ILLEGAL ALIENS COST BILLIONS SAYS REPORT
By Mike Blair October 3, 2005 American Free Press
There are currently at least 20 million illegal aliens living in the United States, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for social services, police protection and medical care. Not to be overlooked are the dozens of state and federal agencies that have been created to deal with this growing problem.
According to Diana Mull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization and an expert on immigration, the number of undocumented migrants in the United States is currently more than the entire population of New York State. It is larger than the combined populations of Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
Using figures recently cited in a report by the investment-banking firm of Bear Stearns, Mull says that as many as 3 million illegal aliens are entering the U.S. annually and the number is growing. Unchecked illegal immigration is damaging the U.S. economy and putting millions of Americans out of work.
And yet, President Bush adamantly refuses to do anything to stop illegal aliens from entering the United States.
Bear Stearns’s statistics are in stark contrast to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Census numbers have been assailed as grossly underestimating the problem, primarily because most illegals chose not to report their presence to a census taker.
The banking and securities firm’s research was compiled from a number of sources, including incidences of border crossings, foreign remittances, housing permits, school enrollments and language proficiency programs.
The report, compiled by researchers Robert Justich and Betty Ng, concludes that the sheer numbers of illegals in America will be of “major significance” in the nation’s future.
It is estimated that local, state and federal agencies are paying out more than $30 billion annually to provide illegal aliens with such services as education, law enforcement and health care.
In addition, the money being paid to foreign workers “under the table” is costing the nation as much as $35 billion annually in lost tax revenue, which must be made up by those that report their income and pay their taxes.
According to the financial publication, W Magazine, which extensively covered the Bear Stearns report, “The best guess as to the size of the output of this shadow economy is about $970 billion annually,” paid “under the table,” which, if taxed, could erase the nation’s current budget deficit.
Why have the Bush and previous administrations not made any meaningful efforts to bring this population invasion to a halt?
The answer could be found in part in the conclusion of Ms. Hull—that this large underground work force, estimated to be accounting for 8 percent of the nation’s workers, or 12 to 15 million U.S. jobs, “contributes to a skewed economic view, helping news look rosier, including government productivity reports that may be reflecting the outputs but not the complete picture on labor inputs.”
This, Ms. Hull states, inflates the “often-touted high productivity numbers in the United States,” making the administration look good in the national media and, thus, hoodwinking the dollar-bled U.S. taxpayers.
The cost of supporting the illegals is devastating, as one example illustrates.
Wages to cheap alien workers have actually decreased the average annual earnings of all Americans by as much as 6 percent.
Says Ms. Hull: “[T]he short-term benefits of cheap labor—like any purported free lunch—have a steep price for Americans pushed out of the work force and for taxpayers who pick up the billions of dollars in taxes unpaid by the underground economy.”
Across America, illegal aliens occupy subsidized housing, which is intended to house poor American citizens. But illegals, who report no income, are occupying apartments, paid for by Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service to the tune of hundreds of dollars a month.
In many cases illegal aliens, who are being paid under the table, receive additional money in federal food stamps. In some areas, the gang violence and drug trafficking has increased as a result of illegal immigration. Today, some police departments are actually picking up illegal aliens, driving them to the nearest bus station, and then buying them tickets to go somewhere else, just so local law enforcement will not have to deal with them anymore.
Consider the current state of affairs in America’s most populous state, California.
In the past 40 years, the Golden State’s population has doubled, virtually all of which is due to immigration.