Dee Perez-Scott Doesn't Give a Damn

NBC reports the imminent birth of the 7 billionth inhabitant of the Earth and repeats what we have known for a long time: the Earth's resources are being stretched beyond their carrying capacity. Water is the critical resource with millions do not have access to potable drinking water. But that is only the tip of the iceberg because producing food for 7 billion people also requires large quantities of water. An official from the UN also points out that it takes 2000 gallons of water to produce one pair of jeans so if each of the 7 billion people had only one pair of jeans their production would require 14 trillion gallons of water.

The U.S. is a microcosm of the world. As such we should be taking action to assure our citizens do not suffer the shortages seen elsewhere in the world. Every new mouth in the U.S. requires shelter, food and water. Yet arable land and water are finite natural resources that will become increasingly scarce. Ultimately, this will result in an increase in the number hungry people in the U.S. and a reduction in the average standard of living. Providing shelter for more people not only requires the use of some finite raw materials but also increasingly requires the use of land formerly used for the production of food. One gets the impression that no one is listening or paying attention to these cogent facts; they should be at the forefront in any discussion of immigration and tax policies.

The problem is not how to divide finite natural resources among 7 billion people. The problem is how to successfully institute policies that will lead to negative population growth so that there will be enough of those finite natural resources to provide the good life for all of the Earth's inhabitants. In the U.S. a ten year moratorium on legal immigration and the systematic repatriation of all illegal aliens who are surplus to our economy.

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Dee Perez-Scott: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh

October 28, 2011

Dear Governor Romney,

I have received your latest letter asking for support for your campaign. As I indicated in a previous communication, my family is finding it difficult to support your candidacy because of your stand on illegal immigration. Your credibility regarding the jobs crisis in America can only be judged on the basis of your willingness to vigorously enforce our immigration laws. There are up to 8 million jobs in this country that are currently held by illegal aliens. An additional untold number of jobs are not available to citizens because of excessive legal immigration. It is unconscionable for any candidate to ignore those facts while professing to be a job creator. It’s time to tie our legal immigration quota more precisely to our needs for skilled labor and well-educated scientists and engineers as well as to the U.S. total unemployment rate.

Although no one will argue that all of the jobs held by illegals could be easily filled with citizen labor, millions of them could be. Before any employer is allowed to hire or retain foreign labor, he needs to provide irrefutable proof that he has been unable to fill his jobs by offering a living wage and a hiring preference for unemployed citizens. We believe stern action against the illegals and those who hire them would free-up many jobs to unemployed or underemployed citizens. Can you think of any other way to create millions of jobs for Americans in a relatively short time?

If it was freed from the restraints that keep it from fully exploiting all domestic energy sources, the oil, gas and coal industries could create millions of new jobs. However, it will take longer for those jobs to materialize than those that could be freed up immediately through vigorous enforcement of immigration laws and a reduction in the total number of legal immigrants we allow each year. If illegals are identified, apprehended, and sent on their way home as quickly and as humanely as possible, the newspapers and employment offices would soon begin to advertise large numbers of jobs.

To do this we need to reform our immigration courts and appeal processes so that where there is prima facie evidence that a person has entered this country or is present illegally he or she can be removed quickly and efficiently. Of course, minor children, regardless of their citizenship, must always accompany their parents who are under a removal order. This does not compromise their right to exercise their birthright citizenship once they reach age 21.
How could this be done? First, we need to augment the immigration judges with a large number of immigration justices of the peace (IJOPs), appointed by the states but operating under a federal mandate. A rigid set of criteria should be provided to facilitate uniform decision-making by these IJOPs. These criteria should assure that a removal order is issued immediately for those who have been apprehended and are unable to produce evidence of their bona fides within a week.
Employers could be put on notice that they will be heavily fined or jailed if any illegals are found in their employ. The employers can protect themselves against those penalties by proving that they have used the E-verification system to check the immigration status of all employees, both potential new hires and current employees. Employers can give first priority to weeding out those among their employees have failed to provide bona fide evidence of their legal presence in the U.S. or who may have presented fraudulent documents. Employers know who they are.
E-verification must be mandated across the board for all employers and all employees and the E-verification records must be available for ICE or local authorities’ audit or inspection at all times. If any complaint of illegal hiring is received, the company involved should be subject to a full audit of employment records, payroll taxes, and E-verification usage. Well-vetted volunteers from among the ranks of the unemployed could be used to do some of the E-verification work and be offered first priority on any jobs that are freed up through that process.
Public notice should be given to all illegals that they must leave this country immediately within a short deadline like six weeks. Those who do not leave voluntarily should be sentenced in absentia to six months working on border infrastructure and transported to the border at their own or their employers’ expense as soon as they can be apprehended. These illegals should be fingerprinted, photographed, DNA’d and put into a national illegal alien data base. After they have served their sentences should be expelled with the admonition that if they return without the proper documentation, they will be classified as repeat offenders and felons subject to not less than two years of hard time.

These measures would be welcomed by the unemployed and by the taxpayers who have to pick up the tab for the cost of Medicaid, education, food stamps, and other social services currently provided to the families of illegal aliens. Teachers have had to be laid off because of the failure of states to manage their fiscal affairs properly. Obama proposes to borrow $35 billion to bail out New York, Illinois and California so that teachers can be hired to reduce class size. As a former governor, you could make common cause with the other 47 governors who would not share on a per capita basis in that bailout. The class-size problem would be quickly solved as soon as the children of illegal aliens are identified and removed from our schools. The homelands of the children of illegal aliens should be responsible for the cost of educating them, not the American taxpayers.

If employers get busy re-advertising their jobs so they can prove those limited number of cases where they must have foreign labor, there should be no problem in keeping America’s economy moving forward and meeting our labor needs. No one wants to deprive employers of the labor they need but neither do they want employers to hire illegals at the expense of unemployed citizens.
Some people will probably take the view that a few million illegal aliens will never threaten America’s culture, language, history and ideals. That is silly in view of what has already occurred in Mexifornia, Mexas, Mexazona, Mexinois and even Mexichusetts. Victor Davis Hansen, a professor of classics, has written about this in his book, “Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.”
One has to argue that if Latin culture is so great, why have so many fled their homelands to come to America illegally? The fact is much of Latin America is rife with disease, oligarchy, pestilence, joblessness, heinous crimes, gangs and drug lords. The more people there are from these countries in the U.S., the more the U.S. will begin to resemble the donor countries. Millions of illegals will simply recreate the very culture and conditions they fled their homelands to escape.

Our population is well over 300 million now. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what it will be like if we add another 300 million before the end of this century. Traffic on our roads and streets will be crushing. Everyone who wishes to go to a national park will have to apply 5-10 years in advance. There will be increasing pressure to develop public lands and encroachment on wild life habitat will increase.

Addressing the population issue helps to solve or mitigate the energy and pollution problems and also enables us to conserve other scarce resources like water. In the Southwest, water rights are being bought up by cities to serve their burgeoning populations. That deprives the farms, ranches, and orchards of the water they need to grow food for the additional people. We should all be watching with dismay the continuing plunder of the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in the United States and one of the largest on the planet. It once held as much water as Lake Huron. It is a treasure that took millennia to accumulate. Remarkably, it could cease to be a water resource within another generation. We are left with yet another illustration of an all too common American mindset: short on vision, mired in denial and unable to comprehend nature’s limits.

There are some who believe our population must grow to enable America’s economy to grow but, in the end, population-driven economic growth is unsustainable. The pro-growth people are false prophets who must be ignored. Well before the final unsustainable stage is reached we will feel manifold adverse impacts on our quality of life and standard of living. The decline in the American standard of living has already been in the news in just this past week or two.
“Inherent in the idea of standard of living is the level of our present and future consumption. America’s “standard of living” is generally considered a measure of how easy it is for us to satisfy our material desires. There are many ways we might look at this--how many televisions or computers we have per household, how much health care we consume on a per capita basis and how many families in our nation live below the poverty level. But however our standard of living is measured, current monetary, fiscal and tax policies will diminish it if we stay on our current path.” We cannot continue to allow our neighbors to dump their poor, uneducated people into our back yard and expect our standard of living to survive that onslaught.

Are the problems illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration cause so difficult to see? Why isn’t our policy one that promotes and enables a stable population with a soft landing for our economy? Shouldn’t we be putting our best economists to work figuring out how this can be done with the least amount of pain?

Written in the late 1800s when immigration was nearing its peak and the U.S. population was only about 50 million, Emma Lazarus’s famous sonnet posted on the base of the Statue of Liberty was an expression of her empathy for those who had fled the anti-Semitic Pogroms in Eastern Europe. The sonnet is a poignant reminder of our immigrant past but the operative word in that phrase is the word “past.” Our population has now increased six-fold. No one can deny that conditions now are different than they were in the late 1800s and therefore our immigration policies should be different.

There are many things in our past: child labor, prohibition, lack of women’s suffrage, Jim Crow laws, and segregation. Few thinking Americans want to go back to that “past” yet too many continue to cling to the idea of “our immigrant past” without a second thought about its appropriateness as a model for the fully-settled and fully-developed America of today with more than 300 million people.

Our immigrant past of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries should not be our guide for the future. The times, our society and the availability of natural resources have changed dramatically. There are several movements in the U.S. such as Zero Population Growth (ZPG) and Negative Population Growth (NPG) that have tried to impact our tax and immigration policies in a direction that would be most likely to enable us to pass on to our descendents the kind of America we have enjoyed. Even though their cogent arguments have failed to gain traction so far, it is time that we paid more attention to them, especially if we value our standard of living and quality of life.

It is as though we have convinced ourselves that population-driven economic growth can be sustained indefinitely. We seem to have ignored the fact that the “limit” of finite natural resources per capita as population grows without bounds is zero. (The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us.) Why aren’t these issues a part of the public dialogue on immigration and the unarmed invasion of illegal aliens?

Of course our nation has prospered from the generous and hopeful spirit expressed in the Lazarus sonnet but does anyone really believe that what was a good thing in the 1800s must necessarily also be a good thing today? We are indeed a Nation of laws and, although we once were, we should no longer be a Nation of immigrants. We can reconcile these two traditions by giving more substantial weight to all of the changes that have occurred in our country since the past peak of immigration. Our traditions clearly need to be rebalanced to fit the vastly changed circumstances of our country. Again, why does no one speak about immigration reform in these terms rather than in terms of a “broken system” and the conditions that prevailed over a hundred years ago?

Although a ten year moratorium on immigration would be welcomed by many, few would suggest that we close immigration indefinitely. Instead we should limit the total immigration quota to 200-250 thousand per year focused on the skilled labor and PhD scientists, mathematicians and engineers we need to remain competitive in the global economy. That number should be inclusive of all chain immigration of spouses and minor children of citizens or permanent residents, but exclusive of foreign students, temporary migrant farm workers, tourists and other workers for whom there is a demonstrated need. We should expedite citizenship for foreign students who are interested and who have completed the PhD degree in engineering, physical or biological science, mathematics, and medicine.

Although highly-skilled applicants should enjoy immigration priority, we should level the playing field for all others so that they have an equal opportunity with that of the adult relatives of citizens or permanent residents. Adult relatives have traditionally made their own way and made their own choices. They need no special dispensation in the immigration rules. The new quota will reaffirm our rich tradition of welcoming immigrants who can benefit our country rather than those who would strain our budget and further stretch our finite natural resources. To do otherwise will certainly result in America’s decline. The time has come for an exclusionary immigration policy. All nations and all potential immigrants must be put on notice that we have only a limited need and capacity for new legal immigrants and it will be our policy to carefully meter future immigration.

There is a broad consensus around building a solution that stops the flow of illegal aliens across our borders and prevents employers from hiring them. The problem is our unwillingness to take the steps necessary to bring that consensus to fruition. We cannot stop the flow of illegal aliens by granting those already here a pathway to citizenship. We cannot stop employers from hiring them unless we implement E-Verification across the board immediately and severely penalize every employer who fails to use that system to avoid hiring illegals. The best way to accomplish both objectives is vigorous and continuous internal enforcement based on mandatory E-verification across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and potential new hires.

Some say the repatriation of a significant number of illegal aliens is not feasible. From a logistical point of view, they are dead wrong. Using a heavily damaged transportation system, eight million ethnic Germans were repatriated back to the heartland of Germany from the East in less than a year following the end of World War II. Many died because of a lack of food and warm clothing during the winter journey in 1945. They were given thirty minutes to appear at the railroad depot and allowed only one suitcase.

No one proposes such draconian measures for the illegals in this country. The advocates of the repatriation of large numbers of illegals favor a systematic, humane approach based on E-verification of work status and attrition through enforcement with due advance notice to the illegals that they are expected to leave voluntarily. Those who choose to ignore that notice will have to face the consequences. We must send the message that if you come here without the proper papers, we will catch you and send you home at your own expense or that of your employer, after you have served a six month sentence working on border infrastructure. Repeat offenders should face hard time for a minimum of two years.

Over the past several years we have invested a great deal of resources into strengthening our borders by increasing staffing and improving infrastructure. We have yet to revise the rules of engagement so that there is no catch-and- release at the border or internally. Recently, usurping the power of Congress, Obama has ordered the courts to review all of the cases where illegals are already under removal orders and release those who have no criminal records. Instead, all of those illegals should have been deported immediately. That is the quickest way to clear up any backlog in the immigration courts. If they can’t produce the proper documentation within a week that is prima facie evidence that they are here illegally and may have entered illegally. They should be summarily dealt with without further delays or appeals. Although visa-overstays may have entered legally, if their visas have expired, they are now present in the U.S. illegally and must leave immediately. We have gotten really sloppy about visa enforcement. Visa overstays must be put on notice that they will be treated in a similar fashion to those who have entered illegally.

After notice has been given and posted, illegals apprehended at the border or internally must be sentenced immediately to at least six months working on border infrastructure. It is estimated that an illegal alien who persists in his or her attempt to get across the border has an ultimate probability of success of about 95%. Illegal aliens believe that if they can escape the immediate environs of the border and the clutches of the border patrol, they will be home free. This constitutes a strong argument for vigorous internal enforcement as a part of any immigration reform.

The East Germans found to their dismay that even mine fields, machine gun towers, multi-layered fences and walls did not deter those who wished to escape to the West. Why? Because the escapees knew if they made it, they would never be repatriated? We need to take that lesson to heart.
The East German experience illustrates the need for the expeditious repatriation of a large enough number of illegal aliens to send the clear message that if you come here without proper authorization, we will catch you, sentence you to work on border infrastructure for at least six months. You will then be expelled to your homeland with the admonition that if you return you will do hard time as a felon and a repeat offender. This is the clear solution to border security. This approach has not been implemented to a sufficient degree to send a message to those who would violate our borders. Quick sentencing and repatriation are the sine qua non of border security. Our borders will never be secure without them.

Your position on illegals appears to be the same as Obama’s. He and you apparently want illegal aliens who are already here to step out of the shadows and onto a responsible path to citizenship by demonstrating sound character, a commitment to America, and a strong work ethic. By advocating that position you not only undermine our laws and the rule of law but ignore the most effective border security measure we have, quick apprehension and removal.

You can’t compete with Obama for the Hispanic vote. He has already given the racist organization La Raza everything it asked for including funding and de facto amnesty. We have to appeal to Hispanic citizens on the basis of their own enlightened best interests. They are or will be adversely impacted by the decline in our standard of living and quality of life just like everyone else. They are sustained by the same finite natural resources as everyone else. They don’t enjoy congested highways and streets anymore than anyone else does. One would hope that they also have some interest in clean air and water and the environment in general. Some of them must be among the unemployed who could get jobs if the illegals were expelled and the border secured. The number of jobs available in America is limited right now. Our Hispanic citizens deserve to have access to those that are now held by illegals willing to work for substandard wages while being paid under the table. Surely, an articulate candidate like yourself can get this message across and convince them that illegal aliens are not in their enlightened self-interest or the national interest. All civilized societies are based on the rule of law. Subverting the immigration laws simply leads to more lawlessness like that observed along our southern border.

As long as unemployment hovers between a total of 9% and 15%, those affect will fundamentally disagree with any amnesty for the illegals already present in our country. The common understanding of amnesty is any measure that would allow the illegals to remain here and work and profit from their illegal presence. In looking for what Obama has called that “illusive middle ground”, the beginning point always seems to be amnesty for those who are already here. That is not the middle ground -- not even close! We tried that in 1986 and it failed for lack of enforcement. Now we must try a different approach. We can determine those among the millions of illegals are essential to our economy and who are not. We can determine what labor needs can be met by utilizing our unemployed first. That is the middle ground and that is where we should begin.

We need to develop broad domestic coalitions to deal with this problem and how to proceed. That consensus will never be achieved as long as proposals include a blanket amnesty for all illegal aliens.

I hope you will give these ideas careful thought and become more forthright and decisive in your future remarks on the subject of immigration in general and illegal aliens in particular. Obama has already usurped the role of congress on immigration. I’m surprised that none of the GOP candidates have belabored this point ad infinitum. Surely one among you must have the courage to speak out on the issue of this usurpation and all of the lies Obama has told as he pursues his rules for revolution based on the Alinsky Model.

Yours for a secure future for America, a stable population, and a continued high standard of living and quality of life for our children,

Dee Perez-Scott: How much have you contributed to this decline in our standard of living?

By encouraging illegal aliens and their 14th Amendment parasite offspring, members of La Raza are major contributors to the decline in the American standard of living and quality of life.

Old-fashioned parents know how important it is to teach their children the “value of a dollar.” Uncle Sam doesn’t seem to have learned this lesson though, which has grave implications for our future standard of living.

For most of this decade, the Federal Reserve has pursued a policy of having a “weak” dollar, a dollar that’s cheap in relation to other currencies. Current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke prevailed on former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to adopt this policy, and Bernanke is now continuing it. And if continued much longer, a weak dollar policy—combined with overspending and bad tax policy--will irreparably reduce America’s standard of living.

Inherent in the idea of standard of living is the level of our present and future consumption. America’s “standard of living” is generally considered a measure of how easy it is for us to satisfy our material desires. There are many ways we might look at this--how many televisions or computers we have per household, how much health care we consume on a per capita basis and how many families in our nation live below the poverty level. But however our standard of living is measured, current monetary, fiscal and tax policies will diminish it if we stay on our current path.

Now, clearly some people benefit from a weak dollar. Farmers and other exporters who sell abroad benefit because their products are cheaper (and thus more attractive) on world markets. But because we purchase so many more foreign goods than we export, a weak dollar policy is very bad for consumers and decreases our purchasing power.

Over the last 20 years, America’s appetite for foreign goods has increased multifold. And it is not that easy just to “buy American.” In many cases, there may not be an American choice in a particular product category and if there is, the “American” product may still have significant foreign content in it. This means that as the dollar weakens, our purchases of foreign goods cost much, much more. We will see our household purchasing power decline in future years as effects of the weak dollar policy filter through our economy.

Another effect of a weakening dollar is that investors fear holding assets in dollars. And so the steadily weakening dollar has produced capital flight from the U.S. which harms our economy, as investors seek assets denominated in other, stronger currencies. This leads to a downward spiral as dollars become less and less desirable.

U.S. per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen over 25% since 2000 when measured in euros (a more stable gauge of value than the weak dollar), according to top Wall Street economist David Malpass. Germany’s GDP has overtaken America’s GDP on a per capita basis. And America’s standard of living relative to the rest of the world is falling off a cliff -- with President Obama’s policies giving it a two-armed push over the edge.

Spending plays a major role. The Obama budget also includes record shattering federal spending increases and trillion dollar annual deficits, doubling the national debt in five years, and tripling it in ten. The Administration’s own budget numbers now show total Federal debt reaching $23.3 trillion in 2019. That debt will exceed 100% of GDP by 2011, giving us the honor of the 7th highest government debt-to-GDP ratio in the world. As Judy Shelton recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, that puts us in the company of Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Singapore, Jamaica, Japan, and Italy.

To put our national debt in perspective -- a country cannot even join the European Union unless its government debt-to-GDP ratio does not exceed 60%. This means that even if we wanted to join the EU, our economic fundamentals may soon be seen as too weak.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) projects that under current policies, the federal debt will climb to almost 300% of GDP by 2040. Even during World War II, the national debt peaked at 113% of GDP. This was only a temporary condition and at least we vanquished Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in return for spike in the debt. Now, huge debts are a way of life in America. Obama’s budget busters include increasing federal welfare spending by one third in just his first two years, with total welfare spending soaring to $1 trillion by 2014 and $10.3 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Consider also the effect of taxes. President Obama’s budget provides for increasing the capital gains tax rate by 33% at the start of 2011. The top federal income tax rate would also increase by almost 30% if a health care reform bill similar to the one passed by the House this weekend becomes law. These prospective tax increases on earnings in dollars would cause further capital flight, increasing the downward spiral of the dollar and our standard of living.

These soaring tax rates and crushing deficits will lead to a continued decline of American living standards. Based on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s GDP and inflation assumptions, continued declines in household wealth holdings are projected from 2009 to 2014, with real U.S. per capita GDP falling to below 2000 levels. So much for the Obama recovery.

But the hit to our standard of living could be much worse than even these numbers show. The economy has performed substantially worse this year than was assumed in the Obama budget, with our growth lower and unemployment at a much higher level. Economists predict that these negative trends will continue in the near future. -- This means future deficits and debt will be far higher than the administration projects.

Unlike our government, Americans have drastically cut back on their discretionary spending in response to frightening economic conditions. In some cases, Americans have done this because they are unemployed and can’t afford to spend, but many others have done this out of fear of what may be to come. We may think that it is appropriate for Americans to learn to consume less. But even if we chose now voluntarily to reduce our consumption of cars, electronics and houses, we still want to be able to afford to purchase them in the future.

The decline of America’s standard of living can be reversed with a dramatic change in course to pro-growth economic policies. But American voters need to wake up, or face declining standards of living far into the future. While a Susan B. Anthony dollar may be larger than a euro in size, it will take change to our fiscal and monetary policies to make the value of our dollar approach that of the euro any time soon.

Mallory Factor is the co-chairman and co-founder of the Monday Meeting, an influential meeting of economic conservatives, journalists and corporate leaders in New York City.

Dee Perez-Scott: Loyalty, Racism and Population

The open society of modern America—combining individual rights, a market economy and a modest safety net—is the closest the world has yet come to the good society. Mass illegal entry combined with excessive legal immigration into the U.S., without the appropriate metering and integration of newcomers, is endangering that unique combination of individual liberty and social unity.

It is doing so by changing the face of many towns and cities too rapidly, eroding the belief that existing citizens come first and weakening a sense of mutual obligation expressed through the tax and benefit system. Citizens who are the ethnic brethren of immigrants or illegal aliens often abandon their obligations to their fellow citizens, choosing instead to give precedence to the newcomers without regard to the cost and the tearing of the social fabric that results.

There is nothing mystical about the nation-state. Anyone can join (if invited) so long as they learn the language and respect the traditions of the country. A commitment to a nation-state requires loyalty and support for national sovereignty. After a long and often bloody pre-history the modern nation-state is still the only institution that can currently deliver what citizens, of both right and left, want: democratic legitimacy for the exercise of power; cross-ethnicity, cross-class and cross-generational unity and cohesiveness and even a sense of collective identification that is bigger, better and more tangible than ethnic identities, families and neighborhoods. There is little sign that any other type of organization would be an improvement over the nation-state.

And for the nation-state to work it must entail borders and boundaries and it must "belong" to existing citizens—on important matters they must have special rights over non-citizens. That means immigration must be managed with the interests of existing citizens in mind. The question is what are those interests? First and foremost must be the maintenance of the standard of living and quality of life of the existing citizens. Second, of course, is a feeling of solidarity regarding the national interest. Third and unbending loyalty to the nation-state rather than to any foreigners or foreign interest or potentates.

Immigration does not in itself endanger the nation-state, but when it happens illegally, very quickly and on a very large scale and when many illegal aliens and immigrants choose to live in cultural enclaves it does do so.

That, alas, is what has been happening in America. The intended or unintended consequences of the failure of government to enforce immigration policies combined with multicultural politics convey the message that you can enter and remain here illegally and that the rule of law means nothing. This state of affairs has alienated voters across the U.S and given rise to populist parties that assert that taxes are too high because of the demands of the immigrants, illegal aliens and their progeny and their fellow-travelers among the liberals, progressives and disloyal citizens.

In several European countries the immigrant and ethnic minority population is rising to 15% or 20%. One leading demographer has said that on current trends Britain will be "majority minority" by 2066. Even in America there are now those who chortle about the rising majority-minority. Some large towns are already have a high percentage of minorities. This sudden and largely unplanned demographic shift has damaged trust between citizens and generated segregation, fear and unwarranted accusations of racism or hate.

The sheer size of some minority communities has made it easier to live apart in "little Kabul" or "little Havana", and so on. The rising influence of racist orgainzations like La Raza, MEChA and MALDEF is a harbinger of America's political future. A conservative Islam, insistent on Sharia Law first for their own communities and then for all of America, is yet another indication of a failed immigration policy that has balkanized a once united America. And unlike the America of a few years ago where hard work acted as an integrating force, today's overly-generous welfare system has created too many immigrant dependents and 14th Amendment baby families, triggering resentment among mainstream taxpayers who have to pick up the tab.

There is, of course, good immigration too. Supporters like to overstate the creativity and dynamism of some young migrants, their willingness to do dirty or under-rewarded jobs (like stoop labor) that few natives want, their relative youth in an ageing America. But these benefits would have to be very large, and demonstrable, to compensate for the cost and cultural and social disruption caused by over-rapid immigration and illegal entry. style="font-weight:bold;"> But they are not! Almost all the economic analyses of mass immigration in recent years have found that the positive effects on employment, wages and per head growth in economic activity is, at best, marginal. Similarly, on the question of fiscal benefit, productive immigrants like Poles probably pay in more than they take out, but less productive ones like Somalis (in Britain, only 25% of them work) do the opposite.

Moreover, costs and benefits are unevenly distributed: employers and richer people benefit, as do many consumers and, of course, immigrants themselves. But low-skilled workers (often recent migrants) face lower wages, and while immigrants create as well as take jobs, the creating takes longer than the taking. Because it is concentrated at the top and bottom, mass immigration reinforces inequality and reduces social mobility (one-third of professional jobs in London are taken by people born outside Britain). It adds to urban congestion, increases pressure on public services and housing, and discourages employers from training, especially hard-to-reach youngsters such as those who have been busy looting in recent days in London.

No sensible person wants a complete halt to immigration, but America needs a dramatic slowdown(like the "pause" from 1920 to 1965) to absorb the large inflows of recent decades and a re-focusing of the quotas on skilled or well-educated immigrants who are likely and There will be some economic costs of a slowdown, but if democratic politics fails to deal with this existential issue on which there is such a settled popular will the resulting backlash will threaten the sharp decline in overt racism of the past 30 years. Young people now have a somewhat liberal view of race and gender but they have become much less generous on welfare, poverty and redistribution of wealth. That is not just because of the mishandling of mass immigration—affluence. Individualism has played a role too. But that makes it even more important to rein in mass immigration before America loses its unique balance between individual rights and mutual obligation.

Dee Perez-Scott: Ruben is only partly right.

Ruben Navarrette recently wrote:
“It's nothing new. We live in a country that has -- for more than 220 years -- held the curious distinction of being a nation of immigrants that doesn't like immigrants. Our national motto isn't really "E Pluribus Unum." It's more like: "There goes the neighborhood." Whether they come legally, illegally, or with a letter of reference from the Queen of England, every batch of foreign arrivals to these shores is instantly considered inferior to those who came before.”

Navarrette, referring to our 220 year immigration history, misses the point entirely. Written in the late 1800s when immigration was nearing its peak and the U.S. population was only about 50 million, Emma Lazarus’s famous sonnet was an expression of her empathy for those who had fled the anti-Semitic Pogroms in Eastern Europe. It was a counterpoint to the disparaging remarks made from time to time about immgrants. The sonnet is a poignant reminder of our immigrant past but the operative word in that phrase is the word “past.”

Navarrette ignores the fact that our population has now increased six-fold. As a syndicated columnist he should fully understand that conditions are different today than they were in the mid to late 1800s. There are many things in our past: child labor, prohibition, lack of women’s suffrage, Jim Crow laws, and segregation. Few thinking Americans want to go back to that “past” yet some of us continue to cling to the idea of “our immigrant past” without a second thought about its appropriateness as a model for the fully-settled and fully-developed America of today with a population of more than 300 million people.


Our immigrant past of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries should not be our guide for the future. Times, society and the availability of natural resources have changed dramatically. Navarrette erred when he wrote that the U.S. does holds "the curious distinction of being a nation of immigrants that doesn't like immigrants." Foreigners have been largely treated the same whether it was the Irish who came to America, the Poles who immigrated to Ireland or the Turks who came to Germany. There is nothing unique about the U.S. in this regard. It is an altogether natural reaction to foreigners especially if they do not speak the language of the country to which they have immigrated and even more so if they have entered that country illegally. This kind of reaction to foreigners is a universal human frailty. It is a rare thing to be able to free oneself from this human condition. It is therefore unreasonable to judge the human race harshly with regard to its treatment of foreigners.

Ben Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, did disparage Germans at one time saying that they were too stupid to learn English. Navarrette considered this to be evidence of Franklin's "ugly prejudice and nativism." But Franklin was probably not the first nor the last to have said something disparaging about the Germans. The French regularly referred to the Germans, especially the German soldiers in WW I and II, as "Boches" (rascals or cabbage heads). Others thought of the French as spineless based on their inability to defend their own country against aggressors. The French, in turn, look down their Gallic noses at just about everyone who doesn't speak French.

Yet Navarrette says, "Behold, the musings of one of our nation's first bigots: Benjamin Franklin who clearly thought the English superior and the Germans inferior." It is not bigoted to argue that a failure to acquire a common language is a barrier to acquiring a common culture essential to a functioning society. I think he judged Franklin far to harshly and clearly overstated Franklin's offhand remarks as a simple case of "ugly prejudice and nativism." This was and is a natural reaction to foreigners observable in every society on earth. That is simply the human condition the world over. The Germans turned out to be one of the most technologically advanced societies in Europe but that may not have been obvious to Franklin at the time if he was unable to communicate with them.

It's hard to say whether Ruben intended the adjective "ugly" to apply to both the words "prejudice" and "nativism" or just the former. I, like many others, consider nativism a normal expression of patriotism and a desire to preserve and protect one's quality of life and standard of living. Those qualities can easily be threatened by excessive population growth. Nativism often manifests itself as fully-justified, anti-immigrant sentiment when those immigrants are almost solely responsible for excessive population growth and demands on finite natural resources. It is important to understand that as the current and most important basis for such sentiment.


It is not unusual for a more advanced culture to consider itself superior to one that is less advanced. The national income per capita, UN rating and the number of Nobel prizes awarded might be some objective measures of this. This is neither necessarily a permanent condition nor a denial of the potential of other cultures. Rather it is a measure of what is not what could be. One has to wonder whether Navarrette considers himself to be superior say to an individual from a cannibal society.

It is clear that the pro-immigrant forces choose to use the word "Nativist" in a pejorative sense as Navarrette did above. Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers, illegal aliens or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment, perpetuation or preservation of such individuals or their culture, a completely legitimate objective for any society.

Nativism typically means opposition to immigration, population growth,or to efforts to curb specific ethnic or cultural groups that have entered and are present in a country illegally and in such overwhelming numbers as to be considered hostile or alien to the natural culture. Depending on their numbers, it may be assumed that they cannot be or will choose not to be assimilated and will simply re-create the very culture and conditions they fled their homelands to escape: overpopulation, poverty, joblessness, crime, disease, corruption, and oligarchy.

Opposition to immigration is common in many countries because of issues of national, cultural or religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, as well as Europe in recent years. Thus nativism has become a general term for 'opposition to immigration' based on legitimate fears that the immigrants will distort or undermine existing cultural values and, through their higher fertility rates, reduce the quality of life and standard of living of the "natives." This opposition to immigration has been expressed through criticism of multiculturalism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this year that the "multikulti" concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany. At "the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country," said Ms. Merkel at the event in Potsdam, near Berlin. "We kidded ourselves a while. We said: 'They won't stay, [after some time] they will be gone,' but this isn't reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other ... has failed, utterly failed." More than 30 percent of Germans believe Germany is "overrun by foreigners" who had come to Germany chiefly for its social benefits.


Some immigrants were indeed inferior in many respects to those who came before because of the economic conditions in the old country had made them almost subhuman. Emma Lazarus admitted as much when she referred to them as "...tired, poor,...huddled masses,...the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, the homeless, tempest-tossed." The condition and culture of the Irish that developed while they were subsisting on rotten potatoes is a good example. Frank McCourt in his Pulitzer Prize winning book Angela’s Ashes described other aspects of the Irish culture that most would find abhorrent. The Irish were discriminated against because of those characteristics. They may have seemed inferior to others because their economic situation dictated their appearance and their living conditions in the tenements. Avoiding disparaging remarks about them would have been difficult. On the other hand, it would have also been difficult to make a plausible case against their potential as human beings given the right influences and role models here in America.


Others were treated in the same manner as the Irish. I mentioned above that Ben Franklin was not favorably impressed by the Germans even though they were known to be industrious with well-maintained neighborhoods. They believed in orderliness. (Alles in ordnung!) Who knows what experiences Ben Franklin had with the Germans that caused him to lose his cool and make a public display of his low regard for them. I don't know the timing of his remarks but if they were made after the arrival of Hessian mercenaries who were quartered in private homes, one could begin to understand Franklin's antithesis to them. I recall that an innocent immigrant of German extraction was lynched somewhere in the Midwest at the time of the WW I. Some Americans were also actually arrested for speaking German over the phone. The street where my grandfather lived in Dallas, Texas was renamed from Germania Street to Liberty Street during that same time period even though German immigrants were and had been an important part of Texas and U.S. history. I understand that fully 20% of Americans are of German extraction. My German cousin once said, “I believe every American has a German grandmother!”


We are all familiar with the plight of the Japanese who were rounded up and sent to relocation or internment camps depending on where their citizenship and loyalties seem to lie. Those who were Japanese citizens and who wanted to return to Japan to fight against the Americans were interned as required by the law. As I recall, they used to drill with stick guns within the camps, making clear that they were indeed enemies of the U.S. Others were simply relocated partly to protect them from incidents like the lynching of the German I referred to above and partly to remove any possibility of espionage to aid the Japanese enemy when we were most fearful of that prospect. Unfortunately, the U.S. government not only violated their rights but did nothing to protect them from economic loss. “Snow Falling on Cedars” is one of my favorite movies. It portrays young love and mutual prejudice. Again this appears to be the human condition.

Dee Perez-Scott Doesn't know about The High Cost of Cheap Labor

Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget

This study is one of the first to estimate the total impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion.

Among the findings:

Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.


Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).


With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social services.


On average, the costs that illegal households impose on federal coffers are less than half that of other households, but their tax payments are only one-fourth that of other households.


Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access them.


If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.


Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status -- what most illegal aliens would become -- can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.


Although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77 percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.


The fact that legal immigrants with few years of schooling are a large fiscal drain does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a net drain -- many legal immigrants are highly skilled.


The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.


The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the National Research Council, which also found that immigrants' education level is a key determinant of their fiscal impact.

A Complex Fiscal Picture
Welfare use. Our findings show that many of the preconceived notions about the fiscal impact of illegal households turn out to be inaccurate. In terms of welfare use, receipt of cash assistance programs tends to be very low, while Medicaid use, though significant, is still less than for other households. Only use of food assistance programs is significantly higher than that of the rest of the population. Also, contrary to the perceptions that illegal aliens don't pay payroll taxes, we estimate that more than half of illegals work "on the books." On average, illegal households pay more than $4,200 a year in all forms of federal taxes. Unfortunately, they impose costs of $6,950 per household.


Social Security and Medicare. Although we find that the net effect of illegal households is negative at the federal level, the same is not true for Social Security and Medicare. We estimate that illegal households create a combined net benefit for these two programs in excess of $7 billion a year, accounting for about 4 percent of the total annual surplus in these two programs. However, they create a net deficit of $17.4 billion in the rest of the budget, for a total net loss of $10.4 billion. Nonetheless, their impact on Social Security and Medicare is unambiguously positive. Of course, if the Social Security totalization agreement with Mexico signed in June goes into effect, allowing illegals to collect Social Security, these calculations would change.

The Impact of Amnesty. Finally, our estimates show that amnesty would significantly increase tax revenue. Because both their income and tax compliance would rise, we estimate that under the most likely scenario the average illegal alien household would pay 77 percent ($3,200) more a year in federal taxes once legalized. While not enough to offset the 118 percent ($8,200) per household increase in costs that would come with legalization, amnesty would significantly increase both the average income and tax payments of illegal aliens.

What's Different About Today's Immigration. Many native-born Americans observe that their ancestors came to America and did not place great demands on government services. Perhaps this is true, but the size and scope of government were dramatically smaller during the last great wave of immigration. Not just means-tested programs, but expenditures on everything from public schools to roads were only a fraction of what they are today. Thus, the arrival of unskilled immigrants in the past did not have the negative fiscal implications that it does today. Moreover, the American economy has changed profoundly since the last great wave of immigration, with education now the key determinant of economic success. The costs that unskilled immigrants impose simply reflect the nature of the modern American economy and welfare state. It is doubtful that the fiscal costs can be avoided if our immigration policies remain unchanged.

Policy Implications
The negative impact on the federal budget need not be the only or even the primary consideration when deciding what to do about illegal immigration. But assuming that the fiscal status quo is unacceptable, there are three main changes in policy that might reduce or eliminate the fiscal costs of illegal immigration. One set of options is to allow illegal aliens to remain in the country, but attempt to reduce the costs they impose. A second set of options would be to grant them legal status as a way of increasing the taxes they pay. A third option would be to enforce the law and reduce the size of the illegal population and with it the costs of illegal immigration.

Reducing the Cost Side of the Equation. Reducing the costs illegals impose would probably be the most difficult of the three options because illegal households already impose only about 46 percent as much in costs on the federal government as other households. Thus, the amount of money that can be saved by curtailing their use of public services even further is probably quite limited. Moreover, the fact that benefits are often received on behalf of their U.S.-citizen children means that it is very difficult to prevent illegal households from accessing the programs they do. And many of the programs illegals use most extensively are likely to be politically very difficult to cut, such as the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program. Other costs, such as incarcerating illegals who have been convicted of crimes are unavoidable. It seems almost certain that if illegals are allowed to remain in the country, the fiscal deficit will persist.

Increasing Tax Revenue by Granting Amnesty. As discussed above, our research shows that granting illegal aliens amnesty would dramatically increase tax revenue. Unfortunately, we find that costs would increase even more. Costs would rise dramatically because illegals would be able to access many programs that are currently off limits to them. Moreover, even if legalized illegal aliens continued to be barred from using some means-tested programs, they would still be much more likely to sign their U.S.-citizen children up for them because they would lose whatever fear they had of the government. We know this because immigrants with legal status, who have the same education levels and resulting low incomes as illegal aliens, sign their U.S.-citizen children up for programs like Medicaid at higher rates than illegal aliens with U.S.-citizen children. In addition, direct costs for programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit would also grow dramatically with legalization. Right now, illegals need a Social Security number and have to file a tax return to get the credit. As a result, relatively few actually get it. We estimate that once legalized, payments to illegals under this program would grow more than ten-fold.

From a purely fiscal point of view, the main problem with legalization is that illegals would, for the most part, become unskilled legal immigrants. And unskilled legal immigrants create much larger fiscal costs than unskilled illegal aliens. Legalization will not change the low education levels of illegal aliens or the fact that the American labor market offers very limited opportunities to such workers, whatever their legal status. Nor will it change the basic fact that the United States, like all industrialized democracies, has a well-developed welfare state that provides assistance to low-income workers. Large fiscal costs are simply an unavoidable outcome of unskilled immigration given the economic and fiscal realities of America today.

Enforcing Immigration Laws. If we are serious about avoiding the fiscal costs of illegal immigration, the only real option is to enforce the law and reduce the number of illegal aliens in the country. First, this would entail much greater efforts to police the nation's land and sea borders. At present, less than 2,000 agents are on duty at any one time on the Mexican and Canadian borders. Second, much greater effort must be made to ensure that those allowed into the country on a temporary basis, such as tourists and guest workers, are not likely to stay in the country permanently. Third, the centerpiece of any enforcement effort would be to enforce the ban on hiring illegal aliens. At present, the law is completely unenforced. Enforcement would require using existing databases to ensure that all new hires are authorized to work in the United States and levying heavy fines on businesses that knowingly employ illegal aliens. Finally, a clear message from policymakers, especially senior members of the administration, that enforcement of the law is valued and vitally important to the nation, would dramatically increase the extremely low morale of those who enforce immigration laws.

Policing the border, enforcing the ban on hiring illegal aliens, denying temporary visas to those likely to remain permanently, and all the other things necessary to reduce illegal immigration will take time and cost money. However, since the cost of illegal immigration to the federal government alone is estimated at over $10 billion a year, significant resources could be devoted to enforcement efforts and still leave taxpayers with significant net savings. Enforcement not only has the advantage of reducing the costs of illegal immigration, it also is very popular with the general public. Nonetheless, policymakers can expect strong opposition from special interest groups, especially ethnic advocacy groups and those elements of the business community that do not want to invest in labor-saving devices and techniques or pay better salaries, but instead want access to large numbers of cheap, unskilled workers. If we choose to continue to not enforce the law or to grant illegals amnesty, both the public and policymakers have to understand that there will be significant long-term costs for taxpayers.

Summary Methodology
Overall Approach. To estimate the impact of households headed by illegal aliens, we rely heavily on the National Research Council's (NRC) 1997 study, "The New Americans." Like that study, we use the March Current Population Survey (CPS) and the decennial Census, both collected by the Census Bureau. We use the March 2003 CPS, which asks questions about income, household structure, and use of public services in the calendar year prior to the survey. We control total federal expenditures and tax receipts by category to reflect actual expenditures and tax payments. Like the NRC, we assume that immigrants have no impact on defense-related expenditures and therefore assign those costs only to native-headed households. Like the NRC, we define a household as persons living together who are related. Individuals living alone or with persons to whom they are unrelated are treated as their own households. As the NRC study points out, a "household is the primary unit through which public services are consumed and taxes paid." Following the NRC's example of using households, many of which include U.S.-citizen children, as the unit of analysis makes sense because the presence of these children and the costs they create are a direct result of their parents having been allowed to enter and remain in country. Thus, counting services used by these children allows for a full accounting of the costs of illegal immigration.

Identifying Illegal Aliens in Census Bureau Data. While the CPS does not ask respondents if they are illegal aliens, the Urban Institute, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Census Bureau have used socio-demographic characteristics in the data to estimate the size and characteristics of the illegal population. To identify illegal aliens in the survey, we used citizenship status, year of arrival in the United States, age, country of birth, educational attainment, sex, receipt of welfare programs, receipt of Social Security, veteran status, and marital status. This method is based on some very well-established facts about the characteristics of the illegal population. In some cases, we assume that individuals have zero chance of being an illegal alien, such as naturalized citizens, veterans, and individuals who report that they personally receive Social Security benefits or cash assistance from a welfare program or those who are enrolled in Medicaid. However, other members of a household, mainly the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, can and do receive these programs. We estimate that there were 8.7 million illegal aliens included in the March 2003 CPS. By design, our estimates for the size and characteristics of the illegal population are very similar to those prepared by the Census Bureau, the INS, and the Urban Institute.

Estimating the Impact of Amnesty. We assume that any amnesty that passes Congress will have Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) as a component. Even though the President's amnesty proposal in January seems to envision "temporary" worker status, every major legalization bill in Congress, including those sponsored by Republican legislators, provides illegal aliens with LPR status at some point in the process. Moreover, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has indicated his strong desire to give LPR status to illegal aliens.

To estimate the likely impact of legalization, we run two different simulations. In our first simulation, we assume that legalized illegal aliens would use services and pay taxes like all households headed by legal immigrants with the same characteristics. In this simulation, we control for the education level of the household head and whether the head is from Mexico. The first simulation shows that the net fiscal deficit grows from about $2,700 to more than $6,000 per household. In the second simulation, we again control for education and whether the household head is Mexican and also assume that illegals would become like post-1986 legal immigrants, excluding refugees. Because illegals are much more like recently arrived non-refugees than legal immigrants in general, the second simulation is the more plausible. The second simulation shows that the net fiscal deficit per household would climb to $7,700.

Results Similar to Other Studies. Our overall conclusion that education level is the primary determinant of tax payments made and services used is very similar to the conclusion of the 1997 National Research Council report, "The New Americans." The results of our study also closely match the findings of a 1998 Urban Institute study, which examined tax payments by illegal aliens in New York State. In order to test our results we ran separate estimates for federal taxes and found that, when adjusted for inflation, our estimated federal taxes are almost identical to those of the Urban Institute. The results of this study are also buttressed by an analysis of illegal alien tax returns done by the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Treasury in 2004, which found that about half of illegals had no federal income tax liability, very similar to our finding of 45 percent.