Have a Few Billion Gumballs

This video is a recently updated version of the one that was done in 1995 by Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, to explain to his son's 7th grade class why mass immigration to the United States will do nothing to alleviate world poverty. It has current figures drawn from the research done by the World Bank. If you don't have audio, you can watch it anyway; it has the text showing at the bottom of the screen. The video is 6 minutes long, but moves along at a good clip so it seems shorter. Here are some of the figures from the World Bank research: The United States has taken in, yearly since 1990, 1 million legal immigrants. The poorest of the poor in the world subsist on less than $2 per day; numbering 3 billion people. Mexico is poor, but not that poor; add in the world population that is at or below the poverty level of Mexico and you have 5.6 billion people (3 billion of the poorest and 2.6 billion at Mexico's level). Our 1 million legal immigrants per year will never even make a dent in that 5.6 billion, which increases by 80 million every year due to the birth rate out-pacing the death rate. And increasing the number of legal immigrants per year into the U.S., even 5 fold, will not alleviate the rampant poverty in those underdeveloped countries. Why? Because the poorest of the poor will never be in a position to immigrate here. Most of our immigrants are from Mexico, because of it's proximity; and they don't always bother to come here legally. Most of the 20 million Mexicans who are here illegally are under-educated and under-skilled and contribute very little to our economy. Of the immigrants who do come here legally, from India, Latin American countries, and the nations of Africa, it is the best and the brightest, the highest educated and the most skillful of their populations. That's their hope of bettering their own countries; and those people are deserting them. We are taking away from those countries the very people who are capable of elevating the quality of life in their home countries; which is something we don't do by increasing our immigration quotas. That only makes matters worse for them.

Since I first became aware of the flux of illegal immigrants coming to the United States of America from Mexico, I have always wondered why they didn't stay there and fight to make their own country better. Just think where Mexico could be today if they had done that; stopped the drug cartels from taking over and killing 28,000 of their countrymen, rid the government of most of the corrupt politicians running Mexico, and helped stabilize Mexico's economy. I said to somebody recently that we need to find a way to help Mexico keep it's people there, with their own people and their own families and loved ones; and not have them leave all they know to come up here and be a burden on us. The reaction: "noooo, we can't do that; Mexico is a sovereign country". Well, what the heck is America, if not a sovereign country, the most generous in the world, which deserves to not have it's law broken by the very act of setting foot over our borders without authorization?  I agree with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA; taking in more people is not the way to go. It will deplete our natural resources, our medical resources, our welfare system, and render us unable to help ourselves, much less any other country in need. We need to help the less fortunate countries THERE, where they stand; and enable their people to prosper in their home countries.

I also get email newsletters from FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Did y'all know that Senator Menendez (D-NJ) introduced an amnesty bill late last Wednesday night, just before Congress left town; and plans to try to push it thru a lame duck session when Congress resumes after the November election?  Here's part of what's in the 874 page bill, S.3932: grant amnesty to illegals aliens currently living in the U.S. (estimated at 13 million, could be much more once they start coming out of the woodwork), and permit them to bring spouses, same-sex partners, children and any other relatives from any country. It provides amnesty to illegals who have violated laws or have been previously deported for any reason.  I'm sure Mexico, which now seems to have a say in what America does since Calderon gets to address our Congress and is a co-complainant against the state of Arizona, will love that part since Mexico last week told the U.S. to "make other arrangements" for the violent criminal illegal aliens and don't send them back to Mexico. The amnesty bill will include the DREAM Act, that which was voted down in Congress last week; that would give legality to illegal students or military members up to age 35. It includes, also, AgJOBS which would legalize illegal aliens who HAVE (not who are) worked in the farming industry, and their families. Now, I'm not for splitting up families. When they leave, they can just take their families with them. The bill will pre-empt all state and local laws regarding immigrations, leaving them powerless to enforce any federal laws the Obama administration chooses not to enforce. It mandates FREE legal services to illegal alien detainees, to represent them in deportation or citizenship matters. U. S. citizens don't even get free legal representation, unless you've committed a crime and get a public defender. It gives illegal aliens the right to immediate free medical care; so much for the claim that obamacare won't cover illegal immigrants. And it would set up yet another governmental agency to determing the number of "guest" workers to admit each year; i.e. the number of American workers to displace each year.

We all know that the Obama administration picks and chooses which immigration laws it wants to enforce; by way of trying to pad the voter base of the Democrat Party with hispanics. One example everybody is aware of is that the Obama administration Dept. of Justice is suing the state of Arizona (still have trouble with our federal government siding with a segment of foreign nationals that are 100% criminals, breaking our immigration law by setting even 1 foot over our borders without authorization) for passing and attempting to enforce a state law that is verbatim of a federal law already on the statutes that the Obama administration chooses not to enforce. Also there is the issue of "sanctuary cities" (which people know about unless they have had their heads buried in the sand), which give sanctuary to illegal immigrants, in violation of federal immigration laws, which action the Obama administration chooses to ignore. Now we have the state of California getting into the act, and I wonder if the Obama administration will take a stand on this: after the U.S. Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act granting legality to illegal students and service members, California's State Assembly and Senate decided to pass their own DREAM Act. Hooray for the Governator. Schwarzenegger, the RINO, vetoed it; saying "given the precarious fiscal situation that the state faces, it would not be practical to adopt a new policy that could limit the financial aid available to students that are in California legally, in order to provide that benefit to those stuents who are not".  That was one of my arguments in the post I wrote recently about the DREAM Act; we have so many deserving young Americans who are falling thru the cracks, and are worthy of ALL of our resources to give them the possiblity of a college education; trying to provide that for millions of people who don't even have the right to be in America will take away what we can do for our own young Americans.

And if you don't think that will happen, that trying to financially support millions of illegal immigrants won't hamper what we can do for, what we owe to, our own next generation of Americans, look at what was in the news yesterday; on Fox, of course, but also MSNBC, the Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, et al: $69 million of California's welfare payments have been spent out of state. The largest chunk of that, $11.8 million, was spent in Las Vegas; but other places the welfare debit cards were used included trips to Hawaii and cruises out of Miami. Considering that California's illegal immigrant population accounts for 90% of the state's growth annually (Snopes says thats incoming plus births to illegals) and that 29% of the illegal immigrants in California are on welfare (tried to verify an email I got in 2007 which cited the L.A. Times, Business Insider used the same figure 10/1/10) it's a safe hunch that a lot of that California welfare money was taken out of the state by illegal immigrants committing welfare fraud. If your house is already full, and you have your own family members to take care of, when somebody comes to you asking for help, and you know that if you give them access to your finances there won't be enough left for your own household; don't you do what you can, within the limits of your own financial resources, after your own family if provided for, to help those asking for assistance so that they can remain in their own homes?  Knowing that if you take in everybody you see that needs a helping hand, you will deplete your resources to the point that you can help nobody; not your own nor those with their hands out. To paraphrase an old axiom: give a man a fish, feed him for a day and he's still dependent and comes right back needing more; teach a man to fish, feed him for life and he can feed others and teach others how to fish. America, focus on what the real need is.