across this.

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again, until
they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them.
I have included the URL's for verification of the following facts.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens
each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77


2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs
such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html


3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school
education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of
English! http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI...4/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare &
social services by the American taxpayers.
http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are
caused by the illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's
two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their
children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens
that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens
from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth,
heroine and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of
mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average
cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute....deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to
their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex
Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States ".
http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml


The total cost is a whooping . . . .
$ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

Like our medical system our immigration system is busted. If the numbers in the quote are correct, illegals are more costly than the war in Iraq. Yet from the chart in my first link the legal ones cost us more, again provided the numbers have remaind static since 1996.

I have legal immigrants in my own family. I have worked arround illegals that have become legal and a few that are now business owners. How they became legal I never asked, so I cant answer that.

Immigration is going to be an issue with the coming US Presidential election, is there a rational way to reform our immigration policy?

I understand this is an international forum, so to be clear, I am refferring to the laws of the United States of America.

 

[Romy]

Well, it's pretty tricky. Especially around here in AZ. For what it's worth, I've spent a long time working around many of these folks. Everybody complains about them and all, but when I worked in a corn factory in Oregon pulling cobs I happened to be the only English speaker out of about 70 workers. All the American born folks I knew kept complaining, "gee, there's no jobs because of the illegals...wah wah wah" Yet when I pointed out the corn place was desperate for employees, they would balk and cry, "I can't work there! It's too hard!" hmmm........ In reality the illegals do a lot of jobs most Americans are too prissy to touch.

Anyway, from my family's point of view y'all are illegals. My people all got butchered and sent to a "reserve" in Alberta where they got into cattle ranching because it's such crappy land you can't do anything else with it. Something similar happened with my husband's family, only they were forced into copper mining in Arizona (practically slave labor until the strike, and that was his dad's generation).

Honestly, a lot of the hispanic people crossing the border are just kind of hanging out/traveling around in the land they have lived in for many more generations than the United States existed, much less the borders we decided on down south. I realize that many illegals are not hispanic, but use those borders, and honestly don't know what the solution is. I DO know that it is NOT building a stupid freaking fence along the Mexico border. We're talking about humans being here, not cattle. It didn't work on the Mongols, and it won't work here either.

 

[Renee750il]

Good post, Romy.

 

[Dizzy]

Well, it's pretty tricky. Especially around here in AZ. For what it's worth, I've spent a long time working around many of these folks. Everybody complains about them and all, but when I worked in a corn factory in Oregon pulling cobs I happened to be the only English speaker out of about 70 workers. All the American born folks I knew kept complaining, "gee, there's no jobs because of the illegals...wah wah wah" Yet when I pointed out the corn place was desperate for employees, they would balk and cry, "I can't work there! It's too hard!" hmmm........ In reality the illegals do a lot of jobs most Americans are too prissy to touch.

Anyway, from my family's point of view y'all are illegals. My people all got butchered and sent to a "reserve" in Alberta where they got into cattle ranching because it's such crappy land you can't do anything else with it. Something similar happened with my husband's family, only they were forced into copper mining in Arizona (practically slave labor until the strike, and that was his dad's generation).

Honestly, a lot of the hispanic people crossing the border are just kind of hanging out/traveling around in the land they have lived in for many more generations than the United States existed, much less the borders we decided on down south. I realize that many illegals are not hispanic, but use those borders, and honestly don't know what the solution is. I DO know that it is NOT building a stupid freaking fence along the Mexico border. We're talking about humans being here, not cattle. It didn't work on the Mongols, and it won't work here either.

:hail:

 

[blue]

So because of the sins of our forefathers we should throw open our borders and be over run like those that came before us?

None of my family subjugated your family, yet I am the illegal?

In AZ the amount of crossings has been cut drasticly by the fence, so how is that not part of the answer? Another part needs to be letting those, who prove themselves by working and contributing to the communities they are working in, in to work, contribute, and show a willingness to assimilate into American culture.

We already know the problem, we need to look for the solution.

 

[Boemy]

Well, it's pretty tricky. Especially around here in AZ. For what it's worth, I've spent a long time working around many of these folks. Everybody complains about them and all, but when I worked in a corn factory in Oregon pulling cobs I happened to be the only English speaker out of about 70 workers. All the American born folks I knew kept complaining, "gee, there's no jobs because of the illegals...wah wah wah" Yet when I pointed out the corn place was desperate for employees, they would balk and cry, "I can't work there! It's too hard!" hmmm........ In reality the illegals do a lot of jobs most Americans are too prissy to touch.

A guest speaker from the forest service was invited to our class and was showing us slides of what she did in the forests . . . One of the things was planting new trees. She said, "This is one of my work crews who helps me. This crew has been with me for about seven years. You notice they're all Hispanic . . . That's because they're the only ones who will do the work. I don't know why, because it's a really fun job."

I doubt the wages on that job were even that bad because the government usually pays pretty well compared to the private sector . . . but still, no one wanted to do, ZOMG, physical labor except for Hispanic people. She didn't come right out and say " . . . and they are illegal immigrants", but she was clearly implying it.

Also it's worth noting that illegal immigrants may use tax dollars, but they also pay taxes. Sales taxes. Which is the only kind of state tax in my state, as we don't have income tax.

The border-fence is a stupid idea. Yeah, people are going to travel 50 or 100 miles or more across Mexico to the border, then say, "Oh no, a FENCE! Let's go back!" And there is no way a fence that length can be effectively patrolled. To put it in perspective, Iraq is only about the size of Oregon and we can't even secure its borders.

 

[blue]

For some reason, I seem to think getting rid of the minimum wage would actually help future legal immigrants.

 

[Romy]

So because of the sins of our forefathers we should throw open our borders and be over run like those that came before us?

None of my family subjugated your family, yet I am the illegal?

In AZ the amount of crossings has been cut drasticly by the fence, so how is that not part of the answer? Another part needs to be letting those, who prove themselves by working and contributing to the communities they are working in, in to work, contribute, and show a willingness to assimilate into American culture.

We already know the problem, we need to look for the solution.

Sorry Blue, that was said kind of jokingly. I should have some kind of smiley to imply that. It just seems crazy to me that the American govt. is trying so hard to keep people off land that they originally came from, simply because they happened to be living 80 miles this way or that way when lines got drawn on a map.

Anyway, the fence down here really does jack-squat. If you don't believe me come spend a few weeks looking. Actually, it does a few things. It really screws up the observatories people spent million of dollars building out in the desert where there is no light, because somehow the govt. felt we needed to fork out big bucks to keep useless spotlights going all night long. It also prevents the migration of hundreds of native animals which is going to cause some serious genetic bottlenecking in the future. There are hundreds of little tunnels that stretch for miles sometimes, from one side of the border to the other. Law enforcement folks find them on a regular basis. A fence isn't going to do any good there. Human beings are smart. If they could sneak people through the Berlin Wall with their machine gun towers, sniffer dogs and all, I'm sure people determined to get across our border won't have too much trouble with a 2,000 mile fence minus the armed guards swarming every inch of it.

Personally, I don't think the illegal immigration is as big a tragedy as people make it out to be. People were freaking out about legal and non legal Irish immigrants about 140 years ago, over-running the cities of the east coast and ruining the nice protestant settlements with their catholic ways and bar room brawls. That turned out ok didn't it?

Just a note: The corn factory paid $10 per hour. Pretty dang good for yanking corn cobs off a conveyer belt! Somehow though, most English speakers were too good for that job. It was about half hispanic workers, about a third philipino, and the rest were ukrainian. I wonder how well the agricultural and manufacturing industries would be doing in this country without people willing to do those jobs.

 

[Romy]

I suppose what I am saying is....fence is a dumb waste of a lot of money. I think this country also thrives on immigrants. It always has and always will. That's just the way America is. If you really want to stop immigration from Mexico, I think the ONLY things that would possibly work in the long run is to just take over the country and annex it into the US, then dump a bunch of money into making it a much more livable civil place for the people there. Not likely to ever happen....but hey! Mexico has some oil fields so who knows what could happen!

 

[Dizzy]

I suppose what I am saying is....fence is a dumb waste of a lot of money. I think this country also thrives on immigrants. It always has and always will. That's just the way America is. If you really want to stop immigration from Mexico, I think the ONLY things that would possibly work in the long run is to just take over the country and annex it into the US, then dump a bunch of money into making it a much more livable civil place for the people there. Not likely to ever happen....but hey! Mexico has some oil fields so who knows what could happen!

Another :hail:

 

[blue]

I suppose what I am saying is....fence is a dumb waste of a lot of money. I think this country also thrives on immigrants. It always has and always will. That's just the way America is. If you really want to stop immigration from Mexico, I think the ONLY things that would possibly work in the long run is to just take over the country and annex it into the US, then dump a bunch of money into making it a much more livable civil place for the people there. Not likely to ever happen....but hey! Mexico has some oil fields so who knows what could happen!

I dont want to stop immigration, from Mexico or anywhere else. Why do people allways make immigration a nationality or a race issue? It makes no sense to me.

 

[Dave-W]

We've already tried dumping a boat-load of cash into Mexico. Money sent home from America is the second biggest source of Mexican income, second only to oil money. The cash sent home by Mexican immigrants seems not to have helped anything, and may actually have made things worse.

This is NOT money sent to their Government; this money was sent directly to the folks by their own family members.

If a massive infusion of cash into Mexico worked, it certainly would have by now.

Laws in America work only because a vast majority of Americans CHOOSE to obey the laws. We're not a Police State. There aren't enough Cops to restore order if WE ALL decided we weren't going to obey the law any longer.

The people who come here illegally have demonstrated that they're the type of people who don't care to obey even the most basic of our laws. Besides just coming here illegally they have to break laws on a daily basis just to get by. Laws the rest of us have NO problem complying with, such as the laws against driving without a licence and identity theft.

People who cannot be trusted to voluntarily obey our laws are the exact people WE DON'T WANT, and cannot tolerate living among us unless we wish to throw away civilized society and live by mob rule.

I've worked with and among Mexicans since I was 14, and I've seen more than I can count become American Citizens, so IT CAN BE DONE! Some of these LEGAL immigrants had to quit school at an early age to support their families, so they had almost no formal education. Yet they still had no trouble doing what was required of them to earn Citizenship.