Time Magazine Exposes Illegal Aliens — November 2004

“In a single day, more than 4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful gateway into the U.S., the 375-mile border between Arizona and Mexico. No searches for weapons. No shoe removal. No photo-ID checks. . . . At night as many as 100 will take over a vacant house. Some crowd into motel rooms, even storage-compartment rental units. During the day, they congregate on school playgrounds, roam through backyards and pass in and out of apartment buildings. Some assemble at the Burger King, waiting for their assigned drivers to appear. Sometimes stolen cars are waiting for them, keys on the floor. . . . They will ride in thousands of stolen vehicles, often with the seats ripped out to accommodate more human cargo, on the next leg of their journey to big cities and small towns from California to North Carolina.”

Time describes the post-9/11 increase in numbers of illegals: 
“The U.S.’s borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous. And the trend has accelerated in the past year. It’s fair to estimate, based on a Time investigation, that the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million — enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be triple the number of immigrants who will come to the U.S. by legal means. (No one knows how many illegals are living in the U.S., but estimates run as high as 15 million.)”

Then Time warns us about the terrorism threat: 
“Who are these new arrivals? While the vast majority are Mexicans, a small but sharply growing number come from other countries, including those with large populations hostile to the U.S. From Oct. 1 of last year until Aug. 25, along the southwest border, the border patrol estimates that it apprehended 55,890 people who fall into the category described officially as other than Mexicans, or OTMs. . . . But that’s just how many were caught. Time estimates, based on longtime government formulas for calculating how many elude capture, that as many as 190,000 illegals from countries other than Mexico have melted into the U.S. population so far this year . . . [including] intruders from Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Russia and China as well as Egypt, Iran and Iraq.”

Who’s to blame for this shocking state of affairs? Time answers: 
“The government doesn’t want to fix it, and politicians, as usual, are dodging the issue, even though public-opinion polls show that Americans overwhelmingly favor a crackdown on illegal immigration. Many citizens quietly benefit from the flood of illegals because the supply of cheap labor helps keep down the cost of many goods and services, from chicken parts to lawn care.”

But this is a bad bargain for Americans. In addition to the terrorism risks, Time explains: 
“Washington’s failure to control the nation’s borders has a painful impact on workers at the bottom of the ladder and, increasingly, those further up the income scale. The system holds down the pay of American workers and rewards the illegals and the businesses that hire them. It breeds anger and resentment among citizens who can’t understand why illegal aliens often receive government-funded health care, education benefits and subsidized housing.”

Time points out that the reason why the number of illegals is increasing is because President George W. Bush offered “the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States . . . a new temporary-worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.”

Time says: “In Mexico that statement was widely interpreted to mean that once Mexican citizens cross illegally into the U.S., they would be able to stay and eventually gain permanent residence. . . . A run to the border has begun. . . . The border patrol is no match for the onslaught. For every person it picks up, at least three make it into the country safely. The number of agents assigned to the 1,951-mile southern border has grown only somewhat, to more than 9,900 today, up from 8,85% in 2000.”

What is it like for the Americans in Arizona who bear the brunt of this invasion? Time explains: 
“When the crowds cross the ranches along and near the border, they discard backpacks, empty Gatorade and water bottles and soiled clothes. They turn the land into a vast latrine, leaving behind revolting mounds of personal refuse and enough discarded plastic bags to stock a Wal-Mart. Night after night, they cut fences intended to hold in cattle and horses. Cows that eat the bags must often be killed because the plastic becomes lodged between the first and second stomachs. The immigrants steal vehicles and saddles. They poison dogs to quiet them. . . . They punch holes in the barbed-wire border fence and then tear up the many fences intended to separate the breeding cattle — Brahmin, Angus and Hereford.”

And what happens when the border agents catch the smugglers? Time explains: 
“The judges let them off, and they get a free trip back to Mexico, where they can start all over.”

Time vividly describes how the hospitals along the border are required to take care of illegal aliens. Time quoted one hospital administrator: 
“We used to have 250 emergency-room visits a month. Now it’s 500. They range from a lone man or woman rescued in the desert, suffering from dehydration or a heart attack, to multiple victims injured when vans jammed with 20 or more illegals crash during high-speed chases. Along the way the hospital is seeing more and more tuberculosis, AIDS and hepatitis. . . . The Copper Queen Hospital’s shortfall from treating illegal aliens this year will be about $450,000, bringing the total for the past few years to $1.4 million.”

Time added: “Not all the free care is going to illegal aliens passing through on their way to other states. About half goes to Mexicans who use the Copper Queen Hospital as their personal emergency-care facility. In effect, the hospital, which performs general surgery, has become the trauma center for that stretch of northern Mexico.”

Time explains why corporate America loves illegals:  
“Many [illegals] have their jobs lined up before they leave Mexico. That’s because corporate managers go so far as to place orders with smugglers for a specific number of able bodies to be delivered. For corporate America, employing illegal aliens at wages so low few citizens could afford to take the jobs is great for profits and stockholders. That’s why the payrolls of so many businesses — meat-packers, poultry processors, landscape firms, construction companies, office-cleaning firms and corner convenience stores, among others — are jammed with illegals. . . . Nonenforcement of employer sanctions, which is in keeping with the Federal Government’s nonenforcement of immigration laws across the board, has been the equivalent of hanging out a Help Wanted sign for illegals. . . .

“For nearly 20 years, it has been a crime to hire illegal aliens. . . . The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, provided that employers could be fined up to $10,000 for every illegal alien they hired, and repeat offenders could be sent to jail. . . . President Ronald Reagan called the sanctions the ‘keystone’ of the law. . . . But companies had little to fear. Neither Reagan nor subsequent Presidents or Congresses were eager to enforce the law. . . .

“Now many corporate managers feel emboldened to place orders for workers while the prospective employees are still in Mexico, then assist them in obtaining phony documentation and transport them hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles from the interior of Mexico to a production line in an American factory.”

Time included evidence of this racket from the Tyson Foods Inc. trial in 2003. Time printed the recorded phone conversation in which the chicken-plant manager arranged for up to 500 illegal aliens to come directly to work at Tyson plants after getting phony documents.

Time then explained: “One of the arguments that is regularly advanced to justify hiring illegal workers is that they are merely doing jobs American workers won’t take. . . The two Tyson managers who pleaded guilty contended that they had been forced to hire illegals because Tyson refused to pay wages that would let them attract American workers. . . . A government consultant estimated that the company saved millions of dollars in wages, benefits and other costs. . . . George Borjas, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, calculates that all immigration, by increasing the labor supply from 1980 to 2000, ‘reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4%.’ Borjas says African Americans and native-born Hispanics pay the steepest price because they are more often in direct competition with immigrants for jobs.”

Time warns about alien criminals: 
“The most alarming aspect of having 15 million illegals at large in society is Congress’s failure to insist that federal agencies separate those who pose a threat from those who don’t. The open borders, for example, allow illegals to come into the country, commit crimes and return home with little fear of arrest or punishment. From Oct. 1, 2003 until July 20, 2004, the border patrol’s Tucson sector stopped 9,051 persons crossing in the country illegally who had criminal records in the U.S., meaning they committed crimes here, returned to Mexico, then were trying to re-enter the country. . . .

“The numbers suggest that tens of thousands of criminals, quite possibly hundreds of thousands, treat the southern border as a revolving door to crimes of opportunity. The situation is so out of control that of the 400,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to be deported, 80,000 have criminal records – and the agency in charge, the Homeland Security Department, does not have a clue as to the whereabouts of any of them, criminal or noncriminal, including those from countries that support terrorism.”

You are urged to go to a library and read the entire 12-page Time article.

Totalization: Sellout of American Workers

 
The Democrats are trying to make a major issue out of George W. Bush’s alleged plan to “privatize” Social Security, scaring seniors into thinking their checks will be cut off. That is a phony issue; all Bush suggests is to offer younger workers the option (not the compulsion) of transferring a very small part of their Social Security benefit into private investments.

The real threat to Social Security doesn’t come from giving young people this opportunity. The threat comes from the Bush Administration’s plan to load illegal aliens into the Social Security system, an idea that would skyrocket costs and bankrupt the system at the same time that baby boomers flood into their benefit years.

The code word for this racket is “totalization.” The United States has totalization agreements with 20 other countries, which have been reasonable and non-controversial, but totalization with Mexico is totally different.

The idea behind totalization with other countries is to assure a pension to those few individuals who work legally in two countries by “totalizing” their payments into the pension systems of both countries. All existing totalization agreements are with developed nations whose retirement benefits are on a parity with U.S. benefits, and the affected employees work for companies that have been paying taxes into the other countries’ retirement systems.

Workers from the other 20 countries come with documents from their employer verifying that they are authorized to work in the United States. Only a minuscule fraction of Mexicans enter with such documents.

The legitimate goal of totalization with other countries is to avoid double taxation for retirement when employers assign their employees to work temporarily in another country. Reciprocity works because there is rough parity between the number of U.S. workers in the 20 other countries and the foreigners from those countries who work in the United States.

But this goal has no relevance to Mexico. There is no parity whatsoever between the number of Mexicans working in the United States and the number of U.S. citizens working in Mexico, and absolutely no parity in the social security systems of the two countries.

Mexican benefits are not remotely equal to U.S. benefits. Americans receive benefits after working for 10 years, but Mexicans have to work 24 years before receiving any benefits.

Mexican workers receive back in retirement only what they actually paid in, plus interest, whereas the U.S. Social Security system is skewed to give lower-wage earners benefits greatly in excess of what they and their employers contributed.

Mexico has two different retirement programs, one for public-sector employees, which is draining the national treasury, and one for private-sector workers, which is estimated to cover only 40 percent of the workforce. The rest of the workers are in the off-the-record economy (euphemistically called the “informal” sector).

The 10 million Mexicans who have illegally entered the United States previously lived in poverty, did not pay social security taxes in Mexico, and did not work for employers who paid taxes into a retirement plan. If they were working at all, it was in the off-the-record economy.

Illegality is no issue with the countries where we have existing totalization agreements because none of them accounts for even one percent of the U.S illegal population. On the other hand, Mexico provides more than two-thirds of the illegals in the United States.

The Bush totalization plan would pay out billions in Social Security benefits to Mexicans for work they did in the U.S. using fraudulent Social Security numbers, something that Americans would go to jail for doing. It would pay Social Security Disability benefits to Mexicans who worked in the United States as little as 3 years.

The Bush totalization plan would lure even more Mexicans into the United States illegally in the hope of amnesty and eligibility for Social Security benefits. The Bush plan would even cover the Mexicans’ spouses and dependents who may never have lived in the United States.

Since few if any of the illegal aliens have built up any equity in the Mexican retirement system, what is there to totalize? Totalization is a plan for the U.S. taxpayers to end up assuming the entire burden.

When George W. Bush became President in 2001, the Mexican government expected the United States to pass amnesty (disguised as a guest worker plan and “regularizing” the entry of Mexicans). After 9/11, Mexico’s national policy turned to increasing the number of its nationals working in the United States and getting them to qualify for all the social benefits and privileges Americans receive, from driver’s licenses to Social Security and Social Security Disability.

The Social Security commissioners of both Mexico and the Bush Administration signed a totalization agreement in June of 2004, but the text of the agreement has been kept secret. Maybe we will be permitted to see it after the President approves it and sends it to Congress.

Let your Members of Congress know you want them to stop this billion-dollar sellout of American workers and taxpayers.

Taxpayer Subsidies for Illegal College Students

 
It’s not often that a state attorney general declines to defend a state law. Kansas passed a law allowing its illegal aliens to attend its state universities at discount tuition rates, and some out-of-state citizens who have to pay higher tuition filed a lawsuit. Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline agrees with them. He recused himself and assigned the defense of the case to other attorneys in his office.

Kline noted that several federal statutes have tried to prevent states from undermining national immigration law by giving taxpayer-paid benefits to those who enter the United States illegally. He says the new Kansas law rewards illegal activity and therefore is likely to be held contrary to federal law.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of students from some of the other 49 states who are attending Kansas universities but are denied the taxpayer subsidy of in-state college tuition. The lawsuit asserts that the new Kansas law, which was signed by Governor Kathleen Sebelius on May 20, makes each of these American students pay at least $10,000 more during their college years than illegal aliens pay.

The three Kansas state universities currently have more than 9,000 students enrolled who are identified as non-U.S. citizens. For just the fall 2004 term, each illegal alien undergraduate student will receive a taxpayer subsidy of a reduction in tuition of $3,181.80 at the University of Kansas, $3,504 at Kansas State University, and $3,360 at Emporia State University.

Federal law 8 U.S.C. 1623(a) expressly bars aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States from receiving “any postsecondary education benefit” unless U.S. citizens are eligible for the same benefit “in no less an amount, duration, and scope” without regard to whether the citizen is a resident of the state. But Kansas is not giving this subsidy to U.S. citizens from the other 49 states.

The intent of the federal statute, which was signed by President Clinton in 1996, is very clear. Anticipating that the states might try to get around the law, Congress specified that states may not award a college tuition subsidy to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within a State.”

The chicanery of the Kansas law is obvious. The law states that the illegal alien student “shall be deemed to be a resident of Kansas for the purpose of tuition and fees” if the illegal alien has attended a Kansas high school for three or more years or has received a GED in Kansas, and submits an affidavit stating that he will file an application to legalize his immigration status as soon as he is eligible to do so.

But this appears to require the student to do the impossible. Under federal law, illegal aliens are detainable and deportable and may be barred for ten years or more from reapplying for legal admission to the United States.

Thus, Kansas law expressly rewards aliens who have violated federal law by giving them a taxpayer subsidy that is denied to lawful aliens and U.S. citizens. Meanwhile university tuition rates continue to soar at a rate greater than inflation, and state legislatures strapped for funds are looking to their expensive state university system to absorb some of the squeeze.

Bills to grant the in-state tuition subsidy to illegal aliens have been introduced in at least 23 states and have become law in California, Texas, New York, Utah, Washington, Illinois, and Oklahoma. These bills precipitated lively debates in the state capitols, and often noisy demonstrators in the streets.

In Maryland, the bill was stalled because an amendment was added to extend the subsidy to include members of the military and their families who might be temporarily living in the state. Washington State found that after passing a state law to help illegal alien children of migrant workers to afford college, the subsidy was used mostly by foreign students with visas (an unintended consequence which indicates the opportunity for fraud).

Meanwhile, Senator Orrin Hatch is trying to repeal the federal law by passing a bill called the DREAM Act. That would be amnesty plus a cash award worth many thousands of dollars given to college students who entered our country illegally.

Some of these illegal aliens who seek to attend college at preferential tuition rates sneaked in illegally with their parents, and others simply overstayed tourist visas. Nobody is able to count how many thousands are in this country.

Despite their illegal status, these alien students have already been generously treated by U.S. taxpayers by being given free kindergarten-through-12th-grade schooling and free emergency health care. Many Americans think that giving them college tuition subsidies which American citizens can’t get is just too much, especially when U.S. parents are struggling to pay their own children’s college expenses.

All Americans who care about the future of America should ask your Member of Congress to join Rep. Tom Tancredo’s Immigration Caucus and get to work immediately to address these problems which are so vital to our national security and identity.