Immigration Costs
The numbers are flying fast and furious between the pro and con immigration folks. So are the names.
There are a few facts that appear beyond dispute. There are about 12 million people now in the United States who did not arrive from their home nations properly. Some snuck in. Some overstayed their visas.
The majority of illegals are of Mexican or Latin American origin. Not all are. New York and Boston house communities of illegals from Ireland. The three Yugoslavs recently arrested for planning to attack Fort Dix were here illegally, had been since they were toddlers in fact.
Not every one who speaks Spanish in the United States is an illegal. Some are folks whose ancestors lived in the Southwest before there was a United States. Some are from Puerto Rico, and are as American as apple pie. Using color, language or culture to identify an illegal immigrant may result in a serious error on your part.
The issue is colored by racism. It is far easier to point to “Mexicans” as the problem, just as it once was to point to Italians, Slavs, or the Irish. That is not the problem. That is the lazy and bigoted way of describing the problem.
Patterico talks about another aspect of the problem from his perspective.
Studies like the Cato study ignore quality of life issues that result from an overabundance of people, and they also give short shrift to the strain on the infrastructure caused by millions of extra people. Of course they crowd the roads. Of course they crowd the hospitals. Of course they crowd the schools and the jails and the prisons. And of course there is a cost to all of this.
There are simply too damn many people — and the law is supposed to control the numbers to keep them in line with our capacity to handle them. Why doesn’t the Cato Institute talk about that?
He’s talking about a Cato piece.
Patterico then proceeds to blame most of the social and governmental ills in California on illegals. Crowded highways are the fault of that extra one or two million Mexicans in Los Angeles. Crowded hospitals, prisons, increased crime all make his list.
Huh?
Traffic sucked in L.A. long before illegal immigration was a major issue. It’s been a standing joke since the sixties. Freeway traffic is due to Mexicans? Nope.
Hospital overcrowding? I just spent the third full day of the last four months in emergency department of the local level one trauma center here in Rochester. Perhaps the odd Mexican or two, but what I saw were old folks, hundreds of old folks with healthcare needs that could not or would not be addressed elsewhere. Every city in the nation has overcrowded hospitals and the reasons for that have very little to do with illegals and a lot to do with government controls on health care.
Prison overcrowding? Sure, if the illegals were not there those beds might be empty. But those beds exist for a reason unrelated to illegals. We have discovered that if you lock up criminals they don’t commit crime. Our various lawmaking bodies have passed “three strike” laws and made more offenses punishable by prison for the last few decades for just that reason. A botched “War on Drugs” has done nothing to improve overcrowding. Heck, Paris Hilton will serve about half her sentence because they don’t have room for her to stay the entire 45 days. If the criminals who are illegals were sent home, those beds would just fill up with the Paris Hiltons of the country.
Schools? Here again, every city in the country has a lousy school system, underfunded and overcrowded. Rochester graduates something like 45% of its students and it isn’t because of Mexicans crowding the halls.
I paid in the neighborhood of $5,700 in state and federal income taxes last year, and about another $3,100 in real estate property taxes. Call it $9,000. Now, I’m going to use that number, even though illegals do pay real estate taxes, through rent. What did I consume?
I had 24/7 fire protection. The streets I drove on were paved. Even though I have no children, I derived a small social benefit from the schools. It kept the kids next door busy, for one thing. The town provided a police force and picked up brush and the odd concrete block. The roads got plowed. My ambulance corps got a $15,000 pork grant from our state senator. I voted.
I paid for water and sewer as a utility. Ambulance calls are billed to the patient. I shoveled my own sidewalk. I raked and bagged my own leaves. I paid for weekly trash pickup.
The question is whether or not my $9,000 paid for the services I used? I could toss on a few more, I suppose. I did not personally use the United States Marines but I did pay a part of their budget. Fish and Wildlife, the same. I do regret paying the salaries of the members of the New York State legislature and the Congress of the United States.
I suspect I fall in to the category that most illegals do. I consume far more services than I pay for. You could ship me home, except that my people have been in this country since the 1600’s. If being a “Johnny come lately” is a reason for deportation, I wonder if Patterico falls in to the “riffraff” category?
You see, illegals pay a lot for their stay in this country. Sales taxes, tolls, payroll withholdings that they will never get credit for, real estate taxes, water and sewer fees. There’s probably more.
The definition of a city includes a high population density. Cities all over the country suffer from the same ills that L.A. does, without have the convenience of brown skinned folks to blame it on. It’s just part of being an urban center in modern America.
Miami has the same problems and all the brown skinned Spanish speakers there are legal.
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