Throughout the presidential race, the issues of the economy as well as the security of the United States have both been in the public spotlight. However, both of these issues would be less important if the candidates focused more of their effort on the problem of illegal immigration. As May Day comes up at the end of this week, immigration reform will be a hot topic in the media. Unfortunately, it will most likely be approached from one angle.
The issue important to most people right now is the economy. Even though they are not legal citizens, illegal immigrants manage to drain (legally) an enormous amount of taxpayers' money from entitlement programs. They manage to do this through their children, legal citizens, as well as through lax visa requirements in terms of financial sponsorship. On a one year basis, illegal immigrant receive about $11-22 billion a year in welfare checks, $1.9 billion in food assistance, $2.5 billion on Medicaid and $12 billion on primary and secondary education. These are only some of the more recognizable benefits they are receiving, and this data was from 2002.
In 2006, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, "…assuming that we have about 11 million immigrants in the U.S., the net cost or the total cost of services and benefits provided to them, education, welfare, general social services would be about $90 billion a year, and they would pay very little in taxes."
Given that more time has passed, the situation has most likely gotten much worse. In 2006, the Iraq war cost $200 million a day. Assuming 365 days in a year, that amounts to $73 billion dollars. Illegal immigrants cost the United States taxpayers $17 billion more per year than the Iraq war.
As of April 23, 2008, 4046 Americans have given their lives in the Iraq war, that's about 809 soldiers per year. As of 2006, on average 12 people per day are murdered by illegal immigrants and 13 people a day are killed by illegal immigrants driving while drunk and uninsured. Over a one year period this amounts to 9125 Americans killed by illegal immigrants. These numbers do not also include terrorist attacks on US soil that were committed by illegal immigrants.
In addition to the economic as well as crime problems wrought by illegal immigrants, there are also the drug and health issues caused by not securing the border. 30% of all inmates are not American citizens. On average 8 American children a day are victims of a sex crime committed by illegal immigrants, this amounts to 2,920 children a year. According to the U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics it costs over 1.5 billion a year to house these inmates, on the state and federal level.
The threat to national security is obvious. The border needs to be secured in order to prevent terrorists, drug smugglers, murderers, sex offenders and all other criminals violent and nonviolent.
On May Day people are going to be talking about all of the good that illegal immigrants do for our country. However, illegal immigrants have and will continue to cost our country more per year than the Iraq war in terms of welfare and casualties. Illegal immigrant supporters will talk about how they help to support our economy. In 2006, illegal immigrants sent $45 billion dollars to their families in other countries. This is $45 billion that is not supporting the economy.
The May Day supporters will argue that illegal immigrants do not commit any more crimes than citizens. If there are 20-30 million illegal immigrants and 304 million legal citizens (Census Bureau) and 30 percent of prisoners are illegal immigrants…well, you can do the math.
Supporters will still argue all of this is irrelevant because what is the government going to do, kick every illegal immigrant out? They believe that after breaking the law by trespassing onto US soil, they deserve to reap the benefits of citizenship. The National Policy Institutes estimates that it would cost as much as $230 billion to deport all of the illegal immigrants. If that is spent over a five year period, it amounts to $46 billion a year. Compared to the burden illegal immigrants impose on taxpayers, this is a bargain.
Even Europe has started to insult our inability to handle the massive amounts of illegal immigrants in America. One newspaper has gone as far calling Los Angeles a third world city. With half of the workforce being immigrants, a third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 percent do not speak English fluently, according to the Migration Policy Institute. If we do not act now, this is a sure sign of the direction of the rest of our country.
Statistics are taken from an article published Apr. 23 in The Telegraph titled "Los Angeles is a 'third-world city.'"
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