How Mass Immigration Exacerbates National Problems

Although many immigrants have many good qualities and some immigrants are great assets to the United States, continued record levels of legal and illegal immigration and another amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens will seriously exacerbate major issues that concern natives and legal immigrants already here, because newcomers will use energy and need jobs, education, health care and many other social services. But due to the limited incomes most can expect to earn, the taxes they pay will not be enough to cover those costs.

1. Mass immigration exacerbates the health care crisis:

According to the March 2005 Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, one-third of immigrants lack health insurance. Since 1989, immigrants and their children born here - nine million people - account for 73 percent of the increase in the uninsured population in the U.S. A study released by Rand Corp. in November, 2006, estimated that health care provided to illegal adult immigrants costs about $6.4 billion a year nationally and that 68 percent of illegal immigrants are uninsured.

2. Mass immigration overburdens public schools:

California schools are struggling, in part because of skyrocketing enrollment by students who - in the words of a Rand Corp. study reported on by the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 4, 2005 - "come from come from low-income families or are immigrants who are still learning English."

Estimates of the number of students nationwide who are illegal immigrants or children of illegal immigrants vary. "There are 1.8 million undocumented children in local school districts" across the U.S., wrote Robert McNatt, a Business Week editor, in a Standard & Poor Ratings Services "special report" published by Business Week Online on April 7, 2006. He added that "at an average cost of $7,500 per student, that totals $11.2 billion." According to data from the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA), more than five million "limited English proficiency" students were enrolled in U.S. public schools (kindergarten through grade 12) in the 2003-2004 school. That's 10.1 percent of total public-school enrollment. California had 32 percent of the nation's total.

Although all children deserve education, if American schools cut programs that affect natives and legal immigrants already here, it would not be wise or responsible to continue to admit large number of foreign-born newcomers who would place an additional burden to our schools.

3. Mass immigration exacerbates the energy crisis:

The U.S. population reached 300 million in October 2006. It was 76 million in 1900 and still less than 200 million when the big door for immigration was re-opened in 1965. From 1991 to 2005 alone, 50 million people have been added to the U.S. population -- all of them energy consumers. Another amnesty for millions of illegal aliens will add, within only a few years, tens of millions more people to the U.S. - relatives of amnestied aliens living abroad and their U.S.-born children - all of whom will consume energy even though not at the same rate as most more-affluent Americans. Domestic energy consumption needs to be curbed, but little progress can be achieved if consumption is reduced by half while the U.S. population is doubled. Also, there are no alternative sources of energy that can cope with unlimited population growth. High energy prices negatively impacts all legal residents and particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

4. Mass immigration exacerbates unemployment and budget deficits:

Legal immigration brings hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals of working age to the U.S every year. According to the estimate of Time Magazine in September, 2004, three million illegal immigrants would enter the U.S. in that year alone. In addition, at least 200,000 "temporary workers" are admitted to this country annually. If the U.S. continues to export high-tech and manufacturing jobs while allowing millions of foreign-born job-seekers to enter our labor markets every year, unemployed Americans and legal immigrants already here will have great difficulty finding work and wages will be depressed based on the law of supply and demand. More people - even prison inmates and welfare recipients - do stimulate economic activities: Newcomers need food, clothes, housing, health care and many social services, and therefore create new jobs. But most new jobs created in recent years are low-paid service jobs that generate insufficient tax revenue to offset the costs of social services rendered to such low-skilled workers and their families.

5. U.S. Homeland will remain insecure as long as our borders remain porous:

According to news reports, several thousand foreign nationals cross our borders illegally every day - and some of them may be members of Islamic terrorist groups posing as Hispanics. Admiral James Loy, deputy secretary of Homeland Security, told Congress on Feb. 16, 2005, that Al Qaeda may have considered using the Mexican border as an entry point. The International Atomic Energy Agency told the London Times in September of 2006 that smugglers have been caught 300 times in the past four years trying to sneak in radioactive material, which could be used to make a dirty bomb.

Furthermore, Professor Samuel P. Huntington, chairman of Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies, has warned that continued large scale Mexican immigration is a threat to American societal security. That threat can be illustrated by UC-Riverside Professor Armando Navarro's quote in the L.A. Times on July 7, 2006: "A new majority is forming. Everything will change. The White House will be within our reach. We might have to change the name to the Brown House .... We are only doing what any good Jew would do for Israel."

Mexico, which does not tolerate illegal immigration on its own soil, has actively encouraged illegal migration to the United States and vigorously opposed all U.S. measures to secure our borders. Mexico has also worked in tandem with activists here of Mexican descent to lobby for many benefits for illegal Mexican aliens, such as amnesty. If amnestied and naturalized, millions of Mexican nationals here will add millions more potential voters over the next few years - themselves and the relatives they will bring into the U.S.

In 1997, Ernest Zedillo, then-President of Mexico, declared in Chicago that "the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders" and that "Mexican migrants are an important - a very important - part of it."

Although many Mexican-Americans are patriotic and most Mexican migrants have no political agenda, many newcomers could be mobilized by Mexico to vote according to Mexico's interests. U.S.-born Juan Hernandez, while serving on current Mexico President Vicente Fox's cabinet, stated: "We are betting that the Mexican-American population in the United States...will think Mexico first." In the spring of 2006, one million demonstrators marched in many U.S. cities. Many protestors were waving Mexican flags and pressuring the U.S. with demands identical to Mexico's.

According to the 2000 Census, people who identified themselves as Mexican had increased by 53 percent from 1990 to 2000, while the U.S. population as a whole grew by 13%. If this trend continues, within decades the majority of people in the United States could very well be of Mexican ancestry.

Mexico is clearly using legal as well as illegal migration to strongly influence American policies and our future elections and, eventually, to extend the Mexican nation.

6. Mass immigration overburdens our prisons:

The federal Bureau of Prisons reported on June 24, 2006, that 27.2 percent of the total of 190,565 federal prisoners are criminal aliens. In May, 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that the federal cost of incarcerating criminal aliens from 2001 through 2004 was approximately $5.8 billion. The federal cost of incarceration per inmate, the U.S. Department of Justice said in 2003, was $25,327 a year.

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