Perspective on Illegals.....FOCUS PLEASE!
Time to ignore the whines and curses, displays and demonstrations, and to get down to the facts of just what the Mexican "invasion" vis-a-vis illegal immigration is really all about!At Wizbang the facts are well-displayed in this bit:
"As John Kerry discovered through marriage, life is a lot simpler when you can get someone else to pay your bills.
And that principle is a large part of why I get so bent out of shape over the illegal alien problem.
Every single nation in the world has its poor people. They are, to be blunt, a burden. An expense. A liability. They consume far more in services than they will ever provide in revenue.
But they are also a fact of human nature, and providing care for them is one of the fundamental duties of any legitimate government. In the United States, we may argue about the level and form of that support, but only the most extreme ideologues argue against it completely.
Mexico, and some other nations, though, have found a solution to this problem. In fact, they've managed to turn them into assets. Their solution? Send them to the United States.
By some estimates, Mexicans working in the United States send home about $20 billion a year to their families. That number exceeds the amount Mexico gains from agriculture exports and tourism, and is a huge boon to the Mexican economy.
Why, this is a stroke of economic genius! Just how do these foreign nations manage to do it, and can other nations follow the same example?
The answer is simple: like the spammer, like the junk faxer, they are cost-shifting, but on a scale the scammers would blush at. By dumping their poor on the United States, they free themselves of the cost of support -- and stick Uncle Sam with the bill.
By the best estimates I can find, illegal aliens contribute about $16 billion to the US economy each year. But they use about $26.3 billion in social spending, meaning that the United States loses about $10.3 billion a year supporting other nations' poor.
Mexicans make up about 57% of all illegal aliens in the United States, so let's round off the numbers and say that Mexican illegals use about $5.7 billion of that cost. Add that number to the $20 billion that they send home to Mexico, and we see that we are subsidizing the Mexican government to the tune of almost $26 billion dollars a year. That's above and beyond any direct foreign aid; that is money that Mexico is directly taking from us via its illegal aliens.
In direct violation of our laws."
Jay Tea, the Wizbang blog-piece author sums as well as he describes:
"The Mexican government has found its goose that lays the golden egg, and it's the big nation to its north. It has discovered how to take its poorest citizens and encourage them to go north, in direct contravention of United States law and in violation of our national sovereignty, and turn them into productive citizens that are a huge asset to its economy. And now it's trying to cast this program of economic exile into a moral issue, insisting that it is not only justifiable, but ethical and necessary that the United States continue to act as a relief valve for Mexico's poor, dispossessed underclass -- the very people who, if not presented with the very attractive choice of illegally coming to America, might very will rise up and overthrow their own corrupt, inefficient, callous government.
By tolerating the continuing flow of millions of illegal aliens into the United States, we are helping corrupt, oppressive governments to sustain their power and bleed off those who would be most motivated to make changes in their homelands. We are preserving a status quo that, by any moral, economic, or pragmatic standard, should not be sustainable. And we are doing it to the tune of $10 billion a year -- and rising.
It's easy to look at the illegal alien and feel compassion and sympathy. He only wants to support his family back home. She has children to care for. But it's a trap. By bending the rules today, we are sentencing untold future generations to the same fate as the guy mowing your lawn, the crew fixing your roof, the women who clean your office. We are rewarding the governments that made them into economic refugees.
It's a simple rule of economics: you get more of whatever you subsidize. We are subsidizing illegal immigration, and there is absolutely no reason why the immigrants will not continue to come -- and no reason why their governments will not continue to tolerate and encourage it.
It's an immoral model. More importantly, it's an economically unsustainable model. And sooner or later, it has to end.
If we're lucky, we'll end it before it ends us."
This places the thinking and focus exactly where I believe it belongs. No control, no solution. All else, including whatever flavor of amnesty you decided to enjoy, only continues and expands the problem....it does not provide a solution.
Duke
p.s. For those who might like to read Jay Tea's entire article you'll find it here at Wizbang!
UPDATE: The site for a petition by the Minutemen to direct our Congress to take action to seal the border..... is right here.
posted by Duke of DeLand @ 5/30/2006 08:20:00 AM
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