The population of illegal immigrants in the country has dropped from 12 million to 11.1 million. This change allegedly is the result of the poor economy and increased police efforts, essentially meaning that illegal immigrants are leaving because they can’t find jobs (just like the legal immigrants/citizens) and the risk is no longer worth the reward. The amusing facet of this change is that it indicates that it seems to partially refute the idea that illegal immigrants are all coming to America for our wonderful political system and great burgers — the motivations for many illegals may be simply economic and wholly contingent on their ability to draw cash from our system.
If many motivations are primarily economic, this presents a key problem: we have a base of presumably 11 million people who are here in America exclusively to leech off our economy until things get bad while simultaneously not paying taxes. This sort of behavior is reminiscent of a parasite drawing on a host’s blood until the host dies, in which it will move to a different host. With proper taxation of these illegals (by forcing them into citizenship or otherwise preventing them from taking jobs/cash), we might be able to lessen this draining effect illegal immigrants add to the economy. Still, with Republicans wanting to spend exorbitant money to kick illegals out due to misguided anger and Democrats wanting to essentially integrate illegals into the already burdened welfare system due to misguided charity, it seems unlikely either party will think of something so logical.
Tags: Boston Herald, citizenship, economics, illegal immigrants, immigration
