Mike Scruggs
The Greeks had a saying, often attributed to the playwright Euripides
(480-406 BC), that seems appropriate to the Schumer-Rubio amnesty and
immigration surge bill, S.477, to be debated next week on the floor
of the U.S. Senate:
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
Actually, this is a paraphrase by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. A closer approximation to Euripides would be:
“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of their senses.”
I am writing this article because I believe the Schumer-Rubio
bill is extraordinarily foolish, and if passed will condemn the country
to rapid economic, cultural, and political destruction.
Schumer-Rubio or the Gang-of-Eight bill will give
amnesty to 11.5 million illegal immigrants and result in another 22
million other legal immigrants and guest-workers coming to the U.S.
in the next ten years. Having looked at the bill and studied the 1986
Amnesty, I believe these numbers are very conservative. Senator Sessions
(R, AL), the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee believes
the bill will result in at least 50 million new immigrants within ten
years. Based on my own analysis, I believe a figure of 60 million is
more likely. Amnesties beget more amnesties and accelerate both legal
and illegal immigration. Based on the 1986 amnesty, we could have two
more illegal immigrants for every amnesty given over the first decade.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has estimated
the cost of amnesty for the 11.5 unlawful immigrants would add $6.3
Trillion to our national debt of $16.5 Trillion over the next 50 years.
But once amnesty is done, the political and liberal media pressure to
accelerate the timetable of benefits and citizenship to newly amnestied
illegals will be immense. It would have a high probability of being
accelerated by court order rather than additional legislation. Both
acceleration plans may be a part of the Democratic strategy even now.
So Rector’s $6.3 Trillion cost, terrible as it is, may far underestimate
the extent of a national economic and fiscal train-wreck. Not just 11.5
million, but 34 to 50 or 60 million new immigrants would push the U.S.
toward unthinkable inflation rates and social chaos. Any U.S.
Senator or House Member who could vote for this would certainly have
been deprived of their intellectual and moral senses.
Only 4.0 million immigrants went through Ellis Island
from 1890 to 1950, yet the Schumer-Rubio immigration folly bill would
bring in 34 to 50 million immigrants in a single decade from 2013 to
2023.
Whom the
gods would destroy, they first deprive of common and moral sense!
Here are some statistics from the Heritage Foundation
Report, based on 2010 BLS numbers that make our national immigration
folly and fiscal irresponsibility easier to understand. The figures
given are for benefits received per household versus taxes paid.
Benefits include government entitlements plus a share of services for
education, law enforcement, public utilities, etc. according to National
Academy of Sciences analysis standards. The Net Household Deficit for
unlawful immigrants is staggering.
Unlawful Immigrants
Annual Household Benefits: $24,721
Less Taxes Paid
10,344
Net Household Deficit
$14,387
Non-Immigrants
Annual Household Benefits: $31,226
Less Taxes Paid
30,916
Net Household Deficit
$ 310
Additional benefits for amnestied immigrants that come with
legal status would amount to an irreversible and ticking fiscal time-bomb.
Two-thirds of their income would have to be paid in taxes to reach the
fiscal breakeven point.
The main reason for the large Net Household Deficit
for unlawful immigrants seems to be education and skill level. Here
is a comparison of educational levels for household heads of unlawful
immigrant and non-immigrant households:
Illegals Non-immigrants
High School not completed 51 %
10 %
High School completion
27 % 30 %
Some College
13 % 30 %
College degree or more
10 % 31 %
In both cases, only those households headed by a person
with a college degree or more paid more taxes than benefits received.
Hence we cannot really afford our current level of government spending
even for natives, much less for low-skilled immigrants. Yet even with
21 million Americans unable to find a full-time job, the U.S. Chamber
and their allied business associations keep calling for more cheap labor.
This has been going on for at least 40 years, and Congress has not had
the guts to tighten the pipeline that keeps driving budget deficits
higher and the wages and living standards of native-born and naturalized
American workers down.
Many politicians believe that anyone who is gainfully
employed and pays taxes is a positive to the economy. Heritage Foundation’s
Rector points out that these statistics prove this is far from the truth.
As economist Milton Friedman warned, high immigration and high public
benefits are in dramatic opposition. Amnesty would result in Social
Security and Medicare going broke earlier.
Higher legal immigration and more and bigger guest-worker
programs will not solve our immigration problems. Bringing in millions
of immigrants with little education and low skills hurts our native-born
and legal immigrant poor by driving down wages and reducing their job
opportunities.
The demand for cheaper labor is not confined to lower
skills. Business lobbying for and hiring of foreign job applicants is
spreading like wildfire. Yet a Mckinsey Consulting survey indicates
that less than half of college graduates can find a job in their major
field. Even in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields,
McKinsey found that 25 percent of graduates were in jobs that did not
require a college degree.
Congress needs to help American workers and graduates
and stop catering to cheap labor lobbyists.
No Republican that votes for Schumer-Rubio or its equivalent in the
House should survive their next primary.
