Thread: Amnesty For Illegals Is Importing Poverty Into The U.S.

Amnesty For Illegals Is Importing Poverty Into The U.S.


Investors.com
Posted 11/20/2014 06:38 PM ET

But Obama insists on legalizing those who are poorest, least educated and least able to assimilate — not because it's good for America but to win Latino votes.

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Illegal Immigration: Rep. Michele Bachmann warned that the immigrants about to be amnestied have high illiteracy rates and may vote. The left howled, but the reality is she understated it. The hard data tell the story.

Commenting on President Obama's amnesty of 5 million illegals, the Minnesota Republican told reporters at the Capitol, "The social cost will be profound on the U.S. taxpayer — millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming to the United States who can't speak the English language."

She added that many will vote illegally, too.

An outraged, politically correct reporter from the Washington Post then asked Bachmann just what she meant by "illiterate," according to a report in Politico.

Bachmann cited the firsthand information she had gathered from U.S. citizens on the front lines of the immigration surge and those inside Latin American countries she's visited, in what was a heck of a lot more homework than the reporters would ever do.

She was on hard factual ground: According to the CIA World Factbook, illiteracy in Guatemala, a top supplier of illegals, stands at 24.1%. In El Salvador it's 15.5%, in Honduras it's 14.9% and in Mexico 6.5%.

As a corollary indicator, note that these countries' governments spend very little on their nationals' education as a percent of their GDP. In Guatemala it's 3%, El Salvador 3.4%, and Mexico 5.1%.

Don't imagine those are the only ills that plague these amnesty beneficiary nations.

Latin America is also tops globally in teen pregnancy, with some 30% of teenagers age 15 to 19 pregnant, the majority "underprivileged" and without husbands, "which fosters the reproduction of poverty," according to a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) released just last week.

And speaking of poverty, ECLAC points out that 45.3% of El Salvadorans live in poverty, as do 37.1% of Mexicans (see chart).

As for the ability to speak English, Bachmann is particularly accurate: Central Americans, despite the long exposure of their illegals to the U.S., have the lowest English proficiency in the entire hemisphere.

According to the Swiss think tank EF's 2013 English Proficiency Index of 63 countries, which it sees as a measure of global competitiveness, Guatemala and El Salvador ranked in the lowest quartile at 51 and 53 respectively (with no other Latin country ranking lower than El Salvador). Mexico came in at a still-substandard 39.

When it comes to competitiveness, cultural attitudes matter. The countries of the nationals to be amnestied have the greatest hostility anywhere on earth toward free markets, according to a new Pew Survey.

Sixty-nine percent of Salvadorans told Pew that they opposed free markets, along with 44% of Mexicans (compared with 43% who supported them). Guatemala and Honduras were not ranked.

All of this isn't to say that Latin America's poor cannot assimilate, learn English, get educated or rise above their negative attitudes once they get here — some can. But it's a long learning curve, costly for U.S. taxpayers.

What's more, compared to bringing in more skilled people from wherever who have a good chance of assimilating into the U.S. with no help, it's a bad policy.

But Obama insists on legalizing those who are poorest, least educated and least able to assimilate — not because it's good for America but to win Latino votes.
It's a great, if cynical, political deal for him in his bid to seem still relevant — and an atrocious policy for the U.S.

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