Immigration: no hands on a hot-button issue
Dante Chinni
Posted: 04.11.2008 / 7:55 AM EDT
There are few pricklier issues in the 2008 presidential campaign than immigration. Most people concede the system is broken, but easy solutions are hard to find – note the collapse of the immigration bill in Congress last year.
It’s becoming like Social Security reform – an issue politicians don’t want to touch. So much so that legal immigration is taking a hit. Congress, for instance, hasn’t yet renewed an exemption for returning workers on H-2B visas, permits for seasonal workers, which means businesses across the country may find it tough to fill slots this summer.
You don’t have to be Lou Dobbs to see that immigration isn’t leaving the news soon. In the past week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Va., (about 45 miles northwest of Washington) and removed 59 workers who were suspected of being in the US illegally. Meanwhile, a new study on the financial costs of immigration was released by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York. The organization found that immigrants cost each taxpayer $9,000 a year.
However, the study was not without its flaws. Its figures included both legal and illegal immigrants. It also didn’t look at any positive economic impact from immigrants. But it made news in Washington.
And while Congress and the presidential candidates may be loath to take up the immigration issue, in several Patchwork Nation communities, it comes up more often than the Iraq war as a major concern.
Steve Hoogland, editor of the weekly newspaper in Sioux Center, Iowa, (our Tractor Country community) writes that when Sen. Charles Grassley stopped by for a town-hall meeting a few weeks ago about half of the questions he heard pertained to immigration, including topics of guest workers, a border fence, and amnesty.
The issue deeply divides Sioux Center, says Mayor Dennis Walstra. People in town say maintaining respect for the law and the Constitution is important, but at the same time “we’re at about zero percent unemployment. Someone has to work the jobs here,” he says.
Then there are the county commissioners who worry immigrants are taxing the prison system. Generally, they’re stopped for driving without insurance or caught carrying fake driver’s licenses, and later they’re held for immigration violations.
In Nixa, Mo., (our Evangelical Epicenter) illegal immigration is a big political topic even though Hispanics represent less than 3 percent of the town’s population.
Most residents in Nixa strongly oppose offering immigrants “amnesty,” or a path to citizenship. That GOP candidate John McCain supports such a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is a “big problem” for many here, writes Mayor Doug Marrs.
Another Patchwork Nation correspondent in Nixa writes that “there is much resentment of ‘illegals’ ” in the area even though there is some understanding that illegal immigrants are inexpensive laborers and help keep prices of goods and services low.
One thing seems clear from dozens of interviews in the 11 communities: People believe that the problem is getting worse.
In El Mirage, Ariz., (our Immigration Nation community) the hard feelings are felt in very real ways, says city councilman Roy Delgado. There are weekly anti-immigration protests in nearby Phoenix, he says, and it has charged the atmosphere in the entire area.
“It’s gotten worse in the recent months,” Mr. Delgado says. “People are getting pulled over for minor traffic issues like broken taillights or getting stopped for jaywalking if they’re brown.”
Delgado, who was born in the United States and fought in the US Army, says he experiences the tensions while standing in line at area stores – looks from some people and comments from others about “cutting in line” when he’s done nothing of the sort.
“It’s totally gotten out of hand and something has to be done about it,” he says. “Someone needs to come up with a real proposal.”
The question he and many others have: Will the candidates seriously address an issue that is so important to so many voters? There’s widespread skepticism that no one will.
“The problem is they’re all too scared to touch it,” Delgado says.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:34 pm EDT
There is no reason for any “prickliness” here. Just stick to the realities and facts. After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the follolwing report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION just released this week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The Fiscal Impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:39 pm EDT
[…] Christian Science Monitor: Immigration: no hands on a hot button issue […]
April 11th, 2008 at 1:51 pm EDT
Just last week research in Britain was released indicating that the theorized “financial benefits of immigration” were ephemeral if not non-existant in that nation.
Virtually every industrialized nation, even China, has taken steps to end illegal immigration, and too curtail legal immigration to only that which is prudent, demonstrably necessary, and above all other concerns, in the best interests of their native population. Its dangerously misguided to even suggest that the United States should not do likewise. Pragmatically, overpopulation, congestion, urban sprawl, crime, pollution, crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded schools and emergency rooms, lack of affordable housing, vanishing farm land and green space, diminishing natural resources, depressed wages, increased tax burdens, the balkanization of our communities, the overall decline in quality of life, are all the result of unconstrained immigration. Too many people competing for limited resources has never been considered sound economic, environmental, social or cultural policy!
April 11th, 2008 at 1:59 pm EDT
A link to the Manhattan Institute study you cite would have been very helpful. At least give the report name and it’s author.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:05 pm EDT
Quote:
“In El Mirage, Ariz..it has charged the atmosphere in the entire area…
“It’s gotten worse in the recent months,” Mr. Delgado says. “People are getting pulled over for minor traffic issues like broken taillights or getting stopped for jaywalking if they’re brown.”
What a lie.
I wish I had a dollar for every time a minority motorist has accused me of “profiling” them when I pull them over for that broken taillight or illegal lane usage or Hollywood stop. I hear that same whine so often. “It’s because I’m Mexican…it’s because I’m black…”
My response? “It’s 2 a.m. and I was behind your car/truck. YOU had no idea I was WHITE until I walked up right to your window. Just like I had no idea of YOUR race until I walked up.”
Always the attempt to get out of their wrongdoing and put it on someone white.
THIS is why people are so sick and tired of “immigrants.”
April 11th, 2008 at 6:57 pm EDT
Back in the Clinton administration we kicked several million families off of the welfare system. I guess we needed to make room for the illegal aliens.
They are clogging up our health care system, yet we can’t adequately treat our disabled troops coming home from Iraq.
Until we start giving their law breaking employers some hard prison time, this will continue.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm EDT
I just don’t have the energy to spare for disliking people. However, living in LA shows a whole different side of the world. The third world. Babel. Wasted time in the classroom–the teacher teaches half the time in English and half the time in Spanish. No telling what happens to the kids whose native language is Vietnamese or Farsi or 98 other languages. And the idea that the jails are full of illegals whose only crime (aside from illegally entering this country, which I consider to be a monumental crime) is a broken tail light. Not all gangbangers are illegals, but a large portion are. Many Americans–and in our area, Americans who are African-Americans–have fallen victim to gang violence. Please, this is not funny or cute or blown out of proportion, though some indoorsy Bostonians entertain themselves by looking down on those in American who are dealing with more than just some leaks in the Big Dig.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:55 pm EDT
Surely the use of fake ids and credit cards, the fraudulent use of stolen social security numbers and birth certificates, are enough to raise huge concerns over the issue? Surely dishonesty is not an acceptable pathway to legitimacy? However, until the federal government takes this bull by the horns, there doesn’t appear to be any resolution in the offing to clearly deal with these crucial concerns and often dire consequences. Somehow common sense and practicality is being buried with a rationalization of dubious motives.
April 12th, 2008 at 4:02 pm EDT
The government figures on immigration are so phony. Two of the many examples:
More than half of the “legal” immigrants to the U.S. are here already illegally and getting thier “status regularized”, which means 600,000 extra illegals get counted as legals and subtracted from the illegal list. How do they do this? Who knows… but lots of lawyers (like some of my friends) get paid well.
Then there is the refuge game. In the past few months the Economist has reported that the 50,000 Indians thrown out of Uganda 40 years ago by Idi Amin who now live in Kenya and the 30-40,000 Nepalies thrown out of Bhutan during the same period who now live in Nepal are to be granted “refuge status” in the U.S. Why? They are in no danger. But our government routinely makes (unreported in the U.S. press)greencards-for-political-support deals with corrupt governments. Usually it is “friends and family”. But Uganda doesn’t want to give the Indians back the property they owned… so the U.S. pays in greencards to get Uganda and Kenya off the messy legal and political hook. After the Tainammin (sic?) square episode many of the Chinese grad. student in the U.S.- mainly officials kids here on pull- signed up as “refugees”. Now they freely travel back-and-forth from the U.S. to China with no problems on U.S. passports. Dictators being rewarded for killing thier own people with greencards for thier relatives…
Then there are the roughly 1,000,000 Palestinians in the U.S. Nice folks. The U.S. government immigration reports list NO immigrants from Gaza or the West Bank. Huh? What gives? Well our ally Israel occupies the west bank, coops up the exploding population in 30% of the land, then somehow the population overflow finds a “safety valve” into the U.S. I’m sure our favorite Hamas-affiliated Palestinians get greencards for all the nephews… So where in the immigration report are they listed… or are the immigration figures like Soviet grain production statistics… “subject to revision”?
April 12th, 2008 at 5:58 pm EDT
Everyone can agree that emotion is now driving the biased information we are fed. Cable Networks have tapped this issue as a sureproof means of hiking their ratings, and maintaining them up as they stoke peoples passion. People’s passiones were inflamed because the information of all the aspects of immigration, for the most part, were biased in the first place.
Anchors have used wartime propaganda. You will find that wartime propaganda is fairly well established as a terrible discipline in time of war. Dehumanize the enemy as “Jap”, as “Hun”, as “Jew”, as “Spic”, as “Anchor Baby” and it’s all the easier to hate that group. We accuse the Germans for having fallen enthralled to the constant, unceasing, unremmitting wartime propaganda of their evil wartime leaders. Lou Dobbs programms have gone from being shown 5 days a week, to 6 days a week, to 7 days a week.
Do you find it unfathomable that such a large, well-educated population can be manipulated into disproportional hate. Well, not so long ago this nation was manipulated by disproportional fear into a war with biased information unceasingly drummed by a few men.
A hard-working legal resident in Arkansas this month was beaten to death for complimenting the looks of a baby in Spanish. Such is the power of hateful propaganda and biased information. Information from a conservative think-tank, from a liberal think-tank–where is its natural bias?–what is its reason for being if not for being biased?
In 10-15 years there will be between 77-79 elderly baby boomers withdrawing Social Security Retirement and Medicare Benefits at a time when the elderly are living longer and accruing higher medical costs. Social Security’s and Medicare’s sustainability is in question, according to Treasury Secretary Paulson, unless, according to his Analysis that came our during Easter,unless there are enough immigrants, legal an illegal, paying into those trust funds. It was a logical, fact-based Analysis. It received little attention. Remember that in another twenty years when we go to the local food pantry as Senior Citizens trying to make ends meet.
April 12th, 2008 at 9:01 pm EDT
what irks me to no end - is the law abiding, well educated foriegn nationals who attempt to enter legally are turned away; while others are rewarded for illegally smuggling into our country with amnesty and other benefits. Case in point - I live in a rural area where we have to rely on foriegn physicians (because of a lack of american-borne MDs to live out here) and these medical professionals in our underserved areas have mountains of red tape, to try and obtain, extend or renew their work visas..
But illegal migrants - crowding in here, where unemployment is rampant, and seems to go unpunished. There’s something wrong with a nation that turns away skilled, talented, law abiding and educated professionals but encourages growth of the underclass.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:11 pm EDT
There is something weak, silly, and doomed about a nation that cannot control its borders.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:55 am EDT
Mr. Munoz, despite the positive/negative effects of Illegal Immigration, this is a subject for the American People to decide - not immigrants. Typically, all subsequent acts obtained by an illegal action are null and void. If someone breaks the law to arrive in this country, it really doesn’t matter what their “benefit” to society by being here is - they have broken the law to enter this country - ALL subsequent actions are without legal protection. IF, and that is a BIG if, the borders are fully enforced and controlled and the United States sees reason to do so, then the United States can decide whether to relax their immigration policies. Until then, talking about the “benefits” immigrants bring to the U.S. is disingenuous. How many immigrants have waited their turn in line? How many Emergency Rooms need to close due to unreimbursed costs incurred by uninsured and illegal immigrants? Why is it that the American people, cannot demand their borders be enforced? It is not Lou Dobbs, it is an enraged American populace, who see their standards of living reduced due to Federal mandates to educate and provide medical care for people that do not have any legal right to be in this country! Is there another country in the world that provides these “benefits” to illegal residents? Mexico (not a prayer)? France (not even a prayer)? The People’s Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela? The point is, NO country has any obligation to provide education and medical benefits to people that have NO legal right to reside in that country!
April 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm EDT
The people I know who are angriest about illegals happen to be LEGAL residents and naturalized citizens.
There is another problem, a biggie, in that the immigrants we are now getting are not assimilating. They are creating their own little Balkans in (mostly) urban areas. Do we want to be a divided country like Canada? Canada, for all its charm and goodness, barely holds together for the French-speaking wanting to break away and form their own country. We could very well see that here, specially in the southwest. Mexican activists have already stated openly that they intend to “take back” territory by virtue of birth rate. Mexicans (although many now are not Mexicans, but simply Spanish-speaking people from other countries who came through Mexico to infiltrate our southern borders) take the heat because they are so numerous and so visible. For those who pose this as a racist attitude (wanting to secure the borders)–HOGWASH. It’s name calling so you don’t have to speak to real issues. And it’s worked so far, but look out. Eventually, even the meek will realize how they’ve been manipulated by the name-callers.
When I lock my doors at night, I’m not locking them to just burglars of color. I’m locking my doors to ALL intruders.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm EDT