Below is the first writing I've done in presenting my ideas on the subject. I am always open for debate on an issue, so let's talk about the pros and cons of this concept!
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Dr. Donald Huddle, an economist at Rice University examined the matter and came up with the following statistics from 1996:
1996 Costs Table from the Huddle Study 1
Programs (billions)
Public Education K-12 $5.85
Public Higher Education $0.71
ESL and Bilingual Education $1.22
Food Stamps $0.85
AFDC $0.50
Housing $0.61
Social Security $3.61
Earned Income Tax Credit $0.68
Medicaid $3.12
Medicare A and B $0.58
Criminal Justice and Corrections $0.76
Local Government $5.00
Other Programs $9.25
Total Costs $32.74
Less Taxes Paid $12.59
Net Costs of Direct Services $20.16
Displacement Costs $4.28
All Net Costs $24.44
At the time, there were estimated to be about 5 million illegal aliens here in the US, whereas today, there are somewhere around four times that many here. The dollar was stronger then, so the relative dollars being lost are in higher amounts today than they would have been then. Further, notice that there is no taking into account in the stats above concerning the depressed wages that are felt throughout the system as a ripple effect, by having some 7% of the workforce willing to work for less than minimum wage, with no benefits whatsoever.
Even so…
The estimates that I have seen as the cost of illegal immigration/invasion range anywhere from $100 to $450 billion per year. This is money that is lost to our economy, like water through a sieve, with much of it being sent back to family members in Mexico or other nations of origin. But lets take the smallest number possible of $100 billion per year.
If we paid every man woman and child that was here illegally (including whatever anchor babies that are actually US citizens but are dependent upon their parents for their well-being) $15,000 to go home, here would be the immediate effects:
1. Those who wanted to get right with the system would volunteer for the program immediately, and we would, by that very act, be able to separate the people simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families from those who are here for alternative goals which would be less desirable for us to have here.
2. Those who would volunteer (and give us fingerprints, photo IDs, and DNA samples) would be placed at the head of the list for reintroduction to the US, but they would be coming back as LEGAL immigrants.
3. Those who did not volunteer for the voluntary deportation within the prescribed 90 day window of opportunity would no longer be able to hide among the masses of well-intentioned workers…because they would have been sent home already, and the trouble makers would then stand out like sore thumbs!
Because of the enforcement of the laws that we currently have on the books that this plan would also require, plus the addition of specific penalties (not just fines to be written off of a corporation’s tax liability as the cost of doing business), the following would immediately be true as well:
1. There would be no hiring of new illegal immigrants (because Tyson’s CEO doesn’t want to go to jail for 30 days for each one we find on his payroll!) in the vast majority of above board business ventures, and thus seedy businesses that do violate the law would be busted sooner, since the ICE agents could then focus on them more intently.
2. The illegals that think they might want to try to come back over here, would have no economic incentive to do so, since there would be no jobs for them.
3. Wages would not be depressed as they now are by millions of people working off the books illegally.
4. Those allowed to legally immigrate back here would be paying their taxes just like the rest of us, and thereby helping to defray the costs to society that they have always been building up.
If we look at things from a strictly financial perspective, even using the lowest numbers possible for the costs of having them here, and the highest possible costs of sending them back (both of which are extremes that no one could rightly justify if we look at the scenarios honestly), then the worst case scenario is that we would be in the black in just three years, we would have control of our borders, those seeking the American dream would have been rewarded for their honesty and their willingness to submit to the new system of law by having their initial payment and by being granted a legal and honest pathway to citizenship. Law abiding citizens in the US would be rewarded by immediately seeing the benefits of stopping wage depression, by having control of the border, by retaining our sovereignty, and by knowing that when those seeking the American dream come back, they too will be citizens with us, rather than criminals among us.
This idea may not be the one that flies, folks…but it’s the only one I have ever seen that actually addresses the problems and the causes that have brought them about. If you have a better idea, by all means, let’s hear it!
The arena of ideas is open to all, and this should be the first of many that we discuss together, in my opinion.
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