By the Numbers, Part I: Illegal Immigration and Healthcare Reform
Recently, our national attention has become so narrowly focused on the moral issues of healthcare that many of us are losing track of the extent to which the healthcare plan is tied up in an inextricable knot with the economics of immigration reform. Changing our policies on immigration will have a profound effect on the healthcare system and its cost to tax-payers, yet the question of what to do with illegal immigrants seems to slip our minds as we get side-tracked by the spectacle of jousting healthcare moralists.
If we continue to ignore the relationship of healthcare reform to every other proposed policy change that has been set before us, the President will continue to go about his business, unnoticed by a distracted American public, and soon he will launch a calculated assault on the wallets of an unsuspecting citizenry. We therefore cannot let ourselves become so ensconced in our debates over the morals of healthcare that we overlook the rest of his battle plan, which includes the costly destruction of our national integrity with new policies on illegal immigration. It is exceedingly important to keep our sights on the fact that the cost of subsidizing healthcare for illegal immigrants accounts for an enormous percentage of the cost of a socialized healthcare system. If we divert our attention from that fact, the current administration will establish a crushing economic burden on the tax-payers of this country.
It’s axiomatic that the average voter is an uninformed voter. It follows that most voters have little or no knowledge of the numbers associated with immigration, thereby remaining blissfully ignorant of the most rudimentary information required to develop an informed opinion about either immigration or healthcare, much less the complex interrelationship between the two. Resistance to edification runs rampant among liberals in particular. It is fortified by delusions of moral superiority and their belief that generous government spending, by virtue of the noble purpose they think it serves, is far beyond the reproach of a number-crunching skeptic. Unencumbered by data and profoundly myopic, the idealists float lightly and blindly over the uncomfortable terrain of economics like sylphs, unwilling to accept the hard reality beneath their feet.
I wager that only a handful of people are aware of the scale at which our country is inundated with illegal immigrants each year. Even fewer are cognizant of the effects that these immigrants will have on population growth or the exponentially increasing economic burden they have on tax-payers.
The data most critical to an evaluation of proposed immigration policies and healthcare reform does exist and is readily accessible to anyone with the slightest interest in finding it. One has only to consult two obvious sources of information: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). I reproduce the most germane data here, which includes illegal immigration statistics, population growth, and the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants under Obama’s planned healthcare reform. Please note that all of the data below were taken directly from the source except where noted.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: BASIC FACTS
The DHS estimates a net illegal immigration of 11.6 million people since 1980. To put that in perspective, there is 1 (one) illegal immigrant for every 26 legal citizens of the United States. (Additional note: DHS undercounts the illegal population by 10%, meaning that the number is closer to 12.76 million.)
- Illegal immigrants and their descendents will increase the population of the United States in the year 2050 by 85 million. That’s the equivalent of the entire population of Germany moving to the United States in the next 41 years. (per author)
- During the same time period (1980 – 2007), approximately 56% of the illegal immigrants entered the US while a Democrat was in office (Clinton). However, Clinton’s presidency accounts for only 30% of that time period. In contrast, only 44% of the total illegal immigration occurred while Republicans were in office for the remaining 70% of the time. Put another way, the ratio of Democrat-era illegal immigration versus Republican-era illegal immigration was 3:1. (per author)
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: HEALTHCARE COSTS
The following data can be found in the transcript of a CIS panel discussion entitled “The Elephant in the Room: Panel on Immigration’s Impact on Health Care Reform” (August 2009) by Steven A. Camarota, Robert Rector, Mark Krikorian, and James R. Edwards Jr. CIS is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization.
The discussion centered around total immigration (illegal + legal), so I have adjusted the numbers to reflect the DHS’s recent estimates that 75% of all immigrants are now entering the country illegally.
- The cost of the new healthcare plan to tax-payers over the next decade, given current immigration policies, is estimated at $1.1 trillion, an average of $110 billion per year.
- Currently, tax-payers contribute $4 billion per year to pay for healthcare for illegal immigrants. If they were given Medicaid, it would cost us $15 billion per year.
- If the current population of illegal immigrants were given amnesty, the cost of their citizenship (e.g. social security, health care, and so forth) would be $2.5 trillion per year.
- The Joint Economic Committee (US Congress) looked at cost estimates done on several healthcare programs over the last 40 – 50 years. Their conclusion was that costs were underestimated by anywhere from 1.6 to 16 times. In other words, a $1.1 trillion healthcare plan for illegal immigrants will in reality cost at best $1.76 trillion and at worst $17.6 trillion over a period of ten years, which translates to anywhere from $176 billion to $1.76 trillion per year.
IN SUMMARY
The number of illegal immigrants who have arrived in the United States since 1980 is close to 12.75 million, and we are expected to subsidize their citizenship to the tune of $2.5 trillion per year under the new healthcare and immigration reforms. This figure does not include the costs associated with future immigration. Historically, the number of immigrants has increased dramatically while a Democrat was in office and it is projected to increase even more as immigrants flock to the U.S. to take advantage of our proposed new government programs.
Though there is of course merit in exploring the moral basis for providing universal healthcare to all persons on American soil, it is nevertheless critically important that we keep the numbers in plain view while doing so. We can not discuss one without the other. If we lose sight of the numbers, we will pay dearly for the President’s healthcare/immigration reform package, in more ways than one.
REFERENCES:
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf
these numbers are simply staggering. what the heck is all this going to be spent on? bread and circuses?