Illegal Immigration Deal

Illegal immigrants in America are on course to get rewarded for breaking our laws.

President Bush is on board with Ted Kennedy and the plan to legalize millions of people.

WASHINGTON -- In a striking reach across party lines, the White House and key lawmakers agreed Thursday on a sweeping immigration plan to grant legal status to millions of people in the country unlawfully.

Sealed after months of secretive bargaining, the deal mandates bolstered border security and a high-tech employment verification system to prevent illegal workers from getting jobs.

President Bush said the proposal would "help enforce our borders but equally importantly, it'll treat people with respect."

The compromise brought together an unlikely alliance of liberal Democrats such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and conservative Republicans such as Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona on an issue that carries heavy potential risks and rewards for all involved.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said debate would begin on Monday, but he cautioned, "I don't know if the immigration legislation is going to bear fruit and we're going to be able to pass it."

Almost instantly, the plan brought vehement criticism from both sides of the immigration issue, including liberals who called it unfair and unworkable and conservatives who branded it an overly permissive "amnesty."

The proposal constitutes a far-reaching change in the immigration system that would admit future arrivals seeking to put down roots in the U.S. based on their skills, education levels and job experience, limiting the importance of family ties. A new class of guest workers would be allowed in temporarily, but only after the new security measures were in place — expected to take 18 months.

"This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty but without animosity," Bush said.

Kennedy hailed it as "the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America."

Bush is touting the bill as a way to treat people with respect. Kennedy is blathering about the shadows and sunshine.

Not everyone is happy with the deal.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama have reservations.

Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are against it.

This is an odd situation.

The President and Ted Kennedy are in agreement, supporting the bill.

Liberal Senate and House Dems are in agreement with Republican presidential candidates, wary of the bill.

Strange.

What's also strange is how people can arrive at such different conclusions regarding the impact of granting legal status to illegal immigrants.

Karl-Erik Stromsta claims to offer "an analysis that dispels myths and lays out the facts about the cost of illegal immigration -- in plain language, for once."

He supposedly lays out the "true cost of illegal immigration."

He addresses the question:

What about federal benefits and aid programs? Do illegal immigrants take more than they give?

Probably not – at least if you look at the big picture.

Some parts of the country have unambiguous financial crises on their hands, and part of the blame belongs to illegal immigrants. California, for example, loses an estimated $10 billion annually taking care of its illegal immigrants.

There are a number of government programs that are being crushed under the weight of illegal immigrants – most seriously healthcare. Illegal immigrants don’t qualify for government health programs, and businesses that hire them tend not to offer health coverage of any kind.

As a result, when illegal workers become sick or injured – and they become injured at a far higher rate than native workers due to the demanding physical nature of their jobs – they inevitably take the only route available to them: They head to the nearest emergency room. Hospitals are required by federal law to provide emergency care regardless of patients’ visa status or ability to pay. Thus, some areas of the country have experienced a tremendous drain in healthcare resources as illegal immigrant populations have risen ($2.5 billion a year, according to Census Bureau data). Prisons and schools also face major hurdles in accommodating the expanding illegal immigrant population.

But that is just one side of the story. Many other governmental programs actually benefit from the presence of illegal immigrants, particularly Social Security and Medicare. Both programs – intended to benefit the elderly – receive billions in tax revenue from illegal immigrants. Unlike normal taxpayers, however, illegal immigrants will never be able to recollect their benefits later on down the line, thus providing a windfall.

That's a stunning conclusion.

Bringing 12 million mostly uneducated or undereducated people into the country doesn't place a burden on already overburdened taxpayers.

Not so, says Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.

Receiving, on average, at least $22,449 more in benefits than they pay in taxes each year, low-skill households impose substantial long-term costs on the U.S. taxpayer. Assuming an average 50-year adult life span for heads of household, the average life­time costs to the taxpayer will be $1.1 million for each low-skill household, net of any taxes paid. If the costs of interest and other financial obligations are added, the average lifetime cost rises to $1.3 million per household.

From the Center for Immigration Studies:

The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury. The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.

This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant. California has estimated that the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates.

That's quite a different picture, isn't it?

Karl-Erik Stromsta's "big picture" isn't even close to the one drawn by the Heritage Foundation.

I don't see how millions of illegal immigrants can be allowed to "come out of the shadows" without it being a tremendous burden on taxpayers.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I don't think Emma Lazarus tallied the costs when she wrote her poem.