Illegal Aliens Drive Up National Debt

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Illegal Aliens Drive Up National Debt
Back in September 2010, the Pew Hispanic Center placed the total number of undocumented foreign nationals residing in the United States at 11.1 million.

The actual count today could be three times this estimate. Pew also referenced an estimate of unemployed illegal aliens at 10 percent, likely the result of recession-caused layoffs mainly in construction and factory work.

The illegal aliens in the United States at any given time and their costs to U.S. taxpayers remain ghost numbers. Look around, illegal aliens are here, but their exact numbers are hidden. The costs to U.S. taxpayers for the education, healthcare, incarceration, and welfare benefits for illegal aliens, employed and unemployed, can only be estimated. For years now, a segment of immigrant advocates downplay illegal migration, its causes, and the cost to U.S. taxpayers.

Douglas S. Massey, demographer at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration project, believes that Americans have a skewered view of Mexico; that it is underdeveloped with a population desperately seeking to come to the United States.

He states, “That’s just not true at all.” In 2006, Massey opined that Mexican migrants were not fleeing poverty but instead were seeking social mobility. He noted that their decreasing interest in migrating to the United States was the result of Mexican families having fewer children, border crime linked to growing drug cartel violence frightening many from attempting a crossing, educational and economic opportunities in Mexico, and a business slow-down in the United States.

These positions, advanced by Massey and accepted as gospel-truth by many illegal alien advocates, create assumptions that are passed off as etched in stone. It is true that the Mexican life-style is improving, except for the drug cartel massacres. If, however, the fertility rate among women in Mexico is decreasing, why is the fertility rate of Mexican women in the United States exceeding that of U.S. citizens?

Demographers agree that the Hispanic population rise in the United States is caused by immigration and the births of anchor babies. A more recent Pew Hispanic Center study (July 14, 2011) found that Mexican births in the United States have surpassed immigration as the main driver of Hispanic population growth.

Numbers on illegal aliens in the United States remain estimates and will continue to be so, until an accurate method for counting illegal border crossers and visa overstays is established. The best numbers on illegal immigration come from U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions. U.S. Census numbers remain notoriously inaccurate with regard to illegal alien counts, largely because members of the ghost population choose not to be counted.

Meanwhile, back on the border, apprehensions of illegal border-crossers are down for the years 2008 through 2010. According to U.S. Border patrol official figures, a total of 447,731 apprehensions of illegal border-crossers were made in 2010, down from the 540,865 apprehensions made in 2009. In comparison, between 2000 and 2006, the average apprehensions per year were 1.1 million, with 95 percent of them occurring along the Mexico-U.S. border.

U.S. Border Patrol estimates are that for every apprehension of an illegal border-crosser, three persons evade apprehension. Some Border Patrol agents estimate that five to seven persons enter illegally for each person apprehended. If the number of apprehensions in 2010 is down to half that in earlier peak years, still at least 1.2 million aliens are entering the country illegally each year.

For decades, “Other Than Mexicans” (OTM) has been a category for border-crossing apprehensions. In the past two years, the number of Central American illegal border-crossers has risen, as have those from “special interest countries” that sponsor terrorism against Western nations, including the United States.

The National Public Radio (NPR) recently quoted an illegal border crosser from Guatemala, who said that no matter how many times he is caught by the Border Patrol, he will continue to attempt a crossing, because it is difficult to find opportunities in his country.

An El Salvadoran Non-Government Organization (NGO) official states that Salvadorans migrate to the United States because of the lack of jobs and opportunities in their homeland. He failed to mention that El Salvadorans in the United States have founded one of the world’s largest criminal gangs, MS-13.

Rather than consider remedies, such as a modernized “Bracero” program to document Mexican farm workers, President Barack Obama prefers the pabulum of comprehensive immigration reform with its pathway to citizenship for all comers.

The president refuses to acknowledge that the United States is faltering under the weight of an escalating national debt of $40 trillion within a decade. He refuses to acknowledge that the national debt is increasing partly because of the escalating numbers of undocumented aliens — a ghost population that threatens the financial solvency of the United States.

http://www.newsmax.com/JamesWalsh/il...7/22/id/404507