Thread: Editorials : Illegal immigration defines differences

Editorials : Illegal immigration defines differences



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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The issue: Illegal immigrants continue to flow into the country, joining the millions already living here.

Our opinion: Because the illegal immigrants are both a boon and a burden, any solution will be problematic.

Six down and about 450,000 to go. That was the inauspicious tally in mid-August after the first week of Operation Scheduled Departure, a pilot program that allowed illegal immigrants who have been ordered to leave the country and have no criminal record to volunteer for deportation.

At this rate, the backlog should be cleared up around the year 3451, give or take a couple of centuries — bad news for those who see the illegal immigrants as a burden to taxpayers.

Worse news for them is the estimated total of 12 million to 15 million illegal immigrants living in the United States today, according to various congressional sources, and more arriving daily.

The influx is also increasingly pervasive. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, states that previously had few foreign-born residents have experienced the most rapid growth in undocumented immigrants over the past 15 years or so. Arizona and North Carolina ranked among the states with the largest numbers of undocumented migrants, while Pennsylvania was 17th, with between 100,000 and 150,000 illegal immigrants in 2004.

The worst news for everybody concerned — those who oppose the illegal immigrants, those who sympathize with them and the immigrants themselves — is that no news is forthcoming about a resolution. Our nation seems to be at an impasse.

What is the problem? We argue that it is our inability to agree on what the problem is.

On one side are the proponents of rigorous immigration enforcement, increasingly vocal since Sept. 11, 2001, who see a problem with law enforcement. They point to the illegal immigrants’ lack of respect for U.S. law, as demonstrated by their flouting the immigration statutes.

The illegal immigrants take jobs that could be performed by American citizens, thus increasing the unemployment rate, they say. In addition the immigrants do not pay taxes but do use social services such as hospitals, clinics, the judicial system and schools, thus placing a burden on taxpaying citizens and legal immigrants.

Throw the illegals out, they say.

Opponents argue that the problem is a lack of compassion. Illegal immigrants take low-wage, low-prestige, back-breaking jobs that citizens shun, and because they work cheap, they keep prices down.

Some illegal immigrants do pay income and Social Security taxes, this side says, with no hope of getting a return on the latter, and they certainly pay local taxes and contribute as consumers to the local economy — all this while using minimal social services.

Give them amnesty, they insist.

It would be easier to decide which side is right if one clearly had the weight of evidence on its side. In 1986, President Reagan granted an amnesty that eventually resolved the status of 2.7 million illegal immigrants, their disregard for the law notwithstanding, but offered no permanent solution.

As for economic impact, heavyweights such as the National Research Council and the Council on Foreign Relations can’t determine whether the immigrants, most of them earning low wages in construction, hospitality, food service and agricultural jobs, make life easier or harder for U.S. citizens.

Regardless of which side one takes, it’s clear that illegal immigrants are deeply enmeshed in the American economy. Perhaps that is why the solution is not forthcoming. We have learned to live with the status quo. Whether that helps or hurts us is still not clear, and so we remain undecided.

Meanwhile, the immigrants keep working, more keep coming, and the problem, however one defines it, only gets bigger. And that’s not good news.
http://www.readingeagle.com/blog.aspx?b ... ifferences

Anyone with a modicum of brain power understands that when an estimated 12-40 million illegals from a third world country, with an average of an 8th grade education, with limited job skills, and potential serious health maladies, with a socialist mind-set, converges on a thriving democratic nation, the results are going to be less than desirable. In fact the obvious outcome, if this population is allowed to stay in our country threatens the very sovereignty of our nation.

Some ways illegals are destroying our country:

1.They take (steal) the jobs that lower and middle income Americans used to hold. And they make it hard for legitimate companies to compete. Illegal employers are enjoying a higher profit margin and the American people are saddled with the taxes to cover ALL of their expenses. Any taxes that illegals do pay don’t begin to cover the ever rising costs of illegals and their families on our infrastructure.
2.Illegal’s are having children at alarming rates and these children dig into out tax dollars yet again to the tune of billions of dollars each year for education and health care. They are directly responsible for the “dumbing downâ€

Sound as if the article is a snow job.