Many
arguments, pro and con, about how to deal with illegal aliens have
been passionately debated over the past couple of years, but there are
still other arguments that need public exposure. Mark Krikorian
presents a new argument in his forthcoming book called "The
New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal
."
The pro-more-immigration crowd
argues that today's immigrants are just like immigrants of a
century ago: poor people looking for a better life who are expected to
advance in our land of opportunity. Krikorian's new argument is that
while today's immigrants may be like earlier ones, the America they
come to is so very different that our previous experience with
immigrants is practically irrelevant.
The essential difference between the two waves of immigrants was
best summed up by the Nobel Prize-winning advocate of a free market,
Milton Friedman. He said, "It's just obvious that you can't
have free immigration and a welfare state."
The term "welfare state" does not just mean handouts to the
non-working. Our welfare state encompasses dozens of social programs
that provide benefits to the "working poor," i.e., people
working for wages low enough that they pay little or no income taxes.
Immigrants of the previous generation were expected to earn their
own living, pay taxes like everybody else, learn our language, love
America, and assimilate into our culture. Today's immigrants likewise
come here for jobs not welfare.
During those prior major waves of immigration, the United States
didn't have a welfare state. Native-born Americans survived the
Great Depression of the 1930s without a welfare state.
The Social Security retirement system was established only in 1935.
Most other agencies that redistribute cash and costly benefits from
taxpayers to non-taxpayers started with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
in the late 1960s.
Today's low-wage immigrants and lower-wage illegals can't earn what
it costs to live in modern America, so they supplement with
means-tested taxpayer benefits. And many immigrants don't learn our
language or assimilate into American culture because of the
multicultural diversity taught in our schools and encouraged in our
society.
Today's immigrants fit the profile of the people who benefit from
our welfare state: the working poor with large families. Krikorian
sets forth some dismal figures.
About 30 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. workforce in 2005
lacked a high school education, which is four times the rate for
native-born Americans. Among the largest group of working-age
immigrants, the Mexicans, 62 percent have less than a high-school
education, which means they work low-wage jobs.
Nearly half of immigrant households, 45 percent, are in or near
poverty compared with 29 percent of native-headed households. Among
Mexicans living in the United States, nearly two-thirds live in or
near the government's definition of poverty.
Costly social benefits provided to the working poor include
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (now called TANF, formerly
AFDC), food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid, WIC (nutrition for
Women, Infants and Children), public housing, and Supplemental
Security Income (SSI).
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the most expensive
parts of income redistribution. Twice as many immigrant households (30
percent) qualify for this cash handout as native-headed households (15
percent).
Health care is another huge cost. Nearly half of immigrants are
either uninsured or on Medicaid, which is nearly double the rate for
native-born families. Federal law requires hospitals to treat all
comers to emergency rooms, even if uninsured and unable to pay.
Hospitals try to shift the costs onto their paying patients, and
when the hospitals exhaust their ability to do this, they close their
doors. In
Los Angeles, 60 hospitals have closed their emergency rooms
over the past decade, which imposes another kind of cost.
Immigration accounts for nearly all the growth in elementary and
secondary school enrollment over the past generation. The children of
immigrants now comprise 19 percent of the school-age population and 21
percent of the preschool population.
The
Heritage Foundation estimated that in order to reduce government
payments to the average low-skill household to a level equal to the
taxes it pays, "it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and
Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public
education roughly in half." Obviously, that is not going to happen.
Attempts to limit welfare eligibility for illegal aliens by
provisions added to the 1996 welfare reform law, SSI, food stamps,
Medicaid and TANF all failed. Krikorian concludes that "Walling
immigrants off from government benefits once we've let them in is a
fantasy."
As Americans are pinched between falling real estate values and the
inflation of necessities such as gasoline, they are entitled to know
how their tax dollars are being spent. The big bite that social
benefits to immigrants (one-third of whom are illegal) takes out of
taxpayers' paychecks should be factored into any debate about
immigration or amnesty policy.
