United States of Mexico Carries A Hefty Price Tag

The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector lays the smack down, with the bark on:

In FY 2004, low-skill immigrant households received $30,160 per household in immediate benefits and services (direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services). In general, low-skill immigrant households received about $10,000 more in government benefits than did the average U.S. household, largely because of the higher level of means-tested welfare benefits received by low-skill immigrant households.

In contrast, low-skill immigrant households pay less in taxes than do other households. On average, low-skill immigrant households paid only $10,573 in taxes in FY 2004. Thus, low-skill immigrant households received nearly three dollars in immediate benefits and services for each dollar in taxes paid.

A household's net fiscal deficit equals the cost of benefits and services received minus taxes paid. When the costs of direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services are counted, the average low-skill household had a fiscal deficit of $19,588 (expenditures of $30,160 minus $10,573 in taxes).

At $19,588, the average annual fiscal deficit for low-skill immigrant households was nearly twice the amount of taxes paid. In order for the average low-skill household to be fiscally solvent (taxes paid equaling immediate benefits received), it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half. [emphasis added]

Eliminate those items from average low-skill illegal alien households, that is. Like that'd ever happen.

According to Rector's piece, there were, as of 2004, approximately 1.8 million such households. That multiplies to an aggregate net annual public benefit outlay of $35.26 billion. Figure the exponential growth curve from another blanket amnesty and that red ink really starts fountaining into the hundred billion-plus range EACH YEAR. With entitlements programs already on an actuarial collision course, welcoming in a quarter or even third of the Mexican population would be like trying to smother a fire with napalm, or me attempting to diet. It just would not work.

The Admiral, in a baffling attempt to provide equal time, links to another allegedly Heritage Foundation analysis that tries to put over that an enforcement-only immigration policy would cost the U.S. $50 billion in lost GDP and 2.1 million jobs in each of the next ten years. I'm skeptical of it due both to the preposterously exaggerated numbers and to its speculative tone ("[T]he Illegal Immigration Control Act would likely have an adverse effect on the nation’s economy....These findings suggest that an immigration policy that relies solely on securing the border and strict internal enforcement could result in less economic activity and fewer jobs for Americans...."), but even if you take the numbers at face value, the costs Rector sites are still overwhelming due to the accelerating rate of illegal immigration another amnesty will encourage.

A temporary worker program designed to allow immigrants to fill temporary jobs legally and return to their country of origin is all very-very and to-to. It's one of those ideas that sounds fantastic on paper, but is a bust in practice. The reason in this case is as straightforward as a punch in the mouth: unless wannabe immigrants know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they cannot just sneak across the border and disappear into the U.S. interior, they will have no reason whatsoever to respect our immigration laws and stand in line and go through the process of coming here legally, whatever the programmatic template and designation.

This is why border enforcement, proven and verified, must come first. The alternative is not just the continuation of a "broken system" that McCain-Kennedy would make immeasurably worse, but inexorable demographic shift, economic collapse, and long before that, what Hugh Hewitt has aptly described as "a national security nightmare".

Las gracias, pero yo pasaremos.