illegal immigration

I hate to hammer away at Arizona, but I’ve been hearing many Arizonans defend this new immigration law for the past week. Most of the comments are along the lines of, “If you had to deal with the huge immigration problem we’re dealing with, you’d agree with this law”.

No I wouldn’t. And let me share some facts with you, for why I wouldn’t.

Let’s start with the fact that Arizona has the 6th largest illegal immigrant population in the country. California has seven times the number of illegal immigrants that Arizona has, putting it on top of the list. Texas comes in next with three times Arizona’s illegal immigrant population. New York is next with double Arizona’s number. Illinois has 30% more illegal immigrants than Arizona. And just above Arizona is Florida, with roughly 25% more illegal immigrants than Arizona.

Four out of the five states that have more immigrants than Arizona are donor states meaning that, they get less money back from the federal government than they pay in. CA and NY get back 79 cents for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. IL gets back 73 cents for every dollar it pays. TX gets back 94 cents for every dollar it pays in federal taxes.

Arizona is a recipient state. It gets $1.30 for every dollar it pays in federal taxes.

Illegal immigrants are not destroying your economy. If they were, California would be fucked. The fact of the matter is, that California has the 8th largest economy in the world. Not in the country, but in the world.

In fact if you look at GDP by state, you’ll notice that the states that top the list are familiar. The top five (in order) are CA, NY, TX, FL, and IL.

I want to be very clear in what I’m saying here. I am not suggesting that the high number of illegal immigrants is the reason why the top producing states are on top. There are obviously a number of factors involved, not the least of which is resources.

But I am saying that illegal immigrants definitely are not destroying your economy. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to suggest otherwise.

All of that crap that you hear about what illegal immigrants are costing each state are completely unsubstantiated. There’s no way to look at the data that I just gave you, while still holding onto that myth. Again, California would be fucked if that were the case. If those assertions were even remotely true, then the illegal immigrant population would be draining the states with the top GDP in the country. They’re not.

As an aside, Arizona’s illegal immigration population has dropped by 7% in the past two years. Why? It’s the economy, stupid! When the economy tanked, jobs dried up for everyone. When the jobs went away, so did the illegal immigrants.

This supports my earlier post about how to deal with illegal immigration if you’re really serious about ending it. If we didn’t have eager employers, we wouldn’t have hungry illegals.

So please Arizonans, don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

Most of you have heard about the immigration that was passed in Arizona yesterday. This is a vile, hateful bill that promotes discrimination, and does absolutely nothing to reduce illegal immigration. It requires that police officers in Arizona seek proof of immigration status from anyone that they suspect might be here illegally. It forces everyone in the state of Arizona to have their birth certificate, social security card, or passport with them at all times. Do you routinely carry these documents with you? This law is reminiscent of another time, in another country, when SS officers could demand to see anyone’s "papers" for no reason whatsoever. Arizona is recreating Nazi Germany, except that instead of looking for Jews, blacks, and gays, they’re targeting Hispanics. Yes, this might be the first time since WWII ended, that Nazi Germany has been invoked without hyperbole. I can’t think of a bigger government intrusion over the past several decades than this law. Why don’t we just streamline this whole system by requiring that everyone in Arizona pin their birth certificates to their chests at all times? This will save the officers a lot of time that will otherwise be wasted in harassing US citizens of Hispanic origin. Plus it will minimize the torrent of law suits that will lead to inevitable ownership of the state of Arizona, by those US citizens of Hispanic origin that will be falsely imprisoned and unconstitutionally harassed. We don’t have an immigration "problem" in America. We have an immigration solution. Illegal immigrants are the solution for corporations that want to get around those pesky labor laws that we have in America. Illegal immigrants make it possible for Purdue to sell you chicken for $1.99 per pound. If they had to pay a living wage and cover benefit costs for their employees the way federal labor laws mandate, you would be paying $6.99 per pound for that same chicken. If you want to eliminate the flood of immigrants into this country, the most effective way to do that is to have mandatory jail time for anyone that employs illegal immigrants. If the CEO of Purdue does twenty years in prison for hiring thousands of illegal immigrants, I can assure you that the CEO of WalMart would make a strong effort to make sure that he doesn’t suffer the same fate. If there were no jobs here for illegal immigrants, they would stop coming. It’s really that simple. The fact that we don’t go after the employers is evidence that our government doesn’t want to stop the "problem". It’s a system that’s working very well for everybody. Corporations get to maximize their profits by exploiting second class non-citizens, consumers get cheap goods, and the government doesn’t have to worry about millions of people claiming their social security benefits after a lifetime of service to this country. And as an added bonus, low income Americans get to hate a class that they deem to be beneath them. They don’t have to be the bottom of the American food chain the way they would be if the eyelegals weren’t here. But I digress. My point in this post speaks to the tea party movement, a noble group of Americans that has picked up the fight against a tyrannical government takeover of our country. I expect that they’re going to be out en masse to protest this most intrusive of big government laws. GO GET EM, tea party! You must be seething with anger over what Arizona has done here. Time to protect America from the Arizonan SS officers and restore our freedom. As an added bonus, you get to dispel all of the baseless allegations of racism that have been hurled at you by the liberal media. I understand that you’ve gotten a bad rap because of a handful of extremists that seem to have a knack for being in front of every camera that has ever been present at any tea party you’ve ever held. But guess what? You have an opportunity to prove the lame stream media wrong, and shut them down once and for all. You get to wage a just war and restore your good name. What’s not to love about that? So you go get em, tea party! Show the world that you won’t put up with big government, while showing them that you’re tea partiers, rather than the teabaggers they’ve made you out to be.

Immigration Fun Facts

Time For The Tea Party To Put Up Or Shut Up