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The forgotten costs.

By: Paul Cella (Diary)  |  July 21st, 2008 at 09:01 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The debate over immigration, when it ranges over the subject of costs and benefits, tends to favor anodyne abstractions and economic postulates. The costs of securing the border and, by attrition, reducing the illegal immigration population include conjectures about economic decline, about the loss of our prestige as a welcoming nation. The benefits, meanwhile, generally take a similar form: cheap products, fluid labor, corporate profits, etc.

There is a place for such speculations and conjectures, to be sure: no discussion of immigration policy would be complete without them.

How much more inadequate is the discussion when it neglects to concrete human costs, like Ft. Myers’ police office Andrew Widman, shot dead early Friday morning by an illegal alien outside a night club?

This too must be part of the debate — along with all the other murders, rapes, assaults and burglaries committed against Americans by foreign nationals trespassing upon our land, to the pristine insouciance of our political elites who favor those easy and anodyne abstractions.

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  • KBDay

    It’s incomprehensible, what this is costing us. And it isn’t just costing us taxpayers, it’s costing the most vulnerable among us as we scramble for dollars to address socio-economic problems in deteriorating neighborhoods, in ever scarce healthcare dollars that American citizens need, in our educational system’s challenges.

    One Florida hospital administrator described costs for a single patient in this country illegally:

    Carol Plato testified about costs incurred by her hospital after treating people who were in the US illegally. Her testimony before the Florida House Committee on State Affairs about costs incurred by a hospital in Martin County, an area near the glitz and glam of West Palm Beach, is pretty earth-shattering. She talks about one patient, a Guatemalan here illegally who stayed in the hospital from 2001-2003. Total for his healthcare services: $1.5 million. The hospital finally managed to return the patient to Guatemala. Total cost: $30,000. And at the time of her testimony, the patient?s family was suing the hospital, with approximately $250,000 spent by the hospital on legal fees.

    I wrote about this at Covering Florida–there’s also a video of her testimony.

    As someone who appreciates the diversity of my country, I also see the situation with those who come here illegally as a definite national security problem–and I’m defining national security in a broad sense that includes dollars.

  • Old_Crow

    Here in NY, Newsday did a Sunday special on the increase in gang violence despite increased enforcement efforts, yet failed to even mention the impact illegal immigration has on the gang activity (mostly MS-13 and other Central American gangs).
    http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-ligang145770438jul20,0,195493.story

    Same issue with increased health care and education costs – the MSM will not even discuss the impact of ignoring illegal immigration on these issues. It’s up to the voters continually bring these issues in front of our elected officials so they cannot disregard the social and economic costs of our current ‘open boarder’ policy.

  • E_Pluribus_Unum

    and often both. It takes about 2 seconds to consider fully the folly involved in open borders.

  • bobbymike

    What if you cheered for a football team that even though they were the best in the league they still got to choose whatever players they wanted for the draft and almost all the good players wanted to come to your team and wanted to pay their own salary. Yet your team drafted the worst players (I know this is a somewhat contradictory to my first premise but assume they had the best players to begin with) Slowly over time your team would get worse.

    This appears to be the US’s immigration policy. You have the best educated world citizenry obtaining PhD’s in the US and having to leave while illiterate, non-english speaking illegal immigrants get a chance at a green card and maybe citizenship.