Hi PB,
Diversity is what made America what it is today. Diversity is what made America what it was 50 years ago; 100 years ago. We have, for all intents and purposes, been a nation that has taken in just about anyone who would come to our shores and ask for citizenship. It is actually a rather modern and liberal idea that we now want to shut off our borders. Why? Because now Americans are greedy and separatist. We're afraid that new people are going to take from us what we've got. We no longer want the poor and huddled masses because they're going to take from us what we've got. This is actually new, in the last 50 years, thinking.
Despite what political pundits would have us believe, illegal immigration doesn't really cost us much in the way of social services as they would have us believe. Yes, the dollar amounts sound big to us who work with checking balances that are a couple of hundred or a few thousand dollars. But in the grand scheme of a national budget of some $4-5 trillion, the few million that we might spend on services for illegal immigrants is a drop in the bucket. A lot of those illegal immigrants pay taxes. They pay sales taxes when they buy goods and services just like everyone else. Many have payroll taxes taken out, but because they are illegal, they don't get to file to get them back even though they may well live below the poverty level. Many states pay school taxes through property tax levies. Guess what, when an illegal immigrant family rents some squalid home to live in, the landlord of that property pays property taxes out of the revenue earned from the rents. So, many illegal immigrants pay a share of school taxes just like everyone else that has a roof over their head.
I'm a landlord. I have owned rental properties in South Florida. All of my tenants, although they didn't personally fill out a check to pay property taxes from which school costs are paid, the check that I sent for the respective property taxes was their money. I was just the middle man that collected it from them. Just as many mortgage companies actually send the check to pay the property taxes from escrowed amounts from monthly mortgage payments. There are actually millions of people across this nation that don't personally send the check to pay their property taxes, but they pay their property taxes. So, it's just a little disingenuous to say that illegal immigrants don't pay for the costs of their children attending American schools. If they have a roof over their heads for which they pay any kind of rent, then they pay property taxes just as much as anyone who rents a home to provide a roof over their head.
So, I'm not so bothered by this argument that illegal immigration costs us a lot of money. Now, there is the issue of vetting immigrants because of the new breed of terrorists, but most terrorists do not come from Mexico or South America. Many of our terrorists are just home grown angry Americans. The majority of the rest have been identified as middle eastern. Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist for all intent of the definition. Timothy McVeigh was a good ole American boy. He was born here and raised here and went to school here. He would never have been identified as a terrorist through any immigration channels, but there he was. Stephen Paddock was a good ole American boy born in Iowa for crying out loud.
So, I just don't see the picture of immigration as our boaster in chief does. I don't agree that immigration is costing us a boatload of money. I imagine that even if we did stop all illegal immigration we wouldn't see one spot of difference in our national financial picture that would be measurable. I don't agree that anywhere near the majority or even a large part of immigrants are murderers, rapists or terrorists. The facts just don't support the claims.
Here's an interesting article on the subject of illegal immigrants paying taxes:
Why undocumented immigrants pay taxes
All these people that will yell and scream at us that illegal immigrants don't pay their way don't ever mention anything about this. They don't bother even allowing that many of them do pay taxes and all of them, if they're living in a home, pay for schools through the property taxes that their landlord pays, or that they pay sales taxes just like everyone else. Contrary to popular belief, illegal immigrants don't usually get a free ride once they start working and find a place to live and begin buying supplies and clothing for their families.
God bless,
In Christ, ted