"The costs of illegal immigration are huge"

A small Iowa paper has a common-sense editorial on the costs of all that "cheap" labor.

It concentrates on just two of the many areas that could be discussed: the costs incurred by the federal Office of Migrant Education, and JAMA's report on a nasty strain of TB:
...One sensible means to reduce the spread of such a dangerous disease would be to, of all things, secure our borders. But the CDC's investigator, in keeping with the touchy political correctness surrounding illegal immigration, dismissed the obvious solution at a press conference releasing the study. "If we hope to accelerate progress and guard against resurgence of TB," said Dr. Reuben Granich, "we must employ innovative public-health strategies - not border closings."

No one has suggested actually closing the border, only patrolling it and actually enforcing our nation's immigration laws. Such is the wackiness of the immigration discussion, or lack thereof, that a CDC official would suggest Americans wait for unspecified "innovative public-health strategies" to be developed rather than directly attempt to reduce the flow of infected people into the United States...
Of course, back in the days of Ellis Island, people were sent back home if found with a contagious disease. That's not possible with the current self-service immigration system and self-declared citizenship, together with political corruption and/or political correctness.

Comments

I am one that also calls for a time out on our current mass immigration, besides the illegal kind. The numbers are just too many and since we do not have an Ellis Island type system of immigration where they are checked out healthwise, how do we know if they are also not carrying diseases. Here in Calif. some of the last batch of Hmong that our Pres. invited in here had some of those diseases that were the hard to treat kind and they came in here legally. Now Calif. counties get to pick up the tab to pay for the expensive price to treat them. If we had a better system they should have been checked out before they were to come here and if they showed signs of sickness they should be prevented from coming in here. We can't afford to treat all these people's health problems, when it is so expensive for American citizens to get health care. And this is why, because they pass on the costs to the regular citizens. And no one ever asks is that a fair system.

To eh:

Don't hold your breath. Ralphie old bean won't be explaining anything. He's got a disorder which renders him incapable of accessing the rational part of his brain matter. He's kind of like a child who has no idea why he wants something, what he wants it for, or whether or not it's beneficial or detrimental, all he knows is I WANT IT, I WANT IT, I WANT IT. He reminds me of a child trying to convince his mother why he should be allowed to eat candy for dinner every night..... i.e. "but mommy it tastes good and I like it..." And just as that's the depth of the explanation you'll get from the child, such is the depth of the analysis and explanation you'll get from ralphie old bean. Even when he's hammered over the head with the facts. LOL. If you want some mild amusement, login to steinreport.com and check out the posts ralphie makes. It's particularly amusing to contrast the flow of non-sense from ralphie in the face of the torrent of intelligent facts coming from the other posters. Inevitably, it brings to my mind the image of a town idiot trying to drink from a fire-hose. Just as the idiot cannot contain and account for all the water coming through the hose, so ralphie old bean cannot contain and account for all the cold hard facts and intelligent posts which prove his understanding of the issues to be woefully and pitifully inadequate and incomplete.

He does have a point, in any case: he mentions both the (possible) benefits (non-specifically), as well as the costs, one of them specifically, that being the importation of contagious diseases via uncontrolled immigration, some of the diseases quite contagious and quite serious and quite difficult and costly to treat.

Anyway, it is this general weighing of costs vs benefits, i.e. our right to democratically decide if and how we want our communities and country to change, that US citizens are denied when the government does not enforce immigration laws (which do serve a purpose). In this sense, the wishes of foreigners, i.e. those who choose to enter the US illegally, for whatever reason, end up having de facto priority over the wishes of US citizens and taxpayers, e.g. those who want illegal immigration to stop, which most polls seem to show is a majority of the population.

This should be clear.

Incidentally, it seems you missed a chance to point out exactly what the "benefits" of uncontrolled, illegal immigration are.

If the only effect of immigration diseases affecting our children, then you might have a point.

And the benefits of permitting diseased people to come across the border to infect our children with nasty illnesses are what, exactly?

Road and bridge construction, police and courts, and K-12 education cost a lot and would seem like bad ideas unless you compare it to the benefits.