ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: COSTS, PROPOSALS
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: COSTS AND SOME
PROPOSED REFORM MEASURES
by
Ken Eliasberg
One could write endlessly about the problems associated with illegal immigration, and, indeed, they have—just enter “illegal immigration” or “illegal immigration reform” under google and you will find13,500,000 entries under the former and 3,790,000 under the latter. Unfortunately deeds have been slow to follow words. Nonetheless, this wealth of verbiage provides some indication of the magnitude of the problem. For present purposes, suffice it to say that it is a problem that has cost the United States dearly—both in terms of dollars and, more important, in terms of both our national security and the integrity of our legal system. There are a number of proposed reform measures being offered up, but, quite frankly, some of them do little more than kick the problem on down the road (a legislative approach that seems all too common these days), and it remains to be seen whether others can be harmonized to arrive at a plan that’s calculated to be both responsive and effective. In this column, let’s take a brief look at the costs (and benefits), and an equally brief look at some of the reform proposals.
Costs.- The costs of illegal immigration are staggering, taking the form of crime, a drain on our educational system, our penal system, and our health care system. And many of these costs are either passed along to you or result in the diminution of services that are available to you. For example, the requirement (under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) that an emergency facility must provide care even if the recipient is unable to pay for the treatment (and also happens to be an illegal immigrant) resulted in the closure of some 80 hospitals in California from 1994 to 2003. I’m sure that many of you have witnessed the closing of an emergency facility in your area. Hospitals can simply not afford to treat patients on a charitable basis on this scale—and they’re not doing it, having no option but to go out of business. Illegals also contribute in significant numbers to our crime rate, and, as a consequence, become a burden on our penal system. In addition, they are a burden on our educational system (prop. 187 was intended to take their pressure off our healthcare and educational systems, but left-wing courts and a left-wing governor aborted this effort). Finally, and perhaps, most important, illegal immigration is a serious and substantial assault on the integrity of our legal system.
There are benefits as well. Illegal immigrants (some 7 million of them) are employed in a multitude of diverse industries, the economy of which would be adversely effected if they were to be summarily removed, creating a ripple effect which would be dispersed throughout the economy at large. Indeed, there are those who argue that immigrants—whether legal or illegal—are absolutely necessary to the preservation of our social security system. That is, our birth rate is flat, our retirement numbers are on the increase, and we shall need more workers to fund the costs of social security. Workers, whatever their legal status under immigration laws, are, the argument runs, an essential component in this retirement system. I would submit that this is hardly an exemplary argument for either doing nothing about Social Security or making any adjustments based on the need to rely on illegal immigrants.
In all events, the costs and benefits are not evenly spread throughout our society. While the benefits may be so distributed, I strongly suspect that the costs are disproportionately born by border states, in general, and California, in particular.
.Proposed Reform Measures.- Before looking at a few of the reform proposals that have been offered up by various legislators, let’s make one basic observation regarding the mood of the country, for it goes to the heart of the matter. And that is simply this—the vast majority of our citizenry does not support amnesty. And for good reason: Amnesty doesn’t respond to the problem; it compounds it. What is amnesty? It is no more than an act of forgiveness—or more accurately, the pardon of past sins, coupled with a welcome-home invitation. In other words, we shall put all of these illegal immigrants, or at least the great preponderance of them, on the fast track to citizenship, disregarding entirely the fact that they violated the law to get on this track. If this is a solution, then I’m afraid I don’t see it (nor does the overwhelming majority of Americans). Not only is this tantamount to putting a bandaid on cancer, it’s worse—it is feeding the cancer, for it is an invitation to perpetuate the very problem that we are endeavoring to resolve. And that is exactly what’s happened on the two previous occasions when amnesty has been the method used to address the problem, and, more to the point, that’s exactly why we find ourselves in our present predicament.
That said, let’s look briefly at the reform proposals on the table. First, the measure proposed by Senators McCain and Kennedy (McCain/Kennedy), which, in my opinion, is, in reality, an amnesty-wolf in reform-sheep