Both Republican George W. Bush and now Democrat Barack “The Messiah” Obama failed in duty to safeguard American citizens living along the southern border. Eric Holder and the Fast & Furious gun smuggling fiasco, which may force Holder to resign, has increased the danger to U.S. citizens to a degree that everyone living along the border may be forced to arm themselves and to adopt a shoot first attitude toward illegal aliens and drug smugglers that each night flood the deserts of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The Republicans want to build a fence. The Democrats want to issue voting cards to illegals.
While walking along a dirt road bordering his property, a South Texas farmer complained about living in fear of Mexican traffickers smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across his land. He would later ask his visitor not to reveal his identity, for his safety and that of his family.
“I’m a citizen of the United States. This is supposedly sovereign soil, but right now it’s anybody’s who happens to be crossing here,” he said. “I’m a little nervous being here right now. Definitely don’t come down here after dark.”
The farmer said a federal law enforcement agent told him to buy a bulletproof vest to use while working in his fields. Whenever he goes out to survey his agricultural operations, he always tells his office where he is headed, and he has purchased a high-powered rifle.
In Congress, comprehensive immigration reform has been sidelined, stuck between those who would not allow illegal migrants to remain and others who are pushing, like President Obama, to create a “pathway” to legal status: read citizenship.
How much of a strain is illegal immigration placing onAmerica’s struggling economy?
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released an in-depth report on birthright citizenship that includes these disclosures:
- Each year, 300,000 to 400,000 anchor babies are born in the United States and automatically recognized as American citizens.
- Only 30 of the world’s 194 nations confer automatic citizenship on children born to illegal aliens, and just two of them are advanced economies — the United States and Canada.
- No European country has birthright citizenship.
- Over the past few decades, a number of countries have repealed birthright citizenship provisions, including the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Ireland, and New Zealand.
- The number of U.S.-born children with illegal alien parents soared from 2.3 million in 2003 to at least 4 million in 2008. Between 2001 and 2009, such births surpassed 542,000 in Texas alone.
- The Supreme Court has ruled that children born in the U.S. to permanent resident aliens are citizens, but has never decided if the rule applies to the children of aliens whose presence is illegal or temporary.
Due to birthright citizenship, the undocumented immigrant families of anchor babies can qualify for welfare benefits they would otherwise not be entitled to receive. In addition, a child born into those families has the ability “when he grows up, to legalize his parents, and also to bring into the United States his foreign-born spouse and any foreign-born siblings,” according to CIS Legal Policy Analyst Jon Feere.
If Barack Obama and the Democrats push through an amnesty program, hold onto your wallets. Taxpayers will get robbed and illegal aliens rewarded. The eleven million illegal aliens who get legalized will then qualify for many taxpayer-funded government programs, including health premium subsidies, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Medicaid. This redistribution of wealth will add billions to the government’s red ink—not to mention deprive productive Americans of their own money.
To get an idea of the size of amnesty’s fiscal consequences, consider the impact on a single program: Medicaid.
Medicaid is an entitlement program, meaning if someone meets the eligibility criteria, then benefits must be provided. This is a welfare program, meaning eligibility is based on low income. It is guaranteed benefit, meaning there is no per-beneficiary cap to cause self-restraint. It is also federal-state, meaning taxpayers get hit twice—paying both state and federal taxes—and states can’t easily buck federal Medicaid mandates. Medicaid has become one of the biggest unfunded liabilities and out-of-control cost drivers saddling state budgets.
Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are the greatest causes of our runaway federal spending. These entitlement programs gobble up about one-tenth of GDP and are expected to double that by 2055.
This “mandatory” spending is on track to eat up the entire federal budget before the end of the century. It already amounts to two-thirds of all federal spending. All of Obama’s and the Democratic Congress’s profligacy in discretionary spending (e.g., education, energy) is pocket change compared to entitlement spending.
It gets worse: Obama’s health reform expanded the Medicaid program. Starting in 2014, incomes up to 133% of the official poverty level can get healthcare through Medicaid. A third above the poverty level is income of about $29,000 for a family of four.
An estimated 20 million people will join the Medicaid rolls by 2019 under Obamacare. Medicaid’s 2008 enrollment was 43.5 million.
About half the costs of the health law, or around $410 billion, will be spent on Medicaid. You can bet money government prognosticators have underestimated the eventual price tag.
There will be millions of New Beneficiaries
Looking at Medicaid alone, the fiscal consequences of amnesty add up to real money. About 3.1 million illegal aliens earn less than a third above poverty wages, census figures show. These would become new Medicaid beneficiaries.
Covering 3.1 million newly legalized, poor aliens would run an extra $8.1 billion a year in new Medicaid costs. Over Obamacare’s initial budget window, that would total $48.6 billion.
That total reflects only spending over six years, 2014-2019, because Obamacare Medicaid benefits don’t start at the beginning of the budget decade. This fact has much to do with Obamacare’s budget smoke and mirrors, the sneaky ways politicians hide true taxpayer costs.
Amnesty’s $80 Billion for Medicaid
Conservatively, Obama’s Medicaid expansion and any mass amnesty will together increase the annual Medicaid costs of lawbreaking aliens by more than Obamacare’s extra Medicaid costs without amnesty. The cost of amnesty to Medicaid alone will run more than $80 billion over a full decade.
Worse goes to worst: The unfunded fiscal liabilities of amnesty to Medicaid will be much higher than estimated, once chain migration is factored in. Each former illegal alien will be able to sponsor distant relatives for visas, and you can bet money those relatives have about the same socioeconomic characteristics and eventually will qualify for the same public programs.
Therefore, amnesty will slap taxpayers with an $8.1 billion a year Medicaid bill. That cost will continually grow because of budgetary underestimation and a pipeline of new Medicaid constituents through chain migration.
The only rational conclusion: Amnesty is fiscally irresponsible.
