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Amnesty and America’s Bottom Line—D.C. McAllister
As an Investor’s Business Daily editorial said at the beginning of this year, major businesses are calling for immigration reform because it’s good for their bottom lines even though it’s bad for America’s.
Politicians and big business have colluded in the push for amnesty: “Businesses like cheap labor. And politicians like political contributions from business. So they’ve formed an unholy alliance to push the idea that costs for amnesty for illegals would outweigh the benefits. But they don’t.”
According to the Heritage Foundation, illegal immigrant households cost U.S. taxpayers $55 billion per year. Some argue that those costs would go away after amnesty because illegals would become taxpayers. But that doesn’t pan out. The costs would actually go up to nearly $160 billion. And that’s just for illegals already here.
Why would the costs go up? Because “amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, ObamaCare, Social Security and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.”
So why do businesses want amnesty even though it will hurt America? The bottom line is cheap labor. They want to increase the flow of low-skilled workers willing to work for minimum wage and “do the job Americans won’t do.”
But why won’t Americans do those jobs? It’s because they get more money from welfare benefits than going out and working.
It is isn’t that there are jobs Americans won’t do. It’s that there are jobs Americans on welfare don’t want to do.
If we open the borders so that businesses can have their cheap labor (and politicians can continue to get their checks from big business), what happens when all those new workers figure out that they can get more money sitting on the couch rather than working minimum wage jobs?
Human nature is what it is. If we already have a bunch of people unwilling to work because government benefits make it easier not to, it’s logical to assume that immigrants will one day do the same. What happens to our deficits then? What happens to the country?
Both big business and its allied politicians need to look past their short-term interests and consider the future implications of what they’re asking for—because it ain’t pretty. If they don’t, one can only assume they care more about the bottom line than the future of the country.
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Neither do I, it was his feelings about his personal experience. “Open borders is bad because I had an experience that I feel bad about.”
This made me smile. :)
In Switzerland, astoundingly enough, McDonalds restaurants are staffed by local teenagers, presumably legal residents. Granted, the hamburgers are expensive by US standards–about twice the cost charged by my local fast food emporium. Swiss janitors and waste haulers also seem to be of local provenance. In short, in my regular sojourns I have not observed any jobs that the Swiss won’t do. And just for comparison, Switzerland ranks fourth in GDP per capita; the USA ranks ninth.
I’m confused about what the $55 billion means. Per year? Per decade? I hate it when the gov’t tells us what a program will cost over ten years. What’s it going to cost next year? And savings over 10 years really piss me off.
That’s not the guv’ment. It’s Heritage, and it is per year. I think this might have a breakdown. (Sorry if it doesn’t. I was just doing a quick search to help.)
Mike, is this the rationale for national borders everywhere, or just in America?
Mike H’s argument reminds me of Yudansha’s earlier today. “I have the God-given right to go where ever I want at any time I want.” I totally reject that.
The position is actually that everyone has a human right to cross imaginary borders just as you have the right to cross from Oklahoma to Texas. Just because we have the legal right to tell foreigners they can’t cross our borders does not take away their human right to do so. It’s a philosophy that says it’s wrong to have different rules for different classes of people.
I need to take notes. D.C. because I said the same thing but in worse language and was slammed as a vitriolic racist. Of course, none of those people actually had any constructive answers to the obvious problems pointed out.
I’m not sure I follow, but this would apply everywhere. No country is allowed to violate the human right to self determination (in this case to go where you would like consistent with other’s personal property rights) though all currently do to some extent.
Ha! Everyone should know that you’re really a heightist!
My question has to do with your assertion that borders exist “because people have an innate distrust of foreigners.”
Thanks, Liz. Personal experience absolutely matters, because what is merely a theoretical argument to people like Mike H is cold, hard reality to those of us who have been affected by border violence.
And if personal experience is to be so cavalierly dismissed, then why the hell did I just spend two years digging through archives in three countries in order to write a dissertation on Anglo-American relations between World War I and World War II? Guess I should have just thrown out all the documentation of the persons involved, as all that was really necessary was to just assert my opinion and claim moral superiority, evidence be damned.
How do you fix rabbit stew?
First, get a rabbit.
The theory is nice, but before you implement this theory, you have to implement all of the other things that this depends on. You would need to dismantle the welfare state, or at least get the exclusions for guest workers/immigrants in place. Politically, that is a non-starter. We are a country that is approximately evenly split politically. The Progressives are never going to allow such legislation to pass. “Why do you hate minorities that you want to exclude them from Welfare programs, you racist?” You have no rabbit there.
And by the way, the obvious reason I mentioned my Hispanic heritage in my original comment was to ward off the inevitable accusation of “raaaaacism!”
It’s the sweet smell of victory in the air!
But, are you a White Hispanic like George Zimmerman?
Heh, indeed I am! However, I prefer to refer to myself as a half-froggy, half-frito bandito, mackerel-snapping, heteronormative Texan imperialist. I think that covers all the bases. ;-)
I think he is one of those Hispanics who buys expensive sunglasses.
Don’t cry for me Argentina…
I love you, man! Thanks for the great laugh.
Sorry Rico, I got turned around. I think people in general distrust foreigners and anyone perceived different than them. I think the whole reason there are borders is much more complicated.
Your response in #40 raises another question:
Does this “human right to self determination” trump the human right to self-determination that a country’s people agree on collectively?
That is, the right to determine how many people, possessing what types of skillsets to welcome into the country?
Is it inevitable? On Ricochet? Sometimes people’s words can come off as racially charged, but aversion to open borders runs much deeper than race.
It’s not to be completely dismissed, but you implied your single personal experience gave you final say on the matter, as if no other evidence needed be considered or that there couldn’t be other causes of the violence beyond failure to stop all movement across the border.
I’ve answered this many times. Yes it does. People would have to aggregate their individual personal property to decide to exclude others. It’s wrong to restrict my neighbor from inviting certain people to live with them. It is also wrong to say that existing in the country we were born in is equivalent to consent to the violations of human rights the people choose to impose by the rules the country follows.
You are saying that people have an individual right to self-determination, but a community of people in agreement must subordinate their own self-determination rights to such an individual. I’d like to know where you get these ideas. Has this theory ever been put into practice anywhere?
I’m saying the “agreement of the community” you refer to is not a true agreement. There was a time when democracy had not yet been put into practice.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your response. Would you please elaborate and/or refer me to an appropriate resource?
D.C., that was a ringing and welcome note of good sense! Thank you!
Here is a question. You see the picture clearly. Jeff Sessions sees the picture clearly. Ann Coulter sees the picture clearly. Many others do. Why are miscreants like Jeb Bush taken seriously?
But whatever. Thanks again for those resonant words!
And if you simply throw the border open to everyone, you don’t find out who’s the gang member until he’s in the country, committing mayhem. That’s too late for his victims.