By Joe Sinagra | The Save Jersey Blog
The media is focusing on the human cost of events transpiring at our southern border, Save Jerseyans. There’s another cost which they rarely discussed.
New York has earmarked $4.9 million in giving legal assistance to foreign-born New York residents facing deportation, providing lawyers for low-income immigrants detained by federal authorities.
It’s joined a host of other U.S. cities including New Haven, Connecticut, Asbury Park, New Jersey, San Francisco, Richmond, Oakland and Los Angeles, California, and Washington, D.C., where a local identification card will serve all the documentation that’s needed to open a bank account, sign a lease, or even get a library card.
Public hospitals are already legally obligated to provide healthcare to anyone who requests it. If an ‘undocumented’ immigrant can’t pay for these services, then the taxpayers who support the hospital indirectly subsidize their care. It doesn’t end there. States are moving towards permitting illegal immigrants to obtain a legal drivers license that’s functionally the same as an American citizen’s drivers license. But is it really a “privilege” if you don’t have to pay for it?
In June 1972, the Supreme Court held that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status.
The U.S. government subsidizes health care and educates their children no matter what the voters say about footing the bill.
That bill is growing larger. The fiscal burden of illegal immigration on the United States taxpayers was estimated at $113 billion in 2010.
From The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that the cost of illegal immigration just for New Jerseyans is$3.48 billion:
$2.44 billion a year to educate the children of illegal aliens
$509 million a year on unreimbursed health care for illegal aliens$336 million a year on criminal justice activities for illegal aliens
$69.7 million a year on welfare for illegal aliens
$125 million a year for additional state/local operating costs
$1,327 annual cost to each of New Jersey’s native-born headed households
Illegal aliens are taking U.S. jobs while sending tens of billions out of the United States back to their home countries, draining the U.S. economy.
According to the Inter-American Development Bank, all of Latin America received a staggering $69.2 billion in remittances from the U.S. in 2009 alone.
Both legal and illegal immigrants send billions back to their home countries in cash transfers on untaxed money. In 2012, migrants working in the United States sent a staggering $120 billion back to their families. In 2013 Mexico received $21.59 billion in remittances, $13.45 billion to China, $10.84 billion to India and $10 billion to the Philippines.
Between June 2009 and June 2010, immigrants (including illegal aliens) have gained 656,000 jobs, while U.S. born workers lost 1.2 million jobs during that same period.
We need a new word; “expensive” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Here’s an idea: Identify the country of origin of each illegal immigrant. Bill the country for whatever public funds are spent on that immigrant. If the country doesn’t pay, freeze the country’s assets in the U.S. and then confiscate them to cover the debt. When the countries complain that their rights are being violated, encourage them to adopt the same policy for U.S. citizens who illegally enter their countries.
If the statistics provided in this article regarding remittances include all immigrants, then what’s the point of including them? Does the author have a problem with people who honestly and legally earn their own money, using that money in any way they see fit? Personally, I will refrain from criticizing how people choose to participate in a “free” market…
I will criticize if their first action to get involved in that free market requires them breaking our immigration laws. If they’ll break those laws which laws can you expect them to follow?
Kevin, did you miss the part about the statistics including legal immigrants?
The problem is the system, not the people. Open borders with no welfare system to suck dry would result in less of an “illegal” immigration problem.