Thread: Doomsday predictions on immigration will flop

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Article published Aug 7, 2006
Doomsday predictions on immigration will flop
Bill Steigerwald
Cagle Syndicate

Is illegal immigration the national crisis it’s been whipped up to be?

If you listened only to the Tom Tancredos, Pat Buchanans and Lou Dobbses of the world, you’d think we are about to have our economy ruined, our culture subsumed and our fiscal future bankrupted by the 11 million to 20 million illegal immigrants living, working and hiding among us.

But Tony Snow, the upbeat conservative pundit-turned-presidential-press-secretary, and the libertarians at Reason magazine don’t buy into that immigration doomsday.

While acknowledging the obvious socioeconomic problems illegal immigrants cause, Snow argues in a column that immigration — legal and illegal — “is not the pox neo-Know Nothings make it out to be.”

Snow’s column is part of Reason’s current package of pro-immigration essays, “Immigration Now, Immigration Tomorrow, Immigration Forever,” which is sprinkled with some facts about illegal immigrants often drowned out by the political hype and semi-hysteria:

Percentage of illegal immigrants who got here by jumping the Mexican or Canadian border: 60. Percent who overstayed their tourist or educational visas and therefore wouldn’t be stopped by border fences: 40.

Percent of illegals who are unemployed: 5.5. Percent who pay income taxes, Social Security and Medicare: 66. Percent who send their children to public schools: 10. Percent who receive food stamps or unemployment assistance: 5. Percent of Latino households that are Spanish-free by the third generation: 80.

Researcher-analyst Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors “a pro-immigrant, low immigration vision,” says some of these Reason statistics are a little off. Camarota uses the figure 55 percent for illegals who pay payroll taxes, for instance, and he seriously doubts that only 10 percent of illegals send their kids to public school.

Camarota has estimated that illegals create a net annual benefit of $7 billion for Social Security and Medicare together. “But,” he says, “here’s the kicker: They impose a drain on the rest of the federal budget of $17 billion for a net drain of $10 billion.” The big question is whether they use Medicaid, he says, “and most of them do.”

Reason uses its facts to argue for an efficient, humane, freedom-oriented system that would allow Latino immigrants and others to come, work, pay taxes, easily cross and recross our borders or pursue full-time citizenship.

As long as immigration is run by a government agency, which means it’ll be politicized and bureaucratized, and as long as we have our welfare state, that hope is just another libertarian pipe dream, of course.

Meanwhile, it’s a free country — pretty much.

You can rail about the fact that illegal immigrants broke the law to get into the USA or that illegals are costing taxpayers $10 billion a year — in a $2.57 trillion federal budget.

But with the economy growing, unemployment almost nonexistent and crime at 20-year lows, just don’t call our immigration problem a national crisis.

Steigerwald is at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: bsteigerwald@tribweb.com.

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Percent who send their children to public schools: 10.

This is total B.S. Just drive by every public school in Southern CA, and you'll be lucky to see more than 2-3 kids out of 100 who are white. And if this figure is correct, that means 90 percent of illegal's kids are doing what? Roaming the streets, part of a gang or who knows what?

What a short-sighted idiot that author is! What effect will this gigantic demographic shift have on the USA a few years down the road? Of course, we're already beginning to feel the effects, but nevermind that!

"Go back to sleep America because Tony Snow said it's all okay."

Does anyone with half a brain actually take that propaganda seriously!?!

neo-Know Nothings

(?)

A 'snow job' for sure!

Originally Posted by IndianaJones

neo-Know Nothings

(?)

A 'snow job' for sure!

Trying to equate our movement with a group from the past:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know-Nothing_movement

"Since the early 20th century the term has been a provocative slur, suggesting the opponent is both nativist and ignorant."

The usual ad hominem attacks of the OBL: Anyone who wants our border secure and people to come here legally is racist, nativist and ignorant.

Where has he been? Crime is up and now unemployment is going up...I hate journalists that lie!

Anybody else for sending this ignorant individual (I'm gritting my teeth, right now), an appropriate library worth of important threads?

But with the economy growing, unemployment almost nonexistent and crime at 20-year lows, just don’t call our immigration problem a national crisis.

You heard it from me first! I think this economic bubble is about to POP! Gas prices are causing across the board inflation. Trust me, it's about to hit the fan. The housing market is about to bust too. It's just a matter of time before we are launched back into the 80's. Remember how uncomfortable that was for the middle class. Get ready, here it comes. My cat food has already gone up 2 dollars a bag in the last 6 months. Look at the prices of everything in the store. They are going up up up and layoffs are on the rise too.

Dixie

Tony Snow used to be conservative - not any more. He was "seduced" by the LIBERAL SIDE. Real shame to see a decent conservative turn into a flaming, anti-American, ultra-left, Hillary-admiring, sucking-up-to-Communist-La-Raza, LIBERAL.

Did I leave anything out?

Coto

No Coto, you didn't.

I just think that maybe we should come up with different, yet printable name, other that conservative or liberal. Seems to me, IMO, that people like what Snow has become, are Globalists, which is a WHOLE AND MUCH WORSE POSITION than liberal. I think Globalists are liberals to the tenth power/socialists/communists. (how do you do power examples on a computer?)

Sorry for the shouting.