The realities of illegal aliens in the United States
The United States has illegal aliens from all over the world, with the majority from Mexico (70 percent) and Central America (15 percent). Do we have a plan to deal with these 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in our country? Should we provide amnesty or deportation? Are illegal aliens just good people seeking a better life? Or are they more like a bank robber? Aren’t they stealing our money just like they were robbing a bank?
Adding to the problem is a new airline in Mexico known among flyers as “Migrant Air.” It offers inexpensive flights from southern and central Mexico north to Mexican towns along the United States border, allowing its customers to arrive at the border rested for the dangerous illegal crossing. Would you be surprised to know the return flights are mostly empty?
Are illegal aliens stealing our money? Proponents of amnesty insist illegal aliens are an asset to our economy because they take the jobs American workers will not. But is that what is happening? Industries pay illegal aliens less than they would have to pay American workers, pocket the profit from cheap labor, and displace American workers. It is not that American workers will not take the jobs. It is that American workers will not work for the poverty level wages illegal aliens are paid. Industries are using illegal aliens to deliberately force down wages.
How many American workers do 20 million illegal aliens displace? Estimates are about 2,000,000 workers. Harvard Professor George Borjas reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost of over $133 billion in 2005.
These displaced workers cost the American taxpayer over $15 billion a year in welfare and other aid programs. Education for illegal aliens K-12 cost states $7.4 billion annually. During a one year analysis in Colorado, 40 percent of the births paid for by Medicaid were for illegal aliens. Each year over 250,000 children born to illegal alien mothers are automatically citizens of the United States.
Is there a criminal element in the illegal alien population? Reports suggest illegal aliens are murdering 10,000 Americans each year. In Los Angeles in 2004, 95 percent of all outstanding homicide arrest warrants were for illegal aliens. Illegal aliens comprise over 60 percent of the members of two of California’s biggest gangs, the 18th Street Gang and the Columbia Lil’ Cycos. Eighty percent of the cocaine and fifty percent of the heroin in the U.S. is smuggled across the border by Mexican nationals. According to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston and San Francisco place a “higher priority on protecting illegal aliens from deportation than on protecting United States citizens from assault, rape, and other crimes.”
What do we do? They are in our country illegally. They are murdering our citizens, spending our money, and damaging our economy. We need to find them, arrest them and deport them. And we need to make it unattractive to enter this country illegally. Lessen the ongoing train of illegal aliens by removing jobs and sanctuary cities. Find the companies hiring illegal aliens and fine them so substantially that hiring illegal aliens is no longer profitable. Remove unnecessary legal barriers to deportation. Do not allow children born to illegal aliens to be American citizens. End all incentives for entering our country illegally. Illegal aliens need to be treated like any other criminal because they are like any other criminal.
Critics claim the large number of illegal aliens cannot be deported. They are wrong. In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol to deport the illegal aliens in our country. In just two months INS agents rounded up over 50,000 illegal aliens in California and Arizona alone. More important, during this same time frame over 400,000 fled these states back to Mexico in fear of deportation. In Texas over 80,000 were deported and more than 500,000 left voluntarily. Within a year nearly a third of the total number of illegal aliens in the United States “self-deported.”
For every illegal alien arrested and deported another 10 left our country voluntarily. Veteran agents from the 1950s have three recommendations:
1. Do not release illegal aliens from Mexico at the border. Instead, take them deep into Mexico so return is more costly.
2. Crack down harshly on employers so there are no jobs available for the illegal aliens.
3. Have a “guest-worker” program similar to President Eisenhower’s permitting a certain number of Mexicans to legally enter our country for work.
The economic and criminal costs of illegal aliens in our country are unacceptable. In this day of fanatics and terrorists we can no longer ignore our borders. Illegal aliens must be found, deported and our borders secured. It is the only rational, reasonable choice.