The net annual cost of illegal immigration to the taxpayers is $90 billion a year, $150 billion a year if you include drug offenses. (80% of all cocaine and 50% of all heroin is smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican nationals.) Mexicans send home $8 billion a year to their families, a top source of income for Mexico.
The two largest drug cartels in Mexico have 100,000 fiercely loyal, battle-hardened foot soldiers. We’ve got 2 million Americans in the military, and the most Obama can assign to border patrol is 1,500???
Crime
Fifty percent of illegals charged with a reentry offense had previously been convicted five or more times, ninety percent had previously been convicted at least once. Undocumented workers commit over a million crimes a year (other than border crossings), sixty percent of these were by illegals who had been previously deported.
There are an estimated 250,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders. They commit an average of 8 crimes before being caught, for a total of 140,000 sexual crimes a year. This works out to over one million sexual assault victims by undocumented workers.
Mexico vs. Arizona
From the Washington Times, “Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.”
Demographics
All together there are six million illegal workers in California, Texas, and Florida. There are half a million each in Illinois, New York, Arizona, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina.
There are between 12 and 20 million undocumented workers in America. There are 250 “sanctuary cities” in the United States where it is unlawful to check on a person’s immigration status for any reason.
Ten thousand illegals cross the border every day. That’s three million each year. One third are caught. One third eventually become U.S. residents.
Family and Education
Forty percent of the illegals are single men, ten percent single women. Ten percent are couples with no children and the other forty percent are mixed status families. It costs $100k per child for a K through 12 education at a public school, a total of $35 billion a year.
Thirty percent of illegals have less than a 9th grad education. Fifty percent have no high school diploma. These percentages do not change for the second generation, even after the fourth generation. In contrast, ninety percent of Americans have a high school education or better.
Sociology
Hispanics remain at the low end of the economic spectrum, even after five generations in America. This short-circuits the normal flow of our society, where lower-wage jobs help young adults decide on careers, help college students work their way through school, and help all poor people work their way up the ladder to a middle class lifestyle. No matter what happens, Hispanics need to place a much higher emphasis on education.
Economic Burden
Two million Americans are displaced out of their jobs every year because of legal and illegal immigration. Welfare and public assistance to these displaced workers costs $15 billion a year. 50% of the wage erosion in low-income jobs is due to cheap labor of undocumented workers.
One American worker making decent wages creates 4 or 5 “trickle down” jobs in the local economy. These jobs do not happen for illegals because they send all their wages to Mexico. Thus, paying Americans twice what we pay illegals for agricultural or other work will still be twice as good for the economy as a whole.
E-Verify
E-Verify is a free internet-based federal program employers can use to verify citizenship of existing workers or new hires. An analysis by a nonpartisan research firm found it was 96% accurate. Of the remaining 4%, only 0.7% were authorized workers who were found by E-Verify to not be authorized, often because of a name change after marriage. 3% of undocumented workers were given work authorization status, which is a lot better than the current 100%.
Action Items
Close the borders using 100,000 battle-ready soldiers permanently stationed at new bases along the border.
Empower the states to deal with undocumented workers, i.e. issuing work permits good for individual states, maybe even individual jurisdictions within each state, for specific industries and time periods. No job can be given to any immigrant unless there are no American citizens qualified for the job. Every immigrant job must be re-offered to American citizens at least once every six months while unemployment is above 5%.
After five or ten years in this program, without incident, a worker can apply for citizenship in a pool of all other applicants, to be selected on the basis of education, job skills, and references.
One critical part of citizenship MUST be learning English. Education is integral to the American social system, Hispanics have shown a reluctance to embrace education, and requiring fluency in English is a VITAL first step toward being an American citizen.
It is insane for the Obama administration to file suite against Arizona, whose new law only duplicates existing federal laws, and to do nothing about the 250 “sanctuary cities” who flaunt federal law on a daily basis.
The only role the Constitution gives Congress is in Article I Section 8 – to establish “a uniform rule of Naturalization.” The Constitution says NOTHING about securing the borders. NOTHING!!! Thus, by default, border control is a state’s right because any powers not explicitly assigned to the federal government belong to the states.
Finally, Democrats are despeate to appease hispaics because they are the fastest growing segment of the population – 15% now and 40% in ten years. I think that is a strong point AGAINST hispanics. There is a HISPANIC BABY BOOM with unemployment at 10%???
We need to be having fewer babies, not more. All the problems in the world are directly related to over-population. Any ethnic group that violates this paradigm is irrational, or worse.
