The article misses the point. It isn't about the relative worth of an illegal vs a legal immigrant. It's about law. We have immigration laws on the books, and there are ways to immigrate legally. If you don't have a skill we need then we don't want you here.
Hell, it's tough to get here legally if you DO have a skill that's in demand. My fiancee is British, an occupational therapist with an advanced university degree and licensed to work in three countries. It's going to cost us over 7 grand to get her here legally, and will take at least another 6 months. In the meantime I'm living here and she's in the UK. The U.S. is woefully short of allied health workers yet we still have to jump through hoops, spend a huge amount of money, and live apart for months on end. I resent this. The proposed Z visas, even with the $4000 fine, are still cheaper than what we're doing.
It's also about social costs.
While it's true that illegal immigrants aren't covered by Medicare or Medicaid (yet, anyway), we do provide free health care for them. In Sarasota county our primay public hospital is Sarasota Memorial, with an annual budget in excess of 400 million. It's primary mission is to provide indigent health care. Before anyone jumps on it, I'm not implying that all illegals are indigent, but they certainly do use Sarasota Memorial. I went to the emergency room a few months ago with an injured shoulder, and the waiting room was completely full, with the line running out the door. The only languare (literally) I heard spoken was Spanish. Now, I'm sure some of those folks were card-carrying workers, but I'll bet 10 bucks to a box of stale donuts there were plenty of illegals. After all, if you're willing to break the law by coming to our country illegally, why would you hesitate to break the law by using indigent care facilities when you aren't truly indigent?
There is a huge cost to the school system. Yes - illegals rent property, so they indirectly pay property taxes. But that argument ignores population density. If you drive through the lower-rent districts in Sarasota and Bradenton, you'll see 5 or 6 cars parked in front of a single apartment. This impiles, to me anyway, that there are a lot of people living in that low-rent apartment. So they're NOT paying a fair share of property taxes on a per capita basis. Also, because so many of the illegal (and legal, for that matter) immigrants don't speak English, there is the cost of interpreters, textbooks in other languages, etc.
The article states that the average loss to a $10 an hour American worker is $3 and hour, while the illegal gains $7 an hour, and that the $7 gain is worth about 5 times the American's loss. Now, I doubt there are very many illegal economists out there dragging down Mr. Landsburg's wages, so it's easy for him to sit in his ivory tower and justify that loss on some grand macro-economic level but it ignores the cost to the legal, law-abiding AMERICAN citizen. If I were making $10 and hour and someone took $3 and hour away from me it would make a huge impact on my household budget, even if it were only for a shot time while the economy 'adjusted'. So I'd ask Mr. Landsburg - are you willing to take a 30% pay cut? I can tell you I'm not.
It's about public safety. The fastest growing gang in the U.S. is MS13, an Hispanic gang that originated in El Salvadore. It is composed mostly of illegals. I won't bother with a citation - just type 'MS13' into Google. Are these people 'worth' as much as an American citizen? I personally know three people in the Sarasota area who have been involved in auto accidents with illegal immigrants, and in all three cases the illegals were at fault. Uninsured, unlicensed illegal immigrants. Is that fair? There's a huge, underground economy that's sprung up to service the illegal population, do we really need that?
It's also about stupidity. The proposed immigration bill eliminated several classes of visas, particularly the 'E' type visas that are for exceptional individuals in the arts and sciences. These are the sort of visas someone like Hawkings would use if he were to immigrate. So what we're basically saying is we want your yard workers and citrus pickers, but keep your physicists and ballet dancers? What sort of stupid, myopic nonsense is that?
Why is it that high-paid liberals are so willing to spend the average American's hard-earned money?
Write your congressional reps and senators, folks. Let them know that anyone who supports this short-sighted, politically expedient horse hockey will be looking for a job come next election.
