Friday, February 25, 2011

Some Illegal Immigration Costs

I haven't had the time to put out any new articles in a while, but I want to share with you some articles that I have come across:

The first is about the cost of illegal immigrants on society. The Federation for American Immigration Reform found that they cost society $113 billion a year. It is over $600 million a year in LA county alone for just the children of illegal immigrants. About half of these costs are related to education because school districts are not allowed to ask if a student is a U.S. citizen or not. Great, how about we just cut to the chase and open some schools with American teachers in Mexico funded by US taxpayers, because this is pretty much what is going on now.

Much of the other half of the tab is from the receipt of welfare benefits. Now part of these costs are from anchor babies, where the US constitution grants rights of citizenship from being born on US soil. Sure, the 14th amendment gives this right, but since it was written about 150 years ago, do you think they had anchor babies in mind when they added this? Of course not. In fact, the original intent of this amendment was to override a prior US Supreme Court ruling that attempted to deny freed slaves citizenship.

And do not forget that these benefits are collected by their illegal immigrant parents. What kind of incentive does that provide that says, "Yeah, hey, come to America illegally and we will pay you money!" And it is ignorant to think that 100% of any transfer payments will only benefit the children.

So some of you might harp on the Jus soli social policy without thinking critically about it. But two things: Their parents are most likely not paying income taxes since they are not legally even allowed to work, which means that they are leeching off society. Bad. And two, of advanced economies, only the US and Canada still practice this social policy. Perhaps the 14th amendment needs to be modified and updated for the times where citizenship is granted only to children of legal residents.