And universal health care, which I hope we will have but I’m not holding my breath, is not going to mitigate the problems my sister sees. (FWIW since she’s a public health nurse working for the gov’t the taxpayers pay for her services.)

Your comment about having the feds dole out the money is mysterious to me. The Feds R Us. It’s not free money.

Indeed, I’m highly suspicious of any thinktank that harps on about the immediate costs of immigration without any eye to the longterm benefits these shortterm outlays are bringing communities and the nation. Every child of illegal immigrants we spend thousands of dollars educating is going to go on to pour many times that back into the system in the form of taxes he’ll be paying over the course of his life, and in the form of consumer spending he’ll be stimulating the economy with. We should continue to provide healthcare, welfare, and education for poor illegals for the exact same reason we provide it for poor citizens: because ultimately it’s good for the economy (not to mention the only morally justifiable stance).

As for the descendants of Latin American immigrants eventually outnumbering whitebread Americans I could really care less. I’m sure there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Massachusetts when it became clear the Irish were going to outnumber the Anglos in a few decades, or in the Midwest with the Germans. They’ll integrate, just like every other wave of immigrants has before them, and our nation will be the better for it.

As for your sister, you can console her with the fact that in a few years, if we’re lucky, we’ll have universal healthcare and everything she does will be paid for by taxpayers.

The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury. The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.
This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant. California has estimated that the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates.

Now mind you, there is nothing wrong with immigration per se. But to borrow from President Clinton, it’s the numbers, stupid! None of these costs, and none of the environmental costs would be a problem if immigration were kept to 100,000-200,000 a year. But we’re taking in between 1-2 million a year, maybe more, and they are having babies far faster than native US citizens. (My sister is a public health nurse who seems them come in baby after baby for care that is paid for by the taxpayers.)

Yo siempre tengo el problema con escoger el género correcto para una frase en español. Arrepentido.

At least I am trying, eh?

Immigrants are of great economic benefit to the country, whether they’re illegal or not. We’ve always imported poor immigrants, unless you think the Irish who fled here during the potato famine were tophat-sporting oligarchs. Hell, a particularly large green woman in NYC went so far as to characterize immigrants as tired and poor.

That they start out poor means nothing. Immigrants integrate themselves economically very effectively. Within a few decades the descendants of these impoverished Mexican farm laborers will be paying your pension.

And we should continue to pay for illegal immigrants’ healthcare and educations for the same reason we pay for our own citizens’ healthcare and educations: it makes them more productive contributors to the economy. Let’s not lose the forest for the trees – for every dollar we spend treating an illegal’s ailments or educating his children, the economy as a whole reaps several times that in the long run.

It’s impossible to stop illegal immigration. No amount of fence-building or draconian police enforcement will stop people from moving north of the border so long as Mexico remains in the hellish state it’s in. It’s a red herring and a canard to suggest otherwise.

The answer to the woes of high school dropouts isn’t keeping their economic niche on life support by protecting it from global competition (of which illegal immigrants are only one form), it’s to invest in adult education and get them back in the workforce for real.

Regarding the minimum wage, it just went up by a couple of dollars. And it ought to go up a lot more, because $7/hr still isn’t a decent wage. It will be easier to stop illegal immigration than to get the minimum wage up to a decent level.

Regarding US high school dropouts, the illegals that take their jobs have no better education, so your argument about globalization is irrelevant. People without a college degree have very crummy prospects. That doesn’t mean we should flood the market for the kinds of jobs they do and doom our most deprived citizens to being unemployed all their lives. You need to think this through a little more.

High school dropouts shouldn’t be under the impression that life would be just great for them without all these illegals taking their jobs. Not completing high school is simply not a viable option in our increasingly globalized economy, with or without illegal immigrants.

“The illegals, who number more like 20 million according to the investment firm, Bear Stearns, whch did the only really careful study of the matter, are here only to improve their own conditions. But the Mexican government has a deliberate policy of exporting its poorest citizens to the US”

Which makes them absolutely no different from every other wave of immigrants in the history of the country.

“The rationale is obvious (follow the money, always follow the money). The single biggest source of Mexican GNP is money Mexican workers in the US send home. It amounts to around 20 billion annually.”

We should let their wives and children in, too. That way they won’t send the money they earn back across the border.

“Following the money still further, those who favor mass immigration within the US tend to be big companies. WalMart was able to undercut the wages of grocery checkers in southern california by about $10/hr, paying its checkers around $7 instead of $17, which had been the going rate. Meat packing used to pay around $17-18/hr before the flood of immigrants. Now it pays around $8, and the conditions are abysmal–lots of accidental amputations, repeptitive stress injury.”

Raise the minimum wage and tighten safety standards. That’s a lot easier to enforce than hairbrained efforts to block illegals, anyway.

“Congestion charges will definitely be coming to a city near you if the population keeps exploding.”

Good. The US needs fewer cars and more public transportation anyway.

The rationale is obvious (follow the money, always follow the money). The single biggest source of Mexican GNP is money Mexican workers in the US send home. It amounts to around 20 billion annually. In contrast, the country that gets the largest amount of foreign aid from the US, Israel, gets about 3.5 billion.

Following the money still further, those who favor mass immigration within the US tend to be big companies. WalMart was able to undercut the wages of grocery checkers in southern california by about $10/hr, paying its checkers around $7 instead of $17, which had been the going rate. Meat packing used to pay around $17-18/hr before the flood of immigrants. Now it pays around $8, and the conditions are abysmal–lots of accidental amputations, repeptitive stress injury.

One of the fast food companies tried to buy Tom Tancredo, the Republican who is running for president on a platform of ending mass immigration, including illegal immigration. Tancredo was not for sale. And look at the Republican legislators who support mass immigration and illegal immigration–people like McCain, Arlen Specter, Chris Cannon of Utah, and W himself–all big business republicans.

As for driving, it will get worse as the population grows. We went from 150 million when Eisenhower was pres, to about 310 million now. The population grow by the equivalent of 4 New Jerseys during the ’90s (about 35 million), three quarters of which was due to mass immigration. The Senate amnesty bill would have added something like 80 million over the next 20 years. If traffic’s a problem now, imagine how it will be when the population hits half a billion. Congestion charges will definitely be coming to a city near you if the population keeps exploding.

When I read these things like this, I really wonder what the Pilgrims thought of those German & Dutch settlers in the 17th century.

California’s school problems stem from their ridiculous refusal to raise property taxes, or to find any other way to pay for schools.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, from 1980-95, the average US high school dropout’s wages dropped 30%, half of which was due to mass immigration. Research by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that the number of employed Americans with high school degrees or less has declined by about a million and a half during the last five years while employment among similarly poorly educated immmigrants has risen by about 3 million, and that most of this shift has occurred in occupations where illegals are concentrated. As for California schools, no doubt the property tax problem has contributed. However, a friend who is one of the more eminent hard scientists in the country, who used to teach at UC Santa Barbara, was appalled to find that his daughter, in the 3rd grade at a school that was 80% immigrant, was only in the 35th percentile nationally in math. He went to talk to her teacher. Not to worry, he was told. His daughter was the star of the class.

David Holtzman,

Do yourself a big favor.

In fact, EVERYONE, do yourself a favor and download "September 11 Evidence to the Contrary" from Bit Torrent. You will find it on btjunkie.org http://btjunkie.org/search?q=september+11%3A+Evidence

If you are not hooked up with Bit Torrent (Bit Torrent is a protocol), you need a client. Try the "BitLord" client…it is freely available. Download "September 11 Evidence to the Contrary", watch it, and then ask yourself who killed your girlfriend's mother.

Illegal immigration in itself is very much a victimless crime. Illegals contribute to the economy, they pay taxes, their children learn English in our schools and go on to pay to support social security, and it’s entirely likely that if they weren’t around entire industries would shift across the border.

California’s school problems stem from their ridiculous refusal to raise property taxes, or to find any other way to pay for schools.

No-one is saying a foreign-born terrorist is worse than a citizen terrorist. However, it is just plain stupid to have policies that make life easy for foreign-born terrorists. It is similarly bad policy to create state or city “sanctuaries” for people who are in the country illegally. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. Terrorists aside, illegal immigrants take jobs from American citizens; their presence depresses wages; they cost the taxpayers for things like health care; and they dumb down our schools. California, which has the most immigrants, used to have decent schools, but it has slipped to 49th in the nation.

We have to be careful not to throw away our liberties for the sake of so-called security. I say bravo to Maine.

Do we want to go down the road of everyone having a bio-chip, every car and cellphone having a GPS, walls around our borders that keep us from leaving, cameras on our streets, (like the U.K) taking our pictures when we are with our mistresses, police listening to our phone calls and reading our posts on TTAC, and our being audited just because we contribute money to a candidate out of favor with the King?

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to live in O’Reillyland.

In a study of foreign-born terrorists in the US by the Center for Immigration Studies, 2/3s had immigration violations. Details at http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/kephart.html

Personally, I’m disgusted with both major parties and virtually all of the current imbicilic politicians because, in case it escaped their notice, we are literally at war against people who wish to destroy our way of life – and leaving the borders wide open is just plain suicidal.

Please, let’s keep the discussion realistic. You’ve forgotten that the 9/11 hijackers were in this country LEGALLY, that they mostly came from Saudi Arabia, (a country we have not invaded and do not intend to invade), and that they’d have been able to buy guns in Maine regardless of the laws under discussion.

Bush, by failing to take the terrorist threat seriously in the first place, and then through all of the security theater his cronies introduced, has been a bigger threat to our way of life than Osama. I mean, you can’t bring your own reasonably-priced bottled water on a domestic airplane flight. And some idiots are all freaked out about the ridiculous notion that swarthy Arabs are going to behead their children in the middle of the night. Mission accomplished for Osama! Thanks, Cheney!

Which is a problem, because a lot of those countries of origin have high rates of corruption, meaning that people who are underage or cannot drive are getting functional driver’s licenses for $20 under the table.

The bigger concern for me is whether they have insurance, although that isn’t an issue limited to illegals, by any means.

The handgun thing is freaky because I can’t believe I live in a country where any nutjob with a license and no felony conviction can
buy a Glock just over the border from my comfy blue state.

En este caso me parece que tu esposa cubano debe clarificar el funcionamiento del género gramatical en español para tí.

TTAC’s rightly-lauded reputation for civilized debate about cars isn’t something I’d like to see put at risk by squabbles over immigration or gun control or the war in Iraq. The TTAC community is united by our love for cars, other issues can only serve to divide us and embitter discourse.