See Mexicans Arrested for Drug Trafficking in Johnson City
Illegal Immigration Crime Invades East Tennessee

Ignoring Illegal Immigration's High Cost

by Lewis Loflin

In 2015 Donald Trump has propelled illegal immigration and the rampant lawlessness around it into the public spotlight. This seething undercurrent of resentment across much of the nation over jobs and falling incomes has both parties scrambling to shut down the discussion.

this was written circa 2006 during the Bush immigration blowup and still stands true today. The Republicans are desperate to buy the Hispanic vote yet polls show legal Americans of Spanish heritage also reject this massive deluge of foreign workers.

Studies show 17% of the US labor force is foreign born with a real unemployment rate of 30-40 percent.

Illegal aliens drain the American economy not only through high social costs but remittances to their home countries. The New York Times (May 1, 2008) reports:

Growing numbers of Latino immigrants (they always lump legal and illegal together) only half of the 18.9 million Latino immigrants in this country now send money regularly to relatives in their home countries, compared with 73 percent two years ago...With fewer people sending money home, money transfers to some Latin American countries have started to decline, reversing five years of often spectacular growth...

This is good because much of this income taxed or untaxed drains the American economy. But is it really all untaxed? Some of it I'm sure is, but millions of Americans also work in the large underground economy be it a kid mowing a lawn or an illegal alien mowing a lawn. But the illegal alien is likely to be employed by someone, and they often do pay taxes.

Their pay is likely to be low and low wage jobs seldom pay benefits, so when they start popping kids they can't support, the taxpayers pick up the tab. This is true of all low income people legal or not. So that person legal or not will end up in an emergency rooms, their kids will be on Medicaid along with other low income children get free/reduced lunch at school.

If we turn to the Salt Lake Tribune (January 2, 2011) we get the usual distortions of the issues by political correctness, but some useful information. (Again they lump legal and illegal immigrants under the term 'immigrants'.) They claim,

The Inter-American Development Bank, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that provides development financing for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, indicated that in 2008 just 31 percent of Latin American immigrants in Utah sent money home that year. Among those who sent money, the average annual amount was $1,861.

But then, they quote a stupid academic named Thomas Maloney, an associate professor of economics at the University of Utah who says,

But thinking about the really bigger picture, you also could argue many of those recipients will have more money to spend on U.S. produced goods.

This statement is absurd because Mexicans are so poor, even with remittances, they can't buy anything we produce. More than likely it will be from China. Professor Maloney also fails to note the wages lost to American workers when "immigrants" push down wages for those on the low end of the economy. What about their purchasing power?

His professional job is shielded from that problem. The article also noted the benefits, such as $12 billion in Social Security taxes (for 2007) that will never pay out benefits to those that paid them, flows to the Federal government. But what about the huge cost of Medicaid expansion under President Obama that covers illegal aliens?

But at least he notes the huge costs of "immigrants" is shoved onto state/local governments for schools, jails, and social programs. But that is only part of the problem.

First, because they are mostly non-white, they and their children are elevated to a special protected "victim" class that mandates all kinds of extra costs that assimilated American students don't cost the community.

Schools are forced into costly bilingual education and when these mostly low achieving Hispanics start their proven cycle of self-induced failure because they can't compete in a merit based, English speaking culture.

See Hispanic families becoming like black families

Then the racism industry goes into full gear. Thus we get more special taxpayer programs to help "solve" the so-called racism problem.

Hispanic families have now become like black families with high degrees of unwed mothers, welfare dependency, and low education levels. Like blacks as many as half drop out of school, while the half that do graduate are functional illiterates. They have passed blacks for unwed motherhood.

Worse, in efforts to accommodate the growing number of low achieving Hispanic and black students, the whole education system is being dumbed down even more. This also doesn't include inflation in housing costs, cost for new schools, etc.

The article also quotes economist Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group in Waco, Texas, who claims they do pay more in taxes than what they cost. Really? How did he come to that conclusion? He doesn't say nor does his website (www.perrymangroup.com) explain that either.

Looking through his newsletters he takes a business profits only view, and illegal immigration has been great for business. I guess the Tribune simply wanted someone to support their pro-illegal alien position, the same view as that of the rest of the nation's elite.

Inflation is great for business too as it drives growth, until it comes crashing down such as with the housing bubble, mainly the result (some claim) of government coercion in forcing lenders to make home loans to unqualified borrowers, mainly minorities. (I question that myself as being that large.)

The public and taxpayers got stuck with those costs, while business made billions and got the bailouts. Driving down wages of poor and lower income workers across the board is great for profits too. The government induced housing spurred plenty of construction jobs - mainly for illegal aliens.

The whole article as usual focuses on the individual story of Irma Morantes and how wonderful it is to send money home to mommy in Mexico. But the fact is Irma has a job that should be held by someone else likely an unemployed black American on welfare. She likely has that job because she will work for far less than a legal worker.

And why shouldn't she use her real name? Because the government in general has no intention of enforcing the laws to begin with. When she starts popping the kids if she hasn't already, she will add even more cost to our growing low achieving underclass. That too benefits the welfare and diversity industries as well as business.

And the Salt Lake Tribune was very clear when they published an opinion piece titled The elephant in the DREAM Act whining about "discrimination" because the DREAM Act excluded scores of non-college bound (that education paid for by taxpayers by the way) illegal alien kids. The press can't be trusted on these issues.

Let's be careful not to scapegoat Mexicans, etc. but deal with the culture of greed and corruption in American business and liberal opportunism that causes these problems.

Ref. http://www.sltrib.com/csp/cms/sites/sltrib/pages/printerfriendly.csp?id=50881102 Salt Lake Tribune Do immigrants receive more tax money than they give? January 2, 2011.