MSNBC.com

Readers share their immigration frustrations
Personal stories highlight many aspects of a hot Gut Check America issue
MSNBC
Updated: 3:37 a.m. PT July 9, 2007
As part of our Gut Check America coverage, MSNBC.com invited a number of readers who ranked illegal immigration as the most important issue facing the United States to share their experiences and concerns. Here's what they wrote.

Legal immigrant has had enough
I am a Cuban-born Hispanic naturalized citizen. I came to America as a child, legally. When I was old enough to ask, my parents told me that we had escaped from a bloody civil war and that we were now safe in America.

Unlike my home country, in America there was peace, prosperity and justice because it was a country of laws and not of men. My dad was an attorney. His admiration for America and the rule of law made my siblings and I revere the U.S. Constitution and America’s form of government. More than four decades later, I have my own family: a Danish-born wife, a boy, 6, and a girl, 2.

As a family, we celebrate legal and sustainable immigration and strongly oppose illegal behavior like identity and tax fraud committed by foreigners illegally in the country; and the abuse of tax-paid services to which they are not entitled. The cost of direct services to illegal aliens in California is $10.5 billion annually, which makes my family’s share of this theft of our tax dollars approximately $1,200, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. This known tax burden on each California family does not include the costs of building infrastructure and cleaning up the environment caused by population growth driven by illegal aliens.

From the first day, illegal aliens need to feed themselves, so they must falsify or steal a Social Security identity (there are 11 million stolen identities annually) in order to secure work. According to the U.S. Labor Department, 40 percent of illegal aliens and their employers commit tax fraud by not reporting income. According to the IRS, there are 9.6 million cases of Social Security “no matchâ€