By Seth Richardson
The argument goes that deporting illegal aliens would cause our economy to falter or fail because despite being illegal, these aliens are productive members of society without which our economy cannot function, and they create wealth for the nation by responding to an economic demand for their services. While many aliens, illegal and otherwise who come to the United States are productive members of society, this is not the case for more than 4.5 million immigrants who come here with no skills and little education.
How much are those who support amnesty and illegal border crossing willing to pay to have an unskilled immigrant household available to serve their needs?
The Heritage Foundation analyzed the true costs of illegal immigrants back in 2007 in the paper “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer.” In this paper, it is demonstrated that low-skill immigrants do not pay enough in taxes to cover the costs to the public of the various social services and benefits they receive. Not by half.
According to the Heritage Foundation, of the approximately 4.5 million low-skill immigrant households, about 41 percent are headed by illegal immigrants. On average, each of those low-skill immigrant households pays $10,573 in taxes, while consuming $30,160 worth of government services annually. This leaves an average deficit of $19,588 per household that has to be picked up by other taxpayers. If 41 percent of those 4.5 million households are headed by illegal immigrants, this means that the total cost to U.S. taxpayers for all low-skill illegal immigrant households is 36.1 billion dollars per year.
In 2007, 141 million people paid income taxes. The top 50 percent, or roughly 70 million taxpayers paid 97.1 percent of all income taxes paid. The bottom 5o percent paid only 2.9 percent of revenues. Disregarding the bottom 50 percent, who pay almost no taxes, this means that the top 50 percent of taxpayers each pay about $512 per year to support low-skill illegal immigrant households. And since it’s actually the top 25 percent of taxpayers who pay 86.5 percent of tax revenues, the per-taxpayer amount, for those who actually pay the bulk of the costs of illegal immigration, is nearly twice as high, pushing a thousand dollars a year.
Socialists and Progressives have no problem with forcibly redistributing the wealth of the top tiers of taxpayers, particularly since they believe (often mistakenly) that illegal immigrants granted amnesty will automatically become a voting bloc for the left. That, by the way, is why Obama refuses to send troops to the border; he sees illegal immigration as a vote-getter for the Democrats and Progressives.
But what’s more fair, to burden the top tier of taxpayers with funding the political aspirations of the leftists and open border advocates, or to require those who support or advocate for open borders and amnesty to put their money where their mouths are?
Here’s an idea: Anyone who advocates for open borders, amnesty or illegal immigration gets sent a bill for $19,588 from the IRS. Every year. We’ll even send them nice photos of some family of illegals they are supporting, so they can feel good about it.
It’s pretty easy to spend other people’s money, but when the costs of sponsoring and supporting a family of illegal aliens is levied on those who favor the breaking of American law and the violating of American sovereignty, I doubt that support for illegal immigration will last very long.
Time to put up or shut up.
© 2010 Altnews
I agree with you on all points except the solution. Congress will happily put up the money (our money) once the GOP gets control again. This simply sinks us deeper in the hole.
The solution is the elimination of the welfare class by the total elimination of government services paid for by property tax. As harsh as that sounds, it is the only proven solution to our problem.
The point you miss in your last article is how debt impacts the middle and upper classes and how that synergy plays into the coming power struggle (the chaos and death part of the collapse). This is what causes the military to fracture.
We are SERIOUSLY in debt. I fear it is later than you think.