Overwhelmed healthcare, overwhelmed education system. lawlessness, and gravely compromised national security, yet you approve and encourage this - apropos name there:
There's an enormous difference between earlier waves of immigrants and this one: This wave is uncontrolled.
As a result, not only are the numbers overwhelming, but because so many in this wave have chosen to flout US immigration laws, this wave is much more likely to commit crimes. The crime rate among illegals is extraordinary. And the financial and human cost of providing social services for this wave is dramatically greater than for any previous one. Help to earlier waves of immigrants consisted mainly of providing them with night school to learn English. Today, the costs are many times greater: free health care, free education K-12, subsidized higher education, easy-to-illegally-obtain social security, welfare, unemployment, housing subsidies, etc, plus the terrible financial and human costs of their high crime rate.
This article will primarily document, with hard facts, how our schools, our health care system, criminal justice system, will likely soon be overwhelmed. In addition, our national security is severely compromised, and salaries are being driven down, forcing ever more formerly middle-class US residents into poverty.
Uncontrolled immigration and its devastating effects would be dramatically worsened further by President Bush’s Guest Worker proposal: all Guest Workers’ spouses, children, parents, and siblings would receive legal status. And the chain would extend far further: the Guest Worker or spouse could “sponsor” his or her parents and brothers and sisters, and relatives, which means they can come to America legally. In turn, those relatives could sponsor their relatives, ad infinitum.
John Kerry has proposed a vague but probably even more devastating plan: He has promised, in a keynote address to the National Conference of La Raza to initiate, within 100 days of his election, a “path to legalization” for all illegals.
Both the Bush and Kerry plans are daggers in the US middle class’s heart.
Here is the evidence.
Lower wages.
Cindy and Ed Kolb used to run a construction service in Hereford, Arizona. On CNN, she said, “We could never win a bid because we paid Americans a living wage. Other firms hire illegals and pay them below minimum wage.” The Kolbs have had to close their business.
Of course, the problem also affects employees. The owner of a Bay Area construction company who insisted on anonymity bragged that he used to have to pay carpenters $20 an hour plus benefits but now gets them for $12, no benefits, because of the ready supply of illegal immigrants.
The Center for Immigration Studies has calculated that illegals have already cost American workers $133 billion in salary cuts and job losses. A study by George Borjas, professor of economics and social policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, found that immigration has reduced the average annual earnings of native-born U.S. men by approximately $1,700. According to a study by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, illegal immigration combined with the rampant offshoring of US jobs promises to significantly shrink the middle and working class, forcing ever more people into poverty.
Legally residing young adults without college degrees—an already vulnerable group--are being hit particularly hard. Last year, the employment rate for teens reached a record low, down nine percentage points just since 2000.
President Bush, pandering to Corporate America’s thirst for cheap labor, is proposing a so-called Guest Worker program that would greatly increase the number of illegal workers. It would provide legal residency for three years (renewable) to all illegals holding US jobs, to their families, and even to those with just a letter stating that an employer promises a job.
The only restriction would be that the employer must first have tried to hire a legal resident. That restriction is practically unenforceable. The cost of investigating each of millions of hiring decisions would be prohibitive. No doubt, as in the 1986 amnesty program for agriculture workers, Bush’s Guest Worker program would rely on employers’ self-serving attestations. Even that amnesty program’s sponsor, Charles Schumer (D-NY) admitted that in that program, fraud occurred in 2/3 of the hires.
According to Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for Numbers USA, a nonpartisan nonprofit that collects immigration statistics, “When that 1986 law was passed, it was support to be a one-time never-to-be repeated action. Since then, however, Congress has passed seven amnesties rewarding more than six million illegal aliens with legal residence and putting them and their relatives on the path of US citizenship.” Why have you not heard about this? Aware that the public opposes amnesty for illegal aliens, politicians disguise amnesty programs by giving them obfuscating labels such as “earned regularization,” or Bush’s term, “Guest Worker.”
I wonder what Bush would say to that carpenter whose income has dropped to $12 an hour, no benefits. “Sorry. We wanted to be sure corporations can get cheap labor.”?
Bush claims that Guest Workers do work that legal Americans won’t. If that were true, then in the 35 states with few illegals (87 percent of illegals reside in just 15 states), lawns wouldn’t get mowed, hotel rooms wouldn’t get cleaned, buildings wouldn’t get built, and crops wouldn’t get picked. In those states, employers simply have to pay a living wage and provide decent working conditions to get people to do that work.
As mentioned earlier, John Kerry proposes an even more radical plan. He has promised—without specifying details—that within 100 days of his inauguration, to forward a “path to legalization” for nearly all illegals
Gutted unions. Unions protect workers against exploitation. Flooding the job market with illegals erodes unions’ power to negotiate. Bush’s Guest Worker proposal and Kerry’s “path to legalization” would add millions of non-unionized workers. That would, of course, exacerbate the problem.
Worse public schools. America’s public schools already suffer under severe budget constraints, causing large class sizes, textbook shortages, and leaky ceilings. Yet, US law requires that all illegals receive free public education K-12. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that this costs $7.4 billion dollars each year.
The birthrate among illegals is more than double that of legal US residents. The Pew Hispanic Center calculates that within seven years, the children of immigrants, legal and illegal, will account for one in nine school-age children in the US. The Urban Institute estimates that already, 15% of all school children in California are illegals, many of whom speak little English. These students are usually mainstreamed in classes with native English speakers. This means that teachers must slow down instruction, denying native English speakers their right to an appropriate-level education.
The challenge is even greater because not all those students’ native language is Spanish: For example, in my nearest major school district, San Francisco, it would not be unusual to find a class that had native speakers of Chinese, Russian, Tagalog, Spanish, and English. Imagine the challenge of trying to educate them all. If your child were in that class, would you be confident that he or she would receive a quality education?
Immigrant children pose less obvious challenges to the schools. Barbara Nemko, the Napa County Superintendent of Schools, points out examples: “Unless she speaks Spanish, we have a hard time justifying hiring an even an excellent teacher… So much of our staff development time must now be allocated to dealing with the needs of ‘English Language Learners.’ Our immigrant kids also come to school with serious health problems that we must address. For example, dentists now visit our high-immigrant schools providing dental services at no cost to the student.”
Immigrant advocacy groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and La Raza have additionally burdened the public schools by demanding that schools provide special controversial programs such as bilingual education, in which students are taught in Spanish for much of the day. Bilingual education programs exist throughout California even after longitudinal research has not demonstrated their effectiveness and after a voter-approved ban on those programs.
MALDEF and La Raza also pushed through legislation that allows, in 19 states, illegal immigrants to not only attend any public university in those states, but to pay in-state tuition, while legal residents of neighboring states must pay the out-of-state rate which is three to eight times more. It’s quite an injustice, for example, that a legal resident can be denied admission to taxpayer-supported Berkeley and must attend community college so an illegal foreign national can attend Berkeley—at in-state rates! And often, because of reverse discrimination admission policies, the illegal is admitted with B grades while the rejected legal resident may have A grades.
And Senator Dick Durban (D-Illinois) is spearheading legislation to extend the in-state tuition privilege to illegals in all 50 states.
MALDEF’s and La Raza’s lobbying and legal power is remarkable.
§ Worse health care. US law states that all illegals and their families are entitled to free emergency health care, and many jurisdictions provide non-emergency care to illegals for free.
Our health care system is already overwhelmed. For example, thousands of Americans die each year because of lack of adequate nursing and other medical care. Illegal immigrants, coming from poor countries, have great health care needs.
And in addition to common diseases, illegals bring challenges not normally faced in the US, for example, 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the past three years came in from Mexico, India, and Brazil, 16,000 new cases of multiple-drug-resistant, incurable, and communicable(!) tuberculosis. The Centers for Disease Control reports that illegal immigrants account for over 65 percent of communicable diseases (TB, hepatitis, leprosy, AIDS, etc.,) in the US. Immigration officials are supposed to screen out immigrants who are carrying diseases, but there is no health screening for illegal immigrants.
Illegals’ further burden the health care system because they disproportionately do heavy physical work, which causes their bodies to fall apart faster, and because the violent crime rate among illegals is staggering (See below).
The burden of providing health care to illegals extends beyond disease and saving crime victims. For example, because of illegals’ high birthrate, in Colorado, which has a mere (?) 100,000 illegal immigrants, taxpayers in 2003 alone paid for 6,000 illegals to have their babies. That’s 40% of the births Medicaid paid for in the state. To get immediate care, the illegal only must say “I am undocumented."
The Washington Times reported that dozens of hospitals in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California have either closed their doors or face bankruptcy because of losses caused by uncompensated care given to illegal immigrants. Heretofore, most of the closings have been in hospitals near the Mexican border. But the problem is extending northward as illegals move northward. This week, a hospital in San Jose (400 miles north of the Mexican border) had to close largely because it was overrun by illegals who would not pay for services.
Brenda Walker, in the same publication writes, "More than 40 million American citizens do not have health insurance while they pay in their tax bills for free medical care for Mexican nationals, many of whom are illegally working at American jobs - a double-dip rip off. Furthermore, hospitals closing and emergency rooms crowded with illegal aliens mean that an American needing speedy treatment may have to wait far longer to receive it. Such delays can mean the difference between life and death."
US House of Representatives member Mark Foley has persuaded the General Accounting Office to study the financial costs that illegals impose on hospitals. He says "we need to remedy this problem before we can no longer afford to take care of Americans."
The impact of legalizing millions of illegals, their spouses, and children, to our already creaking health care system would be devastating.
I wonder what George Bush or John Kerry would say to a legal resident whose family member died because of an overwhelmed health care system: “Sorry, we allow the illegals because it enables corporations to avoid raising wages.”?
§ More Dishonesty. Bush and Kerry would give legal status to millions of people whose first act in this country was to commit a crime—sneaking into the US to evade immigration laws--and who soon committed a second crime-- applying for a job when only legal residents are allowed to. Countless illegals soon go on to commit yet another crime: obtain false documents so they can, from US taxpayers, steal (that is the correct albeit unvarnished word) food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and other government benefits intended for legal residents.
Obtaining false documents couldn’t be easier. A fake identity package including birth certificate, Social Security card, passport, green card, and driver's license is widely available on the street for $50 to $70. For a similar price, illegals can borrow the real thing. Legal immigrants simply rent their IDs to illegals who want to apply for a job, welfare, or Social Security.
Can we ask legal residents to be honest--for example, to pay their income taxes—while we reward lawbreaking illegals with legal status, an array of services for themselves and their families, plus full US citizenship for all subsequent offspring? In officially welcoming millions of acknowledged at-least two-time lawbreakers into the US, we would exacerbate America’s already declining honesty.
And the impacts of a dishonest society are profound. Already, we hear of endless examples of rampant dishonesty from corporate malfeasance to welfare fraud, from student cheating to elder scams. A viable society requires that we able to trust what people say and do.
§ More violent crime. The violent crime rate among illegals is horrific. I wish I could present the most germane statistic: the violent crime rate for legal versus illegal residents, but for reasons I can’t understand, most law enforcement agencies are prohibited from collecting those data. Nevertheless, related statistics are available.
According to the US Transportation Department, nearly half of California's drunk driving arrests in 2001 were Latino men. (Data for later years is not yet available.)
An article in City Journal reports, “In Los Angeles, up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal immigrants. A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County.” One in seven inmates in California state prisons are illegal immigrants, serving time for crimes other than being in the US illegally. California taxpayers alone spend $500 million a year on incarcerating illegals.
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