Thread: State, U.S. would be far better off without flood of illegal

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State, U.S. would be far better off without flood of illegal immigrants
By Mike McGarry
June 3, 2006

"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub"

- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

Fact: America is the most generous legal-immigrant-receiving country on Earth, admitting more immigrants each year than are admitted by all the countries of the world combined.

Suppose the 12 million to 20 million illegals in the U.S., including Colorado's 250,000, were to dream up the ultimate boycott, a year-long vanishing act to show how "essential" they are to the nation's and state's economies. So they all board a giant teleporter and beam up, from where they watch with satisfaction the wailing and gnashing of teeth of all those too unconnected to their surroundings to mow their own lawns, too irresponsible and presumptuous to raise the children they produce, too dull and uninspired to cook for themselves, and too gentrified to clean up after themselves.

Here's what they would also see that dream year: Workers' wages, benefits and conditions would be improving, especially for our more chronically marginalized workers. The shrinking American working middle class would be expanding. Schools would be less crowded, with education costs lower. Shamefully high school dropout rates would be reversing, and CSAP scores would be trending upward. Our health-care system wouldn't be under assault.

Gang membership would be falling off sharply. Colorado wouldn't be a crossroads for alien, drug and sex-slave trafficking. Rampant home-loan and ID fraud would evaporate.

Ten percent of jail beds would be empty, including those of accused cop-killer Raul Gomez-Garcia and confessed murderer Martin Novotny. Twenty percent of the federal prison population would be gone. Colorado's citizens wouldn't be subjected to a two-tiered system of justice, where illegals are treated as though they were members of a protected class, with citizens relegated to second-class status. There would be no sanctuary cities!

Dream on.

Drought-plagued Colorado would have 17.3 billion additional gallons of water to redistribute, enough to provide average water use the entire year for everyone in Boulder, Pueblo and Grand Junction. The state's alarming population growth would be slowing, because there would be no "anchor babies" born in our hospitals, and because fewer Californians would be moving here, fleeing the illegal immigration-fueled meltdown in their state.

The $2 billion that otherwise would have been spent by Coloradans on illegals that dream year would be saved. The $10 billion in federal money spent to make life sweeter for border-crashers and visa violators - including health care complete with on-demand translators - would be available to fund the health-care needs of all our eligible military veterans, to whom we have no greater obligation. Hundreds of thousands of vets have been turned away from receiving needed care, while the U.S. government welcomes illegals.

The U.S. Senate would not be forcing on us an unwanted, preposterous "comprehensive" immigration bill that would cost unacknowledged tens-of-billions of dollars to implement and would, over 20 years, engorge the country with 100 million new arrivals - an unthinkable human pile-on, given the nation's already unsustainable, mass-immigration-driven population explosion.

President Bush wouldn't be pushing his duplicitous "not an amnesty" mega-amnesty. Fifty-thousand illegals and their supporters would not be marching in the streets of Denver demanding amnesty, running up Mexican flags and arrogantly supplanting our national anthem with a dopey Spanish-language version. The corrupt, narco-cratic Mexican government would not be violating long-established diplomatic protocols by meddling in matters that are exclusive prerogative of We the People. And we just might be liberated from the symbolically offensive, "For English, press 1."

Ah, perchance to dream of an America where the rule of law prevails, of a Colorado where citizens are respectfully treated as if they were all members of a close extended family, of a land where the primacy of citizenship is forever ordained - this would require our elected representatives to share that dream and have the wisdom and character to preserve, protect and defend it. Ay, there's the rub.


Mike McGarry is the acting director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (www.cairco.org).

I think I shall dream that dream tonight, only for Florida....