Sustainable Immigration (part 3 of 4): American Taxpayers

The immigration questions asked during the MSNBC/Politico and CNN/Tea
Party Republican presidential debates approached immigration from an
ethnic perspective. The media missed the chance to press the eight
candidates on the larger impacts of
immigration policy. Census data analyzed by the Center for Immigration
Studies shows that the U.S. will add 30 million new residents every decade for generations to come unless the federal government cuts immigration back to traditional levels. Neither the media nor the candidates have questioned whether the current immigration policy is desirable or sustainable.

The debates follow a troubling pattern where the media and
politicians fail to recognize immigration’s interconnectedness
with other issues. This is the third of four blogs concerning
immigration-sustainability questions policy makers should address.

Part One: American Workers
Part Two: The Middle Class

Part Three: “Are current immigration numbers sustainable for American taxpayers?” According to the Heritage Foundation, low-skilled immigration costs American taxpayers $89.1 billion every year. Health care programs make up nearly one-quarter of the federal budget, and 85 percent of the
growth in uninsured since 1999 has been a result of immigration policies, according to Dr.
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Imagine how different the health care debate would have been had
Congress adopted the immigration reductions recommended by the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform,
chaired by the late Rep. Barbara Jordan. The $940 billion dollar price tag on health care
reform would be much smaller had Congress cut immigration in half as
Jordan’s commission proposed back in 1996.

Immigrants (legal and
illegal) are more than twice as likely to be uninsured than
American-born citizens, largely because they tend to earn less. Although
President Obama was adamant that his health care overhaul would not
cover illegal aliens, the law does not require the use of the SAVE system,
which is essentially E-Verify for benefits. In August, the Department
of Health and Human Services (HSS) announced that millions of taxpayer
dollars are going to health centers that target seasonal farm and
migrant workers, and those centers “do not, as a matter of routine practice, ask about or collect data on citizenship,” according to a department spokesperson.

Some Republican candidates infer that illegal aliens
are a permanent part of American society and, accordingly, must be afforded an opportunity to earn legal
status. The media hasn’t asked what a large-scale legalization would cost, but the Center for
Immigration Studies estimates that enrolling 3.1 million amnestied
aliens into Medicaid alone could cost $48.6 billion
for the years between 2014-2019. Candidates who support large-scale
legalization for illegal aliens should be asked how they propose that the
federal government would pay for the benefits afforded to them.

The media has allowed the president and Republican presidential
candidates to
treat immigration policy as if it existed in a vacuum and did not have
implications for American workers and tax payers. But unless they are
asked tough questions, politicians are
unlikely to give substantive answers. The media, which under-reports
the negative consequences of mass immigration, needs to hear from
readers and viewers. Leave
comments online, call
reporters and editors and spell out the direct relationship between more
immigration and higher taxes
taxes. Tell us about your efforts in the comments section below.

JEREMY BECK is the Director of the Media Standards Project for NumbersUSA