As a Yankee in Texas, I'm quite fond of the Texas multicultural heritage and I've encountered many fine hardworking immigrants. Texas has a long history of Hispanic immigration. In fact, many Texas Hispanics hail from families that have been here for hundreds of years and far longer than my 3rd generation immigrant status resulting from my grandparents migrating to the U.S. from Russia, Ireland and Germany in the early part of the 20th century.
As a hot potato political issue, immigration ranks near the top of contentious issues, along with the never ending social issues. Some folks just really, really hate all immigrants and demand that all of them be deported. I'm definitely not in that camp and I absolutely do subscribe to the view that nations benefit from immigration. Healthy immigration is a win-win for everybody.
Heck, America is a nation that was built by industrious and hardworking immigrants. I know how hard immigrants work because I've witnessed it up close and personal. Immigrants are here because they want to work, they do work and Americans seems to have gotten lazy about working. I had a roof replaced a few years and August in central Texas is brutally hot. The roofing crew was all Hispanic and only the supervisor spoke English. These workers worked like dogs in the blazing heat tearing off one roof and nailing down a new roof. I had some tile replaced and a fine Hispanic tile man did the job on a Sunday along with his 13 year old daughter assistant who was delightful. She manned the table saw outside, cut the tiles and gave them to her dad. She told me she loved working and helping her dad. I could go on and on about my wonderful experiences with Hispanic tradesmen.
In my opinion, the immigrants who are here that are productively working should be legalized, given green cards and have the opportunity to apply for citizenship. They earned it and they deserve it. However, I draw the line at entitlement dependent immigrants. The immigrants that built America didn't need food stamps, Medicaid cards and other entitlements. There are indeed immigrants in America who mooch of the taxpayers and the welfare system.
My immigration plan is simple: deport the entitlement dependent and keep those who work and demand nothing except the right to work.
Unfortunately, that's not how our immigration system works. The US immigration system is designed to be welfare for businesses by massively importing cheap third world laborers who are so poor that they are eligible for entitlements. This is basically a taxpayer subsidy to businesses. Moreover, entitlement dependent immigrants are definitely not the type of immigrants that America needs.
The Obama Administration is already advertising that some form of subsidized-to-free medical care (either Medicaid or Obamacare) will be available to 14 million illegal immigrants as a benefit. A government benefit is paid for by tax dollars.
Medicare and Medicaid already cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion a year and the government estimates that Obamacare subsidies will cost another trillion a year. Obamacare is not only a huge subsidized disaster, it will force more folks into Medicaid.
Considering that America is rapidly morphing into a minimum wage economy because we've made the decision to offshore and outsource our once legendary manufacturing industries that produced high paid middle class workers, it's clear that the minimum wage economy will dramatically ratchet up entitlement dependency.
Zero Hedge reports: This Is Bernanke's Minimum-Wage "Recovery" In Facts And Figures
A suddenly seemingly hawkish Ben Bernanke may be giving the impression he is preparing to taper because he feels confident enough about the recovery (just don't ask him about sudden dramatic rises in yields: that "puzzles" him). Yet as those who have been reading Zero Hedge for the past three years know, this jobs "recovery" is purely quantitative (not to mention seasonally adjusted): the quality of jobs regained is, in a word, abysmal, with the bulk of new job creation benefiting part-time and minimum-wage jobs.....
The lower-wage occupations that grew the most during the recovery include retail salespersons, food preparation workers, laborers and freight workers, waiters and waitresses, personal and home care aides, and office clerks and customer representatives.To make matters worse, currency devaluation resulting from decades of deficit spending, mountains of fiat debt and nasty government policy decisions have not only decimated the middle class but has put workers in the poor house.
40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage
Because America is now a nation where worker wages are no longer sufficient to cover basics like food, healthcare and shelter, the explosion of the entitlement dependent is shocking. Nearly 50 million folks are on food stamps and its use rate is soaring. 100 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare (49 million) and Medicaid (50 million). Those numbers are expected to grow substantially.
The Heritage Foundation reported that the immigration bill concocted by the so-called congressional Gang of 8 will cost $6.3 trillion, here.
To further complicate the mess, there are provisions and incentives in the immigration bill that actually encourages employers to fire Americans and hire newly legalized immigrants.
Gang of Eight Amnesty Bill Encourages Companies to Hire Illegal Aliens over American Workers
Immigration Bill's Health Care Provisions Could Get U.S. Workers Fired
The immigration bill not only stinks to high heaven, it's specifically designed to exclusive benefit newly legalized immigrants at the expense of American workers, as if American workers aren't already hurting and struggling to survive.
Before American can even begin to work on a sane immigration policy that is beneficial to everybody, it needs to first solve the entitlement problems. With Libertarian leaning think tanks like CATO advocating for legalizing all illegals and opening our borders to everybody to create a borderless nation, none of them ever take into account the gargantuan cost of the welfare entitlement state and subsidizing corporate profits. We need to get Americans off the welfare rolls and back to work. We need to become a nation where a days labor earns enough money to provides essentials like food and shelter without a welfare subsidy.
Until the entitlement state is demolished, re-engineered and/or massively downsized, there is no way to separate honest hardworking immigrants from the moochers who come here to mooch and many of them are caught up in the spiral of low wage jobs and poverty - folks just trying to survive in a global economy that has turned against them.
Between the non-working folks on welfare and the working poor on welfare, America has morphed into a hideous industrialized feudalistic society consisting of the rich and the serfs who serve them.
35 Statistics About The Working Poor In America That Will Blow Your Mind
#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income".
#2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either "poor" or "low income".
#3 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among "the working poor". Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.
#4 Back in 2007, 21 million U.S. children lived in "working poor" homes. Today, that number is up to 23.5 million.
#5 In Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent all of working families are considered to be "low income".
#6 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent....The above stats are not good signs. In fact, they document the death of America's once prosperous middle class rather than portray a healthy, rising and vibrant middle class. In America these days, it's all about documenting the rot and decay of our dying middle class - folks who have no futures.
The senate immigration bill will only further stress the already severely stressed American workers by importing entitlement dependent third world labor. It's a recipe for massive impoverishment of all workers, citizen or immigrant.
Want wages to rise? Abolish the entitlements and force businesses to compete for unsubsidized labor in a free labor market. Maybe then we could talk about immigration.
Still, it makes no sense to flood America with tens of millions of immigrants when our own people are profoundly suffering from an economy that had hit the skids and put many Americans on skid row.
Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/PikiWiki_Israel_5694_immigrants_from_poland.jpg
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