The Case Against Immigrants

by emptypockets

When George Bush announced Monday that he would spend nearly $2 billion dollars to prevent immigrants from entering the country, liberals had a knee-jerk reflex to oppose the plan. But the case against immigrants is sound: they take jobs away from Americans, they drain our social services, and by moving routinely across our borders they endanger homeland security. The Senate is right to pass a bill next week to keep immigrants from entering America. In fact, in my opinion, they do not go far enough.

Jobs, for example. Apparently immigrants do not let Americans line up with them at 4 am in parking lots. Now, that's not fair. But we can't forget the companies that are moving those jobs out of the US altogether -- in 2004, an estimated 400,000 jobs per year. 140,000 of those jobs went right to Mexico. And it's not just the border states -- nearly half the lost jobs came from the Midwest; over a quarter of them came from Illinois and Michigan alone. If we're going to blame Mexicans who come here to work, we better also crack down on those executives who are moving the work to Mexico. (Click here to find job exporters in your area.) So while we're at it, let's kick some of those CEOs out of the country as well.

Social services. Illegal immigrants don't pay taxes -- well, ok, they pay sales tax, and about two-thirds of them have Social Security and Medicare automatically withheld, and yeah I guess since their social security numbers are fake they aren't able to claim those benefits, and since 1996 they haven't been able to get Medicaid benefits, or food stamps or housing assistance for that matter. In fact it's estimated that illegal immigrants contribute on the order of billions of dollars to federal tax revenues. But the principle stands: it isn't fair for one group of people to drain substantially more from the federal pool than they put in. As Mississippi Senator Trent Lott writes on his web site, "That doesn’t include other costs associated with illegal immigration like increased crime, the strain on social services and lost tax revenue." Of course, Mississippi itself has been getting more federal money back than it puts in for a while -- in fact, Mississippi has been getting one of the top 5 free rides for at least 25 years. New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia, too, have consistently sapped our resources far more than they've given back, since at least the 1980s. Maybe we out to kick some of them out of the country as well.

ok, well, security is a real issue though. It's important to secure our borders, using the latest technology, even if it does cost us $2 billion and further strains our National Guard. We can't listen to those nay-sayers like the Heritage Foundation ("Some of the finest conservative minds in America today" -- Rush Limbaugh) who call on Congress to "reject the pro­posed 'solutions' to these con­cerns of mandated 100 percent inspection of cargo and increased port security grants," proposals made by Democrats in Congress. They say that these proposals would involve "spending billions of dollars on container and port security" and that it's just not worth it since terrorists might easily get around it by FedEx'ing a weapon of mass destruction into the US (I am not making that up). They are joined by Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, who said his officers will start running background checks on 400,000 longshoreman and issue biometric identification cards to 750,000 port workers to make sure they're not illegal immigrants stealing our jobs draining our social services sneaking bombs into our country, but that it would be impractical to inspect incoming cargo. Republican Senators also oppose port security. I say, you're either with us or you're with the immigrants. Heritage fellows, Chertoff, Republican congresspeople -- go back to your own country.

ok. I think we've just about gotten our house in order, sent away the ones who are causing all this trouble. Let's make sure we got rid of everyone we needed to. Immigrants, check. Job-outsourcing CEOs, check. Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, West virginia, check. Conservative think-tanks, Michael Chertoff, and Republican congresspeople, check. Did I forget anyone?

Oh, wait -- maybe just one more --

Bush Wants Newcomers to Learn English
"What the president has said all along is that he wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language," Snow said. "It's as simple as that."

"Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of 'Hop on Pop.'"
--George W. Bush

Comments

[Newcomer]

companies who hire illegal aliens. Why are'nt they arrested, fined, and sent out of the business?

[MissLaura]

Don't forget that immigrants from Mexico (but really, are there any other kind?) are a nasty brown color, when real Americans are pinkish. This bill should become law on aesthetic grounds alone, to say nothing of preservation of the strength of the genetic pool.

[emptypockets]

MissLaura, here's George Bush Sr. pointing out his grandchildren of half Mexican ancestry to Ronald Reagan in 1988: "That's Jebby's kids from Florida, the little brown ones."

[MissLaura]

See? That's what happens when you let them in. Mixing.

Pardon me while I go cleanse this from my beautiful mind.

[The Stuffed Tiger]

The passion with which I jumped to slam you for your opening paragraph is only matched by the size of my sigh of relief when I realized what you were up to. Phew.

The Drum Major Institute has a fantastic policy primer on immigration that not only outlines a way forward but includes a section debunking popular immigration myths and one that grades the current legislative packages. A great, short read.

[ana]

In fact, the prosecutions for companies illegally hiring undocumented workers have gone way, way down in the Bush administration. Clinton's admin actually did a much better job with this. (From the AZ Republic)

From 1999 to 2004, the number of businesses that faced fines dropped from 417 to three, the GAO said. Data after 2004 could not be compared because the government changed the way it records data.>

417 fines... to 3. It's almost unbelievable.

Why am I saying that? This is Bush. He doesn't manage to do much of anything right.

[emptypockets]

Stuffed Tiger, thanks for reading through it before commenting then! I crossposted elsewhere and based on the comments not all users seem to have shared your courtesy...

thanks also for the link. I referenced it (& you) in another thread just now.

I've been surprised at the number of anti-immigrant voices I've heard from the left on-line. While there are always real issues under the politics, I thought we all got that the current bill & Bush's speech are more goofy election-year politics (as ana provides more evidence for) not serious attempts to deal with any real immigration issues. I've been surprised that there's not more consensus on how to respond.

[Bimon]

The fines should be enough to close the business.

[JohnLopresti]

TypePad asked to try again:
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Want to drive the liberals wild? Update your post with criticism of the protesters who harrass the World Trade Organization.
The left has some facile answers it needs to nuance by some study.
I would look at some specialists' treatises for insight into Latinos.
Republicans need to recall the asylum for Salvadorans issue during the era of civil unrest there. I understand some of the US secret agency people in Central America then, now are part of upper echelon Bush-2 administration.
The wierd rhetorical tag line I recall Bush-1 using at the end of his all encompassing thousand points of light family demo was the 'brown' ones were "on the end there"; and they were on the far end of the lineup on stage; recall, that was the first year of entirely stage produced nominating conventions; no more bartering on the convention floor. Reagan's most affirmative legacy, certainly, given his grade-B celluloid sensibility.
The representatives from ExxonUSA and Chevron need to walk in to Pemex and say Pemex should encourage Obrador to enhance the social safety net.
The US should tax remittances by wire to MX; place the tax in a trust account which MX can access only as it passes milestones in providing enhanced social safety net programs for its poor; only as it improves environmental protection. This is a lot like what the international lending institutions do; but corrupt officials are part of the history of Latin America.
There is a science of evaluating the legacy of colonial powers; impoverished former French colonies; rule by junta in ex Spanish colonies. Look at the history of how the colonist home countries (France, Spain) treat their intellectuals and dissenters, and what political systems are in place in the home countries (France, Spain) for problem resolution. A recent social science essay reminded me there is no equivalent of the US Bill of Rights in Brittain, although I think that is hyperbole; political systems provide context, a reference point, once the colonies are liberated.
I wholly support people learning English; Hispanics from central america are notorious non-adapters of English, and there are ethnic and political reasons for that besides Yankees abusing them once they are here; and, for the immigrants who are here illegally, life is a string of paranoia.
I once remarked to an illegal immigrant that he drove too slowly on the highway; the rejoinder was that may be out of character (who knows?), but it lessens the chances of being stopped by the highway gendarmes.
I once met a CPA from MX who earned more as a carpenter in the US, and showed us his ersatz ID which cost $1500. in a border city; it sparkled like all the optically tamperproof genuine IDs in the US, but he assured us it was fake.
Something about politics promotes the sweetest talker and the person who befriends supporters with lucrative spoils; that character is translated into foreign policy. Sometimes congressional debate very much resembles an argument among moguls seeking to divvy the spoils. We could use a few professorial Paul Wellstones.
A person with familial experience in US State Department employment once explained to me the interesting diplomatic posts are given to scions of the rich; as if there is a global oligarchy of the affluent which operates the entire diplomatic structure; pretty abstract; for those dedicated souls who enter foreign service without familial bonafides, theirs are the bleak and dangerous posts.
Acculturation is a complex issue.

[wtmesq]

I agree with Bush when he said "Those immigants need to learninate English as good as I do"

[Rick B]

I have a question about illegal immigrants. Your line "...they take jobs away from Americans, they drain our social services, and by moving routinely across our borders they endanger homeland security." pretty much laid out the issues being used to justify the immigration hullabaloo. Jobs, Social Services and security. But aren't they all related to the fact that by not having any way to bring them into some form of legal status they remain a hidden and illegal community?

They aren't illegal because of their nature, they are illegal because they need jobs to support their families and we give them no route to do that legally.

The fact that they are illegal means that employers can (and frequently do) cheat them out of their wages. There are numerous stories of illegals being hired, working for three or four weeks without getting paid, and when they demand their pay the employer calls ICE and has them deported. This has several effects. First, the employer gets free labor, so that Americans cannot compete (how whould the employer stiff the American workers out of their pay?) Second, the illegals are given no route out of their illegal status, so they remakn doing the really low-level jobs and get quite good at them. Again, legal workers look for promotion and training to better jobs. Third, since they are already in an illegal status and have little access to social services and fear of contact with authorities, they are more likely to steal. (My surprise is how few really do this.)

As for social services, they can get emergency medicine and not much else. Frequently they can't get driver's licenses, so they can't get bank accounts. They get paid by check and then get charged 5% or more of the face value of he cneck to cash it. If they do get a good job, they can't easily move to another one for better pay and benefits. It's hard to buy a home or set up a business. This is all because of their illegal status which they are forced to accept in order to obtain work that allows them to support a family.

Finally, the security issue. The problem isn't that they cross the international border regularly, it is that they do so illegally. But this is because of their status as illegal immigrants. I can cross that same border anytime I wish in either direction.

The whole set of problems appear to stem from the need for family-supporting jobs (which are available in the U.S rather than in Mexico)and the related need for workers to fill jobs in the U.S., without a way of giving those workers any legal status. If the workers were not forced into the illegal sub-class by the lack of a way out of it, the rest of the problems would mostly disappear. The one remaining problem would be the fact that they speak Spanish rather then English, and that is curable.

[Jay Jerome]

The money illegal immigrants pay into Social Security goes to the Federal govt, not to the states, who bear the brunt of providing the huge amounts of social services illegal immigrants consume. Here in California citizen taxpayers make up the difference. All the independent studies (there’s a lot out there, google it up) show that illegal immigrants, and first generation naturalized immigrants (like the ones we gave amnesty to last time) take more out of the system than they put in, even after you factor in ALL the taxes they pay.

Hispanic immigration is a complex and vexing issue: especially for liberal/progressives like me. On one hand, I don’t favor draconian measures to round up and deport 10 or 12 or however many millions are living here now; but on the other hand it’s an undisputed fact they’ve usurped entire categories of jobs from lower and middle class Americans by undercutting wage scales, making it impossible for many of our own citizens to compete at those jobs. That’s one of the reasons it’s difficult for me to swallow another amnesty, especially when the rationale and slogans for this one are the same failed ones I heard last time around: good hard-working immigrant-refugees who came here to escape economic hardships; immoral and cruel to extirpate them and break up families; better to legalize them so they can contribute and pay their own way; a one-time and one time only amnesty, with promises from the government will stem the flow of future illegal immigrants. Or as Yogi Berra said: deja-vu all over again.

There may be other unintended consequences of this ongoing and apparently unstoppable Hispanic migration. For one, what’s going to happen when we add millions of mostly Mexican Hispanic’s to the voting lists over the next decade? Will it be the death knell for many social causes Liberals believe in and have energetically fought for over the years?. Hispanics in general, and Mexican Hispanics in particular, have conservative Catholic social views (the newer the immigrant, the more conservative the views). Generally Hispanics are anti abortion, don’t favor gay rights, are against laws restricting the possession of firearms, but are in favor of school prayer, school vouchers.

In light of the tenor of the (forgive me, but it seems obvious) knee-jerk posts I’ve been reading here about the immigration issue, another old adage may be operative: beware what you ask for; you might get it.

[Publicus]

This is America. As a sovereign nation, we need to control our borders. As a nation of immigrants, we need to welcome new immigrants. But, we need to do this through controlled borders.

Let's live up to that poem at the bottome of the Statue of Liberty. But, let's also ensure that people come through official doors.