The Immigration issue & our goals

The current immigration discussion often focuses on whether immigration is good or bad. But the real issue is how many immigrants can the U.S. absorb and who should be allowed in. Since the 1960's, annual immigration has tripled. Estimates of the cost to taxpayers of today's immigration level range from $29 to $51 billion annually, and increasing at a record rate. At a time when Congress is wrestling with ways to reduce the deficit, the historically high level of immigration and the associated costs means that more dollars will have to be cut from benefits for the elderly, veterans, schools, the environment, etc.

Recent polls indicate that over 80% of Americans want to reduce immigration, but our voices are not being heard. Powerful, well-financed, special interest groups have so far been successful in killing every effort to reduce immigration to sustainable levels. The Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration (MCRI) is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit non-partisan group dedicated to making the voices of Midwest citizens heard in this debate. But to be effective, we need thousands of additional members demanding meaningful immigration reform. Allow me to explain why your support is urgently needed.

As Chart 1 and Chart 2 dramatically demonstrate, unless the present immigration trends are significantly reduced, America will add more people in the next 60 to 70 years than in the almost 400 years since the founding of Jamestown in 1607. We are being invaded by 1.2 to 1.4 million aliens a year - 25 million in the last two decades. Immigrants tend to have much larger families than the average American. When we add in their children and their children's children, it quickly accumulates to 12 to 15 people for every immigrant allowed in. As a result the U.S. will add more than the entire population of Russia in only 35 years.

Immigration was not a problem during the last century when there were open frontiers and we needed many strong backs to farm our lands, build our railroads, and work our mills. And even today there are examples of immigrants who are making a major contribution to our society. However, the majority of immigrants are uneducated and unskilled. Today, we are in the post industrial, information age when there is a surplus of unskilled labor. We have 20 million persons either unemployed or involuntarily working at part time or temporary jobs. We have another 20 million persons working at pay levels below the poverty level.

The result of today's immigration will be to swell the ranks of the poor in this country by the tens of millions. In the last great wave of immigration early in this century there wasn't any welfare and 40% of the aliens returned to their homelands when they could not find jobs. No one is going back now. The U.S. General Accounting Office study shows that immigrants are twice as likely to use welfare as the average American.

A recent analysis by the Center for immigration Studies indicates that the population of Illinois is expected to increase by almost 3 million because of immigrants and their families during the next 25 years. The consequences are totally predictable:

  • Illinois will need to build an additional school every month for the next 25 years to handle the increased school enrollment due to children of the new immigrants. The city of Chicago already spends about $450 million to educate immigrant children; the fastest growing component of its budget is for bilingual education. Bilingual education increases the cost of education per student by about 50%.
  • Although most immigrants are law abiding, we can expect crime to increase. It costs Illinois $44 million a year to imprison illegal aliens. No estimates of the cost of jailed legal aliens are available, but since 1980 California has incurred a 600% increase in alien inmates. Nationally, 25% of federal prisoners are foreign born.
  • Illinois is now spending more than $170 million on welfare for illegal immigrants. That is a mere drop in the bucket to what California has experienced. Illinois can expect its welfare cost to soar in the coming years. As a taxpayer it will come out of your pocket.
  • As rival ethnic groups vie for a dwindling number of good paying jobs we can expect inter-racial strife increasing and a general breakdown of the social cohesion that has held our country together for the past 200 years.

Most congressmen believe that the problem of immigration will be solved by simply strengthening our border patrol. This is mistaken on two counts. First, the majority of illegal immigrants do not sneak in over the border. They enter the country on temporary visas. They then buy false identification and meld in with the population. Second, illegal immigrants account for only about 25% of annual immigration. As Chart 2 shows, the vast majority of immigrants are legal. The problem is that ill-conceived legislation over the past two decades has dramatically increased immigration which is now running at four times the historic level.

MCRI's goal is to reduce immigration to 300,000 or less annually. That is the historical average and would allow us to meet any conceivable special labor needs, eventually slow the U.S. population growth, and still leave the U.S. with the most generous immigration policy in the world.

MCRI

E2302 Cool Brook Court

LaValle, WI 53941