Published: Mar 25, 2010

White House Pushing Amnesty & National ID Cards
by Jim Kouri

President Barack Obama is already planning his next sweeping change for American society after he gets his Obamacare passed in both houses of Congress: fulfillment of his campaign promise to revamp U.S. immigration policy as part of his fundamental transformation of the United States.

On Thursday, Obama mentioned a proposal by Democrat Senator Charles Schumer and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, that features a first-ever national identification card for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want a job.

In a blog posted online by The Washington Post, Senators Schumer and Graham stated "our immigration system is badly broken." Graham, who has angered conservatives time and time again, and Schumer outlined plan revamp U.S. immigration policy.

While the proposal for state-of-the-art identification cards are a new development in the Senate, other parts of the Schumer-Graham plan are old hat including a promise to upgrade border security, creating a new process for admitting temporary workers, and implementing a "tough but fair path to legalization for those already here," a euphemism for illegal alien amnesty.

Obama met last week with Schumer and Graham, and the White House said a sweeping agreement dealing with as many as 12 million illegal immigrants was unlikely to get through Congress without support from both parties. Such a measure would have difficulty advancing before November's congressional election especially with the epidemic of violence occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border and reports that Islamic terrorist groups are recruiting and training would-be terrorists in Central and South American countries.

It's been widely reported that illegal aliens comprise upwards of 27 percent of the US prison and jail population. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection - two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security - claim in several reports that they've apprehended over 100,000 criminal aliens whose offenses go far beyond violation of immigration laws and regulations.

Sadly, only about 25 percent of expenses for imprisoning criminal aliens is reimbursed by the federal government to state and local governments. This creates a hardship for taxpayers in states with high incarceration rates for criminal aliens. The proponents of open borders or lax immigration enforcement always point to the benefits derived from illegal immigration such as the amount of taxes they pay into the government system. Evidence, however, exists that refutes those claims. For instance, there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence that suggests a large number of illegal aliens are paid "off-the-books" therefore those wages are not taxed.

The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants who actually do pay taxes go to the federal treasury.

The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.

This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant.

Californian officials have estimated that the net cost to taxpayers in order to provide government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates existing today.

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary ... 1900.shtml