Illegal Immigration

There are very few issues that have been exaggerated to the extent that illegal immigration has. On the one hand some people are using excuses to cover up their not-so inconspicuous racism and on the other some are worried over the economic effect that illegals have on our economy. On the one side no one is proposing building a wall along our Northern border nor do many propose building a wall along our shores to the southeast. Ironically many on the right readily welcome Cuban visitors to our shores, could it be because they have a tendency to vote Republican, hum? But the same people usually want to stop almost every other person whose skin is varying degrees of brown or slightly darker than pasty i.e. Dominicans, Haitians, Mexicans, El Salvadorians, etc.

Those who worry about the economic implications simply haven’t done their homework on the realities of the situation. For example, the majority of illegal immigrants (men between the ages of 18 and 50) pay social security and medicare taxes but can’t ever collect on their payments and the numbers are NOT insignificant. The exact numbers are hard to quantify but it appears that in many ways illegal aliens are a net positive gain in terms of what they pay into our society and what they actually take.

” Using data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies… estimated that 3.8 million households headed by illegal immigrants generated $6.4 billion in Social Security taxes in 2002″

http://www.latinbayarea.com/channels/community/issues/immigration/

I could go on all day about this issue but the simple answer is that to build a wall to solve our problems is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous stupid, inefficient, and ludicrously expensive as many of those that come to our country do NOT cross the border on foot. If you’re worried about illegals stealing Americans jobs then support the rights of workers to unionize, work towards strengthening workers rights and support policies that enforce workplace standards. In essence, remove the economic incentive for employers hiring illegals and you’ll attain your goal without building a big, ridiculously expensive and ineffective wall. But be prepared to pay more money for the things you buy but expect that you’ll also make more money, have more job security and more employer accountability.