Illegal immigration is not a benefit to our society, but, rather, a huge drain.

First of all, when it comes to Social Security and tax revenue, there’s no way illegals can bail us out, since they use far more in services than they might happen to pay into Social Security or pay in federal taxes. At the federal level their net drain in 2002 (“The High Cost of Cheap Labor; Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget,” Center for Immigration Studies, most recent statistics) — figuring taxes paid minus services used — was $10.4 billion. And this drain would triple if illegal aliens were legalized, as they would be eligible for even more services. And at the state and local level, this deficit is even greater where most of the costs for schools, criminal justice and needed infrastructure upgrades are felt.

Secondly, while it’s true many Americans don’t compete with illegal aliens for jobs, the poorest 15 percent of Americans definitely do. And, don’t be fooled; there is no evidence of a labor shortage in this country. The only shortage is in the minds of employers who can never seem to find labor that’s cheap enough. There are 60 million Americans of working age (18-64) who have only a high school degree or less, and 23 million of these individuals are currently not in the labor force. In addition, there are 10 million teenagers, ages 15-17, who are currently not in the labor force.

And if this information isn’t enough, what about the crime statistics on incarceration rates and the horrible crimes illegals commit? For example, a 12-month in-depth study by Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta finds that there are currently more than 240,000 illegal alien sex offenders in the United States and that 93 more sex offenders are coming into the country illegally every day. It also notes that the number of victims per sex offender is four. Just think, that’s nearly 1 million chances that you or someone you love could be sexually assaulted by someone who shouldn’t even be in this country.

No, illegal immigration is not a benefit to this country.

 

Paul Westrum

Albert Lea