Illegal Aliens cost us $338 Billion in Debt a year!! (or do they?)

I recently received an email regarding illegal aliens, and the horrible economic harm they are doing to our country.
You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much?
Read this: Boy, am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda
that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.
I now find that to be RIDICULOUS. I hope the following 14 reasons are
forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the
reader gets sick of reading them.

I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens
each year.
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs
such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school
education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of
English!

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare &
social services by the American taxpayers.

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused
by the illegal aliens.

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's
two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular,
their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the
US

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens
that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal
aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine,
meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern
border.
Homeland Security Report:
12. The National Policy Institute, 'estimated that the total cost of
mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average
cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to
their countries of origin.

14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex
Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States '.
The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!

Are we THAT stupid???

If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message.
If, on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your
neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country
including every representative in Washington, D.C. - five times a week
for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our
policies and enforcement thereof.


That was the entire un-edited email.

There's nothing that irks me more than an 'article' that attacks a specific group of people (be it Muslims, Illegal Aliens or Mormons) without giving all the facts, so that all those who read it come away thinking who knows what. With that in mind, I want to offer a little perspective.

If you look at last year's US budget ( Wikipedia United States federal budget, 2007 ), you'll notice something interesting. $338 Billion dollars sounds like quite a lot, and it is! But, we paid $243.7 billion in debt interest ALONE last year. Just pause and think about that for a minute. That's almost as much as the figure in the email below ... compare that to what we are paying for our active military: $548.8 billion. Social Security/Medicare hits a combined total of $980.6 Billion ... wow. (and don't forget, that number will DOUBLE in ten years)



There are about 7 million illegal aliens in the country (mostly in California and Arizona), that's an average of 1.7 illegal aliens per 100 citizens. If we take the suggested $338 billion dollars and divide it up between them all, we come up with about $48,000 in spending per illegal alien. Maybe you should ask them what they are doing with all of that cash? The more reasonable explanation is that the numbers were inflated. If you check the numbers from The Center for Immigration Studies , you'll find that they figure $10.4 billion in deficit per year. Now, that's still a lot, but not enough to put us in debt, just enough to make us stop and try to figure out a solution. What that solution is, I guess the politicians will argue about until someone does something about it. But, please! keep in mind that we're really talking about people, not numbers.

By the way, do you want to know the real reason we're in debt? (9.5 trillion, if you were wondering) The same reason any of us might be. By spending more than we earn (approx. 2.5 trillion earned and 2.8 trillion spent), as well as not budgeting in debt payments.

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