The U.S. population could top 300 million this week, but as of yet there aren’t any plans for bell clanging and a celebration speech in Washington, D.C., as Lyndon Johnson did in 1967 when we passed the 200 million mark. Maybe that’s because of the concern many people have about illegal immigration. Immigrants — both legal and illegal — account for nearly 40 percent of our population growth. But shutting off the immigrants could result in flat rate growth such as what Europe and Japan have, and that would create a serious crunch in Social Security and Medicare.
Posted by Angie Holladay
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23 Comments
Unchecked growth is also not very responsible. More mouths to feed in an increasingly scarce environment. Especially for the throw-away society like the US. What happen to being the good steward of the creation?
On the other hand, who’s going to help fund my children’s retirement?
According to a study done by a university, even after paying some taxes, illegal immigration puts a minus 70 billion chunk in the U.S. wallet per year. Negative gains are good in your book?
Take Los Angeles California for instance. Forty percent of workers(predominatly illegal aliens) in L.A. are working for cash, thus non reportable and non taxable income.
However, the costs to L.A. taxpayers are:
95% of Warrants for Murder are for illegal aliens.
75% of people on the ‘Most Wanted List’ are illegal aliens.
Two-thirds of all births in L.A. County are of illegal alien mothers. The expense is charged to Medi-cal which is payed by the taxpayers of L.A. County.
25% of Inmates in California Penal institutes are illegal aliens. In federal institutions the figure rises to 29%.
Only Two percent of illegal aliens actually pick crops. However, 29 percent of illegal aliens are on welfare rolls.
Shutting down illegal immigration would have a postive flow in terms of dollars saved. There would be less crime, less people on welfare, less people sapping the medicare and medicaid system and generally less people avoiding taxes rather than paying them.
Legal immigrants or immigrants on work visas from Mexico? Sure, let them come across and work. Illegal immigrants, sorry nope.
“Negative gains are good in your book?”
Hell, check out Bush’s Actual budget for last year…
Record 9.5 Trillion national debt!Record Debt to China and every other country to loan us money!Record Trade Deficit!
Come on, if the government cant take care of that, what makes u think they even give a shit about this…
The problem is complex.We suffer mostly from our success, people are living longer and mortality tables are revised upwards on a regular basis now.Actuaries are beginning to produce tables that show the chances of a person born today living to age 120, when age 100 had been adequate for the entire history of the life insurance industry, until now.IRS actuarial tables say that the life expectancy for a 65 year old is currently 21 more years, or age 86.This means that half of the 65 year olds will die before age 86 and half will die after age 86.There is more to the story, however.The probability that a couple, both age 65, will see at least one of them living to age 85 is 84% and rising.
http://www.nasi.org/usr_doc/Retirement_Security_Roundtable_-_Rappaport.ppt#280,1,Slide 1
According to Farrell Dolan, CFP and Van Harlow, CFA, who wrote a booklet called “Retirement Income Planning” for Fidelity Investments:
“The odds that at least one member of a 65-year-old couple will live to 92 are 50%. And there is one chance in four that one member of that couple will live to 97.”
I know that many of you call me a “shill” or flack for “corporate America,”
Think this through, however: More than 50% of corporate stock is owned by retirement plans for the benefit of beneficiaries. This number will only go up over the next several decades. If corporate profits don’t pay for our retirement, who will?—–On the immigration front, we are facing a huge labor shortage when the baby boomers start hitting age 65. 65+1946=2011. The “boom” was from 1946 to 1964.However, we are seeing a huge knowledge base, with relatively high education, leave the work force.We can’t really replace that high quality labor pool entirely with uneducated illegal immigrants. Of course some immigrants can train and educate themselves, but we should be selective in who has that opportunity.I support legal immigration reform, so that we can control who gets in, giving first-in-line status to those who can help our economy grow.Of course, I still think amnesty for military service makes great sense.Nobody is better at remedial training than the U.S. Armed Forces.
What you see going on right now with the strain on the system is what the future will be in ten-folds.The immigrants coming into the United States have no more interest of being patrotic to this counrty than the average United States citizens.They say all that they want is a better life.In reality each one of us only have interest in survival of what we have worked for and in truth will do whatever we can to gain and keep that status quo, right or wrong including breaking the laws and taking advantage of others.
JM – I like your comment very well said!
Hey Tony get an attention span, stick to the topic.
My favorite topic on illegal aliens is one supported by Sebelius.
Let’s say that little Sarah is 18 years gold and ready to go to college. Her grandparents, uncles, cousins all live in Kansas and Sarah is looking forward going to Kansas State.
However, there is a problem. Little Sara will have to pay out of state tuition fees.
Of course, Juan came to Kansas last year, got him a good construction job and saved up his money,he’s ready to go to college. He walks up to the Admissions desk at the University of Kansas and pays the residence fee which saves him thousands of dollars. It did not matter that Juan was an illegal immigrant.
Poor Sarah will have to spread her college out for awhile longer as the increased costs will slow her education down. If only she was an illegal alien instead of an Oklahoman should could have gotten her tuition at the resident rate.
Oh well, and welcome to Kansas Juan.
JM, How did Juan score that?
When are we going to take back our country? If you are illegal, no welfare, no hospital care except for emergency, no right to citizenship for newborns, stop illegal immigration NOW.
“JM, How did Juan score that?”
In May 2004, Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius signed a law, HB 2145, that would extend in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens effective July 1st of 2004.
Ah, That’s no fun JM…
I was laying ground work for future postings contrasting your earlier one and mine…
My point is that our ever increasing debt along with the drains on our system, i.e. illegals, is not making our country as great as it could…
I always wondered who the conservatives were going to scape-goat once they threw the “welfare queens” off the roles.
Illegal immigrants . . . they benefit the rich conservatives who employ them and they benefit the powerful elite who use the issue to get the useful idiots to vote for the racist conservatives who rage against the “invasion” of sp*cs.
Perfect.
CapnAmerica,
There is no racist/conservative/liberal debate here. It’s about receiving the correct information.
In fact, the largely Republican State Legislature passed the HB 2145 bill which allowed illegal immigrants to get in state resident status to attend universities.
Okay, here’s an issue that isn’t liberal or conservative. The various jails around Kansas spent over 3 million dollars housing illegal immigrants awaiting trial/exportation. When they asked the federal government for reimbursement, they only recovered only a little over 1 million dollars of the over 3 million spent.
I don’t know of any single database that records the political party of all restaurant owners, farmers, small business owners and corporate owners that are directly responsible for the hiring of illegal immigrants.
If you are CapnAmerica, privy to this information, by all means share it with the rest of it.
Just the facts please, rhetoric as a substitute is not acceptable.
Raj Goyle is against building a fence to stop illegal immigration and Raj Goyle is against the deportation of illegal immigrants.You HAD to make this political, didnt you Capn?
CapnAmerica may have a valid point. You could have rich people who want ultra-cheap labor making big GOP contributions, using candidates as shills who pretend to be anti-immigration.
We don’t want to be cynical, but Mark Foley sponsored an anti-child-predator bill. David Kuo, a former administration staffer alleges, in “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction”, that Karl Rove and other White House machiavellians figured out how to lasso the fundamentalist Christian vote, while calling them “nuts” behind their backs.
So, I’m not sure that CapnAmerica is misreading things. I am not asserting that his proposition is true, but my tentative inference is that there’s a reasonable possibility he is right.
1. If I want to know what Raj Goyle’s position is, I’ll ask him, not Paul Rosell-out, thank you very much.
2. JM, have you ever heard of the concept of “fixed costs.” The library, the gym, the roads, the police, even the teachers cost about the same at WSU whether 10 thousand students go there or 16 thousand go there.
Allowing illegals to attend college doesn’t raise the costs very much, because so few of them will go.
You’re right that it is a fairness issue. But it’s not really much of a cost issue.
Anyone who really wants to eliminate unnecessary gov’t spending should demand the end of the occupation of Iraq, where we spend 1.1 BILLION a week, 40 percent to private contractors who make money by spending money.
Also, JM, your comment: “I don’t know of any single database that records the political party of all restaurant owners, farmers, small business owners and corporate owners that are directly responsible for the hiring of illegal immigrants” is disingenuous in the extreme.
You know as well as I do that all those groups in Kansas overwhelmingly vote Republican. If it weren’t for teachers and uninons, there wouldn’t even be a Democratic party in this state.
JM: “In May 2004, Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius signed a law, HB 2145, that would extend in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens effective July 1st of 2004.”
I am aware of that law. However, doesn’t it require graduation from KS HS (min. 3 yrs.), and for the person to currently be working toward legalization? How Juan who “…came to Kansas last year, got him a good construction job and saved up his money,he’s ready to go to college. He walks up to the Admissions desk at the University of Kansas and pays the residence fee which saves him thousands of dollars…” can qualify under that law? And as for the Oklahoma Sara, she can establish Kansas residency within a year and then go to college, can she not?
Roo Haa,
Correct or you can have a GED equivalent, which can be completed in less than a year.
As far as the establishing residency in Kansas, that is also correct, but it is a requirement the legislature and the Governor forced upon U.S. Citizen and recently a Judge reinforced that non-resident U.S. Citizens cannot get the same break as an illegal alien when it comes to paying in state tuition.
What confuses most of us is allowing children of illegal immigrants to go to school, but authorities don’t go to the home of the student and arrest the illegal parents. Big protests in the streets, of which many are illegal, and nobody is arrested. Waving of the Mexican flag is not helpful to their cause. It is not a racial or bigoted thing. Legal is legal, illegal is illegal.We are tired of it. The melting pot has seemed to have stopped melting.
I am not saying that Republicans dont have our share of opportunists, I am saying that Democrats who spend a great deal of time picking the splinter out of Republican eyes are ignoring the railroad tie in their own, Democrat eyes!As a policy matter, the Republican party has been against lowering the age of consent, the Democrat party has frequently supported measures to eliminate statutory rape laws by lowering the age of consent.Individual behavior is important, but policy decisions are what we should vote upon.
I would also label JFK an opportunist, but also a great leader, inspite of his failures.JFK wire tapped Martin Luther King, through his AG, Robert Kennedy.This continued under LBJ, not so great a President.JFK and LBJ moved the civil rights debate forward, with huge Republican support in Congress, yet both of them mistrusted MLK and made the same comments, behind the civil rights leaders backs, as Republican leaders probably make about pro life leaders.Professional politicians are always uncomfortable around street activists, always have been, always will be.(With the possible exception of the courageous Phil Kline, Kansas Attorney General)
Heartlander and CapnAmerica did you read the article Posted on Sun, Oct. 15, 2006
Spanish voter cards ‘just a mess’By Dion Lefler – The Wichita Eagle
“Something was lost in the translation when Kansas produced its Spanish-language voter registration cards.”
Doesn’t the article point to what you are saying?That our politians are saying one thing but doing another thing?
This comes from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Serviceshttp://www.uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/index.htm
Naturalization is the process by which U.S. citizenship is conferred upon a foreign citizen or national after he or she fulfills the requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).The general requirements for administrative naturalization include:1 – A period of continuous residence and physical presence in the United States;2 – Residence in a particular USCIS District prior to filing;3 – An ability to read, write, and speak English;4 – A knowledge and understanding of U.S. history and government;5 – Good moral character;6 – Attachment to the principles of the U.S. Constitution; and,7 – Favorable disposition toward the United States.