The Economics Behind Illegal Immigration

What makes America great? Many things but one of the best qualities of America is written on the Statue of Liberty,

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This is what immigrants would see when they entered the United States through Ellis Island in New York. For the most part this is true to this day. Many different people from many different nationalities apply to come to America for a better life. Sadly a lot of those people are denied an opportunity to come live the American dream because of bureaucratic red tape.

Immigration is necessary for America to continue to thrive and be the land of opportunity. But illegal immigration is threatening this once great tradition of America. It threatens this tradition because of the economic burden it places on natural resources, municipal services and welfare.

In 1970 there were 203 million people in the United States. In 1973 the American people moved into below replacement level fertility, which means that we have fewer than 2.1 children per woman. This means that the American population will eventually begin to stabilize. But what we saw is that population after this point still continued to grow. Scientist began to do some calculations and figured with the "baby boomer" generation and "baby boomer echo" that the American population would reach 247 million by 2030.




We all know that those numbers are not true numbers because we currently have more than 350 million people living within our borders. What the census bureau said was that because of immigration our country has doubled its growth. This means that as a country we have had to double all of the infrastructure spending in this country. We have had to build twice as many schools, twice as many streets, twice as many sewage plants as well as any other municipal services including garbage and electricity.

In California the State Department of Education claims that everyday of the year they have to build a brand new elementary school to keep up with the population growth as long as the current immigration policy continues.

The census bureau has stated that if Congress does not lower the immigration standards currently in place then by the middle of the next century our children and grandchildren will see a population growth that will suffocate the current citizens leaving them overtaxed and undereducated.

The real question is, Is immigration an effective tool? America currently takes in about one million immigrants a year. 25% of the immigrants in 1980 came from Mexico. The average Mexican makes about one tenth annual salary that the average American makes which we would consider poor. How many other cultures in the world though are more deserving then Mexicans? That number is 4.6 billion people. Lets extrapolate this number that is 4.6 with 8 zeros behind it. That is roughly 76% of the world that are more deserving then the average Mexican. So if immigration is a policy to help the impoverished third world countries around the world then that means that we as a country are missing out on helping more than 80% of people that are worse off than us.

So what do we do? Shut down our borders? Forget about third world nations? Continue with our current policy? No because we can continue to let in one million immigrants a year or we can help them develop their own nations. Since the 1950's the thought that America should take the overpopulation of the third world Latin American countries but can that really work? No, because last year we took roughly one million people and Latin American countries produced an additional 80 million people births over deaths. This year we will take a million people and this year Latin America will produce more than 80 million people. This trend will continue and there is no way that America can ever get ahead of this except by helping the third world Latin American countries create a better life for its citizens.

The truth of it is that America could take millions of people a year and ruin the social fabric and social services and it still wouldn't impact the explosive population growth and the standard of living would decrease significantly.

This may be the most important part of this. At our current population more than 40% of our rivers and streams are not fishable or swimable. What are we going to do when our population doubles in ten years due to current immigration standards. Over 70% of our ground water in America is being utilized what happens when our population increases by another 40% in 10 years? Will we be out of water? What happens when we cannot produce enough electricity to keep up with demand? Wait a second that is already happening. Rolling blackouts in California. Record droughts in the Southeast. Lakes are drying up left and right. How much more can America withstand? How do we change this?

We need to tell congress to change the immigration levels to the levels of 1965. We need to reward the businesses that hire legal immigrants and punish those recruit illegal immigrants. We need to tighten border security and bring over immigrants from all over the impoverished Earth instead of just one region. Leave a comment.