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Originally Posted by savage560
Immigration is the biggest problem we have today, & sooner than latter it will affect the future of our nations, like it or not.The time has come to choose which way nations will go, & America HAS chosen. It seems Britain has too. Where are you world? We'll see, in France very soon & if Madam Le Pen is elected?  |
We have had the illegal immigrants on welfare discussion before. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for welfare, Medicare, or Medicaid. They are eligible for schooling and emergency medical care. Most of the costs to state and local governments for illegal immigrants come from educating their children. On the other hand, the Social Security Administration estimates that undocumented immigrants and their employers pay $13 billion per year in taxes for which they will never receive benefits.
There is a problem with the immigration policy giving preference to family members of
legal immigrants. For example, a student from China or an Indian Tech worker on an H1-B visa, gets a job here and becomes a citizen. That worker brings their parents here. The parents will wind up in HUD subsidized housing and be receiving Medicaid. That phenomenon and poorly educated and marginally skilled refugees cause 72% of
legal immigrants to receive some form of public assistance. It is estimated that 62% of households headed by one or more undocumented immigrants are receiving public monies because their U.S. born children qualify for TANF funds, food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized school lunches. Please note that since 1996 green card holders must wait
five years before they can collect any form of public assistance, while those here illegally are barred from receiving benefits.
We are in agreement that the spigot needs to be turned off until we can absorb the quarter of our population of !st or 2nd generation immigrants. I am concerned that ICE's rather ham fisted approach could cause agricultural shortages as few American want or can do that work efficiently. Also, we hear that undocumented parents are keeping their U.S. born children out of school for fear of being caught and separated from their children. We don't need to be creating more poorly educated kids, or putting more kids into foster care. I am very much in favor of either deporting criminal gang members or placing them in prisons where they are greatly outnumbered and letting the inmates take care of them.
As a final note, if we take the CIS estimate that the 3.7 million immigrant households receive an average of $6,234 in benefits, the total cost of those benefits would be $23.1 billion. We don't know exactly how much in taxes they pay. One estimate is $90 billion, but let's cut that in half and say that immigrants are paying $20 billion more in taxes than they consume. That would still be a positive contribution to GDP.
Then there are these little tidbits. 2015 is the most recent year for which we have accurate measures of government spending. The military spending of the United States was $598.5 billion that year. Interest payments on the national debt totaled $223.2 billion. Basic economics teaches that military spending and government borrowing are drags on GDP.
IMO, unequal distribution of income, poor educational performance, the growing deficit, and the poor return on healthcare expenditures are much bigger problems.