Step 1: Triple the quota for legal immigrants so that more of these guys will become legal.

Step 2: Change the law so that naturalized citizens cannot receive welfare benefits for the first two years.

Step 3: Actually enforce laws meant to prevent illegals to get welfare benefits, with penalties that actually make sense. Create documents that are more expensive to forge so that social workers will be duped less often. Make welfare fraud a deportable offense.

In short, take a big carrot, huge stick approach.

1. We clearly need to up the quota system from the 10,000 or so legal immigrants we currently provide for from mexico.

2. Granting citizenship outright to those in the country now is a slap in the face to those who have followed proper procedures to come here legally or are following them and have not yet arrived.

no one has reconciled these two points into an effective policy that i can see. i hear loudly from camp xenophobe and camp amnesty, but no one solving the issue to my satisfaction.

- the late conservative economist Julian Simon calculated that native U.S. citizens receive more in government benefits than do immigrants;

- a Cato Institute study found that immigrants paid 48% as much in taxes as the average American family, but received only 32% as much in government benefits;

- the Urban Institute estimated in the mid-90′s that immigrants contributed $30 billion more in taxes than they receive each year, a number that has no doubt risen since then;

- Rachel M. Friedberg of Brown University and Jennifer Hunt of Yale University determined that immigrants create many more jobs than they fill;

- economists Paul Krugman and Elise S. Brezis concluded that immigrant expenditures in the U.S. encourage investment and, over time, increase the number of jobs in the U.S.;

- the National Academy of Sciences determined that immigrants provide a net economic benefit to the U.S.

Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, have proven to be exceptionally hard workers. We have all benefitted from their hard labor and from the resulting increase in GDP.

Last report was that there are some 12M illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. Kindly do the math. Unless they’re all using forged documents to receive welfare and/or social security, they are employed and their employers are not generally inviting federal penalties on themselves and risking deportation for their employees by reporting their illegal income. In the rare cases where illegals file using an ITIN – which requires a forged ID to procure if you’re not a legal resident, and compounds the crime they’re committing – the low wage level will typically result in a partial or complete refund, or worse; because of the low wage level, ITIN filings can also be used to get EIC which. Ironically (unless you live in Bizarro World), this results in the illegal immigrant being **paid** by the federal government (i.e., we legal resident and citizen taxpayers) for entering the country and working here illegally. Again, this is an unconscionable slap in the face to both legal immigrants and citizens alike – this behavior should not be rewarded with amnesty.

No one has claimed that illegal immigrants receive *more* govt. services than U.S. citizens, irrespective of income level, which is impossible to verify other than as an estimate (see above). Likewise, no one is claiming that illegals commit *more* crimes per capita. The point is that any illegal use of services and any increase in the prison population (see http://tinyurl.com/ahjkg ) attributable to illegal immigrants is a problem that can be corrected by enforcing existing immigration laws and securing the U.S. borders.

As for schools, any additional burden put on the state due to illegal resident students can likewise be addressed by enforcing existing immigration laws and securing U.S. borders.

Sorry to upset any delicate sensibilities with the term “breed”, that wasn’t my intent. But it’s accurate nevertheless – especially in this context. U.S. citizens also breed, albeit at a lower rate than the ethnic and racial groups that comprise the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S.

I’ve had to endure this argument all week on two other blogs, so I apologize if I seem bothered by it.

Do you have any evidence that illegal immigrants are paying less taxes or receiving more government services than U.S. citizens at the same income levels? Do you have any evidence to show that illegal immigrants – not Hispanics – are committing any more crimes than the general population (excluding illegal entry)?

I’ll address the school issue tomorrow, for I feel it’s just not valid.

Would it be too difficult to say “they have children here” rather than “they breed here”? To me, it just sounds very disrespectful to use that term when referring to fellow human beings. I’m just suggesting that your arguments might be easier received if you did show respect.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. Don’t like it? Petition for a change in the law, don’t expect special pleading to exonerate you if you’re caught breaking it. U.S. citizens can’t avail themselves of this kind of sophistry to avoid the legal consequences of their actions – why should non-citizens be free to do so?

Regarding the notion of ‘refugees’, this is a false analogy, isn’t it. Illegal immigrants stealing across the border in the dark are not escaping from a virtual gulag in Cuba, they are for the most part looking for either a handout or a better deal, not freedom from the persecution and conditions under a communist regime.

Regarding assimilation, Rick Moran has an excellent post that speaks to this issue ( http://tinyurl.com/lbsf9 ). It underscores the necessity of obeisance to culture required when one expects to avail one’s self of guarantees, protections, social programs, better economy, better health care and other benefits of living in the U.S.

Sorry, Alina, but I just cannot use the term “criminal” when the offense is crossing a border to work hard at a job willingly offerred. That’s just not the same offense as robbery or burglary.

I don’t think anyone believes the Mexican immigrants are more worthy than those from anywhere else. They’re just luckier because they live next door to the strongest economy and one of the most free nations on the planet.

The humanitarian argument I made was simply a request that we not fault these people for what they did. IMO, we do owe them respect because they have worked at these jobs within our borders for years. They helped build our economy.

Please consider one other factor that makes Mexicans different from all other prospective immigrants. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California were all part of Mexico for twice as long as they have been part of the U.S. These were conquered regions just as Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were conquered nations. Spanish was the “offical” language of these states for over 300 years. (Note: The U.S. itself did not directly conquer Texas. U.S. immigrants crossed illegally into Spanish Texas and later, with U.S. government assistance, gained their independence.)

Just as some in the Baltic states never felt they should have been dominated by the Russians, some Mexicans and Mexican-Americans do not believe they should be dominated by the culture of the U.S. They should not be required to adopt the language and all the customs of the Anglos.

I’m not arguing that today’s U.S. citizens should feel guilty about the conquest of the Southwest states 150 years ago. But we should not be so quick about insisting on total assimilation.

But if we make a humanitarian, emotional argument, then we should be airlifting people from Africa by the thousands. As I said in my earlier post, this presumes that Mexicans are more worthy of US largess than anyone else, and that isn’t fair either.

And furthermore, does it mean that anyone already in America who feels desperate, jobless, devoid of medical care and hungry and commits a crime is, by the same defintion, not a criminal, either?

I applaud you for following the rules, and I’m glad that you are here.

It is a porous 2,000 mile border that allowed 12 million illegal immigrants into this country. If the USSR had shared a poruous 2,000 mile border with the U.S. in 1977, do you think every immigrant from Russia or Latvia or Georgia would have waited to get the correct paperwork and permissions? Maybe. I don’t know. But suppose that jobs in the USSR were almost non-existent, and those few available paid a pittance.

Before branding the illegals as criminals, we should consider the choice they faced:

1. They could wait years on the chance they could get in legally, working for $3 a day while they remained in the queue. They could have sat around patiently while their children complained of hunger and suffered for lack of medical care. Or,

2. By simply eluding a few patrols, they could enter the U.S. and immediately receive a 1,000 to 2,000 percent increase in wages. The jobs were there for the taking. Employers were eager to hire them. Their Mexican government was encouraging them to go.

What parent would not have taken that risk?

It is easy for us to talk about respect for the law. But that respect will fade fast for even the best of us if faced with hunger and severe poverty.