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U.S. cannot afford to bring more high school dropouts into country, says scholar

A domestic policy scholar has studied the long-term economic effects of adding millions more low-skilled immigrants to the U.S. work force if President Bush and members of Congress give amnesty to illegal aliens living in the country. He is very concerned about the so-called "comprehensive immigration reform" plan working its way through Congress.



Robert Rector is senior research fellow in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation. He says in the last 20 years, the United States has imported ten million high school dropouts from abroad, who on average receive "about $30,000 [a year] in government benefits, including public schooling, welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, public housing and so forth."

However, these immigrants only pay about $10,000 in taxes, Rector points out. "So there's a gap of about $20,000 a year of services that they receive that they don't pay for with their own taxes," he says.

That is a staggering amount in the lifetime of the immigrant, the domestic policy scholar contends. "Each low-skilled immigrant that comes across our border," he explains, "either legally or illegally, and brings a family with him is going, over his lifetime, to impose a net cost on the U.S. taxpayers of about $1.2 million," he says, "and that's benefits minus all taxes paid in."

The U.S. cannot afford to give amnesty to millions of low-skilled illegal aliens, Rector insists. "What we're proposing in Washington," the Heritage Foundation fellow asserts, "is to bring in a vastly larger number of exactly these types of low-skilled immigrants, who will be a huge burden on the U.S. taxpayer, but on the other hand, will be almost guaranteed voters for a bigger welfare state in the United States."

Rector says bringing in millions more low-skilled immigrants into the United States would not only dramatically increase the fiscal burden on taxpayers, but he believes the effects of such an amnesty could lead to the bankruptcy of the U.S. Social Security system.

Our open borders, and our pandering politicians, have facilitated the importation of poverty into this country.  We have enough legal citizens living in poverty and putting a strain on the taxpayers, we certainly don't need anymore.  Why would any country desire to import poverty?  At this rate, it won't take long before we become a third world country with only two classes.....the wealthy and the poor.  Our middle class is being systematically destroyed, while big business continues to reap huge profits.