Saturday, December 1, 2007

The Cost of Immigration

An article at NewsMax offers up some disturbing statistics about immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular. Here is a condensed version of the report:

A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), based on the latest Census Bureau data, shows the number of immigrants in America, both legal and illegal, has swelled to a record 38 million this year - making one of every eight U.S. residents an immigrant.

The new numbers indicate the highest level in more than eight decades - with a third of those being illegal aliens.

One third of immigrants are on some form of welfare, costing states nearly $20 billion a year, the study claimed, adding that efforts to legalize the spiraling number of illegal aliens will only increase the amount of uneducated, uninsured legal immigrants burdening America's welfare rolls.

Since 2000, more than 10 million immigrants have entered the U.S., more than half of them illegally, according to the CIS. With no change in U.S. immigration policy, another 15 million immigrants will likely arrive in the next 10 years.

Almost 60 percent of the Illegal aliens entering the U.S. come from Mexico.

The numbers portend a major shift in American demographics. More than 72 percent of native U.S. residents are white, 13 percent are black, 10 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are Asian. But among the burgeoning immigrant population, over 48 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are Asian, 21 percent are white and 7 percent are black.

Camarota, research director at the CIS, a Washington think tank that favors immigration restrictions along with improved services for legal immigrants, says immigrants now make up one in every five school-age children in America. Immigration accounts for all of the increases in public school enrollment nationwide over the past 20 years, the CIS reports.

In places such as Los Angeles County and New York City, the children of immigrant fathers make up nearly 60 percent of the school-age population.

More than 31 percent of adult immigrants have not completed high school, compared to just 8 percent of U.S. natives. Since 2000, immigrants have boosted the overall number of workers who lack a high school diploma to 14 percent.

Camarota's findings on the quality of life for uneducated immigrants shows that attempts at so-called amnesty for the current population of 12 million illegal aliens would prove costly and provide little benefit.

"Immigrants who have legal status, but little education, generally have low incomes and make heavy use of welfare programs," the CIS report states. "If we decide to legalize illegal immigrants, we should at least understand that it will not result in dramatically lower welfare use or poverty.

"Those who advocate such a policy need to acknowledge this problem and not argue that legalization will save taxpayers money or result in a vast improvement in the income of illegal aliens," the report continues. "Legalized illegals will still be overwhelmingly uneducated and this fact has enormous implications for their income, welfare use, health insurance coverage, and the effect on American taxpayers."

True to the CIS charter, Krikorian stresses that there "is no excuse whatever for intolerant attitudes toward legal immigrants -- we admitted them according to the rules established by our elected representatives, and we must, and will, continue to embrace them as Americans in training.

"Even illegal immigrants must be treated humanely as they are detained and returned to their homes," Krikorian says. "But future legal immigration is a different question -- mass immigration is simply not compatible with the goals of a modern society and should be minimized to the extent possible."

It's a somewhat droll aspect of this issue that those who don't wish to see America turned into a northern extension of Central America are often branded bigots and "nativists" for wishing to preserve their heritage and for being reluctant to push this nation to economic ruin. It's okay for citizens of every country in the world to wish to preserve their traditions and character except for the citizens of the U.S. and Israel. Any measures taken by them to prevent either of their two countries from being culturally overwhelmed by their neighbors are, for some reason, roundly condemned as racist or zionist. It's very odd.

RLC