Moderator move to place post in proper section (originally placed by dataman in photos).

Dataman, if you see this, repost it under your name here in News Articles and I will delete this cut and paste of your original post.

Thanks!
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dataman
ALIPAC Apprentice 2
Joined: Mar 01, 2005
Posts: 135

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 10:27 am Post subject: Cost of illegals edditorial Phila Inq

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This is way too tame for me, but it is a start. Most of the mainstream media avoids this topic (cost) like the plague. Too pc. I sent them a
nice response. Maybe there will be some other volunteers.


Posted on Wed, Mar. 23, 2005
Philadelphia Inquirer

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news ... 205022.htm
(c) 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.


Editorial | The Cost of Illegal Immigrants
It's more than a security issue

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has reached 11 million, most of them coming from Mexico, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center. But new statistics and growing concern that our porous southern border invites terrorists into this country may not spark the White House into action.

In fact, Mexico President Vicente Fox warned that no major announcement on immigration would result from today's summit in Texas with President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. One would expect more from Bush, who governed the state with the second largest illegal immigrant population.

About 6 million illegals in the United States are Mexican. Not all of them stay close to the border. New Jersey, with 350,000 undocumented immigrants, according to the Pew researchers, ranks among the top eight states in that category. California is number one, with 2.4 million illegals, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina.

The Department of Homeland Security has an illegal immigrant category it calls "other than Mexicans," or OTMs. The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday that most of the 44,000 OTMs allowed in the United States while awaiting hearings last year were released on their own recognizance.

Most of the non-Mexican illegals come from other Latin and Central American countries. But the route they chose could be easily followed by others who traveled to Mexico simply to cross its borders.

Both 9/11 and Oklahoma City have taught Americans that it only takes a handful of terrorists to fashion a tragedy of epic proportions. Dozens of terrorists could slip through the Mexican border's holes.

But it's not just the fear of terrorism that demands attention to the immigration issue. The Pew report says a sixth of the illegal immigrants in this country are under age 18. Local schools and health-care systems can expect to see many of these children, as well as their estimated 3 million sisters and brothers who were born in this country and are U.S. citizens.

Bush proposed a "guest worker" program for illegal immigrants last year, but has not pushed the idea with Congress. He and Fox need to have more than a polite conversation about the issue. The number of Mexican-born U.S. residents has grown from 760,000 to more than 11 million since 1970. Each year, a half-million Mexicans move to the United States, about 80 percent of them illegally. They work here, go to school here, and they can't be ignored.