EXCELLENT IMMIGRATION COST WRITING BY EDITOR ATWITSEND!

Please add Atwitsend from Houston County to your blog readings-see the link on the right hand side of this blog!

Copied and pasted from Atswitsend:
The Cost of Illegal Immigration
The cost of illegal immigration goes far beyond the costs of attempts to stem the flood of illegals crossing the border and the costs of court proceedings to send them back to their home country. The actual costs cannot be fully expressed as some of the potential problems have yet to express themselves. Currently, we can find evidence of those costs through the monetary and emotional losses that have resulted from the massive illegal immigration and are seen as monetary costs, safety costs, and the costs of the fragmenting of our social structure.
The cost of providing government assistance to illegals may be impossible to ever fully document. However, there are known costs that have caused numerous critical budgetary crises in border states and cities. In California, the cost of providing indigent medical care to illegal immigrants has exceeded $ 10 billion. A FOX news analyst places the cost to provide medical care to illegal immigrants at between $ 30 and $ 40 billion. In cities like El Paso, Texas the indigent medical care for illegal immigrants has often flooded the emergency rooms, delayed care for citizens and added millions of dollars of unpaid medical costs to their bottom line. Other border cities and states have been likewise affected. Citizens living along the U.S.-Mexican border have seen their property ruined as crops and animal stock have been lost. Each day they face the danger of having trespassers pass by their homes at all hours of the day. Yet, our government refuses to offer protection for them and their property. Government assistance to women who illegally cross our border and give births here costs American taxpayers millions in Women-Infant-Childcare payment. Other assistance programs are provided to those children and their families even if the family relocates to Mexico. Cheap, illegal labor has the affect of lowering wages for working Americans. There is the myth that the jobs illegal immigrants occupy are jobs that Americans don’t want. That is simply not the case. Fourteen percent of Americans are without a high school diploma. Those jobs in the food processing and meat packing industries are jobs Americans used to work. Those jobs provided a living wage and benefits. They are either gone or rapidly disappearing as a source of occupation for our unskilled workers.
Yet, our political elites are in essence saying that those citizens are either too lazy or too stupid to work those positions. Our aristocratic power brokers have even gone so far as to say that jobslike that are not the kind of jobs we want. That is the excuse they have used to promote “free” trade agreements that has left us without many industries that used to provide good jobs that enabled working families to purchase homes and send their children to higher education so their offspring might have a better life. Those industries include clothing, textile, footwear and many more including large components of automobile and electronic manufacturing. The loss of industries necessary for the maintenance of a society leaves us relying upon the good will of other nations. During the first gulf war, we were unable to manufacture combat boots and camouflage uniforms for our troops. We had to procure them from England. It must be noted that no nation has long existed without a manufacturing base. Yet, our political elite insist that we must evolve from a manfacturing to a service economy. Unfortunately, many services are being exported abroad even as they hype their grand vision for our future in the "new world order". Illegal immigration is a cornerstone of the fulfillment of their dreams. There are costs that have not yet been encountered but may well be on our doorstep. Serious diseases can be carried by those unknown people crossing our border. The question is, “Are we very far from a potential pandemic?” One cannot possibly imagine the cost arising from the loss of thousands or millions of lives. There is the cost of the failure of new immigrants to assimilate into American culture. Instead, they prefer to maintain their culture and its mores and languages. As an indicator of the cost this has brought to one state, California, the printing election ballots has been required in 117 different languages. Generations of illegal immigrants reside in this country and have never learned the English language. For them, there is no reason to learn the language of this nation. They live in enclaves where their native tongue is the "official" language. They can conduct all the business they need in their neighborhoods. All the support systems of family are there. If their community cannot provide a need, the American people through their government will provide that need. As each day passes, our nation is becoming more a bi-lingual society. Go to any store and see signs in English and Spanish. Local Spanish speaking broadcastsof radio and television programs has reached even the rural areas across our country.
The demise of the "Melting Pot" forebodes great danger for our nation in the future. No society can exist with two separate value systems. One will remain dominant or the other will rise to dominance. As has been noted, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
But the greatest immediate danger is the lack of faith that American citizens can be expected to have in their government. They see a government that refuses to enforce laws already enacted and ask why they should believe that the government will enforce any future law it passes to address the problem of illegal immigration. Our people wonder whether the government can provide their families with any good economic future as the onslaught of bargain-basement labor continues unabated. Our people worry about the future with good reason as they see this country and their elected representatives lacks the will to protect its borders. Our society understands that our elected officials are selling out the American people on the twin altars of the "Hope of future electoral support" and the "Cheap labor underwrites the corporate bottom-line".
Is there hope that the tide can be changed? Yes, but not easily. We'll look at that in our next installation.