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April 14, 2008
U.S. Immigration Policy Harms Children
We have previously reported on the effect of ICE raids on children; the Urban Institute and National Council of La Raza have issued one report on this issue and is conducting further research on the matter.
Now Mary Ann Zehr of Education Week has noted that the United Nations is concerned with the effect of U.S. immigration policy on children. She notes:
Children from migrant families are vulnerable in this country to having their human rights violated, according to a report released last month by the United Nations. (Click here for the link to download the 27-page report, which is at the top of the list. Choose "E" for English.)
About a year ago, Jorge Bustamante, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants for the United Nations, visited the United States to investigate the effects of U.S. immigration policy and procedures on migrants, including children. The Special Rapporteur notes that the United States lacks a clear, consistent, long-term strategy to improve respect for the human rights of migrants. Although there are national laws prohibiting discrimination, there is no national legislative and policy framework implementing protection for the human rights of migrants against which the federal and local programmes and strategies can be evaluated to assess to what extent the authorities are respecting the human rights of migrants.
Mr. Bustamante makes a recommendation regarding treatment of unaccompanied minors He says they should be removed from "jail-like detention centres and placed in home-like facilities."
He mentions education issues briefly in the report, saying that in some cases, migrants have "limited access to health and education." He notes how in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the presence of migrant workers in the Gulf Coast region has created tensions over language barriers and education.
Click here for the Ms. Zehr's entire blog entry.
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Comments
After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The Fiscal Impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 2008) , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
Posted by: zeezil | Apr 15, 2008 11:19:14 AM
After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The Fiscal Impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 2008) , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
Posted by: zeezil | Apr 15, 2008 11:20:00 AM
What a simplistic and un-Christian comment by the prior commenter. What I don't see are the financial and non-financial contributions that aliens make, both documented and undocumented.
I don't see anybody complaining about a South African winning the Masters or the number of international players in the NBA.
I don't see anyone complaining about the Gestapo tactics ICE agents use in harassing people in their homes, work, and schools. Pretending to be local police does not seem right. Searching homes without arrest warrants signed by a judge does not seem right.
One can not rightfully blame all our problems in the U.S. on Mexicans and people of color.
A suggestion is to look and act globally since we are one big world family. How would you like to be treated if you were born someplace outside the U.S. and had to raise a family?
What would the Pope say?
Posted by: Rocky | Apr 15, 2008 7:11:34 PM
What a simplistic and un-Christian comment by the prior commenter. What I don't see are the financial and non-financial contributions that aliens make, both documented and undocumented.
I don't see anybody complaining about a South African winning the Masters or the number of international players in the NBA.
I don't see anyone complaining about the Gestapo tactics ICE agents use in harassing people in their homes, work, and schools. Pretending to be local police does not seem right. Searching homes with arrest warrants signed by a judge does not seem right.
You can not blame everything on Mexicans or people of color.
A suggestion is look and act globally since we are one big family. How would you like to be treated if you were born someplace outside the U.S. and had to raise a family.
What would the Pope say?
Posted by: Rocky | Apr 15, 2008 7:13:13 PM
"What a simplistic and un-Christian comment by the prior commenter. What I don't see are the financial and non-financial contributions that aliens make, both documented and undocumented."
Although advocacy groups like nothing better than to rope illegal aliens, recently naturalized immigrants, and legal residents subsets into the same set, mainly to convey the same legitimacy to the first as the last two, there's a big difference. Most of the former consist of poor and ill-educated, who will ultimately resort to our welfare system for support. They'll have no choice, as our society is geared toward providing free health care, food stamps and tax credits for the poor. If they don't seek actively benefits for themselves, their community leaders will undoubtedly steer them towards it after they're amnestied. The fact is that the poor and illiterate have historically always taken more out of the treasury than they put in. In short, these people will become net recipients of tax money, not taxpayers.
"I don't see anyone complaining about the Gestapo tactics ICE agents use in harassing people in their homes, work, and schools. Pretending to be local police does not seem right. Searching homes without arrest warrants signed by a judge does not seem right."
Don't believe everying you hear in the news about ICE or the police. Much is exaggeration. Many advocacy people believe that the ends justifies the means, and they'll do everything in their power to discredit our our authorities, even to the point of demonizing them and lying.
"One can not rightfully blame all our problems in the U.S. on Mexicans and people of color."
I haven't seen this. I have seen communities claiming that they're paying for free health care for illegal aliens, even to the point of bankrupting hospitals (California) and paying for ESL and education for the children of illegal aliens. The Supreme Court misguidedly forced the states to pay for foreigners education against their will, and illegal alien advocates somehow think that citizens should accept this with equanimity, asgainst all common sense. One may well understand the resentment that citizens feel in being forced to do so.
"A suggestion is to look and act globally since we are one big world family."
Suggest all you want, but your thoughts mean nothing, as most of the world is out for itself and keen on their own survival, even at the expense of others. The first function of our government, as stated in the preamble to the Constitution, is to promote the welfare of ourselves and our posterity, which does not include that of non-citizens. We are are a sovereign nation, and we do for ourselves first, and assist those of other nations to help themselves, as do those who live beyond our borders. One world family? With strife in South West Asia, Bosnia, Africa (Darfur), Al Quaeda terrorizing the world, the Russians turning to dictators, Tibet being oppressed by the Chinese who have thoughts of dominating all of Asia, such thinking is laughable.
"How would you like to be treated if you were born someplace outside the U.S. and had to raise a family?
What would the Pope say?"
Who cares about the Pope. I'm not catholic and he's no holier than the postman to me. He believes the U.S. to have deep pockets and subject to the imposition of millions onto the public welfare roles without so much as as asking our permission. All he thinks in terms of is how may pews he can fill and how much money is put in the collection plates. He should pay more attention to the root cause of illegal Mexican immigration, the failure of the sending nations, rather than regale us with admonitions. If I barged in to another country without a visa, I would expect to be deported, which is exactly what our friends south of our border expect to be done to them. Our invaders to the south do exactly that to our people and others when we cross their border illegally.
Posted by: Horace | Apr 17, 2008 9:02:47 PM
"What a simplistic and un-Christian comment by the prior commenter. What I don't see are the financial and non-financial contributions that aliens make, both documented and undocumented."
Although advocacy groups like nothing better than to rope illegal aliens, recently naturalized immigrants, and legal residents subsets into the same set, mainly to convey the same legitimacy to the first as the last two, there's a big difference. Most of the former consist of poor and ill-educated, who will ultimately resort to our welfare system for support. They'll have no choice, as our society is geared toward providing free health care, food stamps and tax credits for the poor. If they don't seek actively benefits for themselves, their community leaders will undoubtedly steer them towards it after they're amnestied. The fact is that the poor and illiterate have historically always taken more out of the treasury than they put in. In short, these people will become net recipients of tax money, not taxpayers.
"I don't see anyone complaining about the Gestapo tactics ICE agents use in harassing people in their homes, work, and schools. Pretending to be local police does not seem right. Searching homes without arrest warrants signed by a judge does not seem right."
Don't believe everying you hear in the news about ICE or the police. Much is exaggeration. Many advocacy people believe that the ends justifies the means, and they'll do everything in their power to discredit our our authorities, even to the point of demonizing them and lying.
"One can not rightfully blame all our problems in the U.S. on Mexicans and people of color."
I haven't seen this. I have seen communities claiming that they're paying for free health care for illegal aliens, even to the point of bankrupting hospitals (California) and paying for ESL and education for the children of illegal aliens. The Supreme Court misguidedly forced the states to pay for foreigners education against their will, and illegal alien advocates somehow think that citizens should accept this with equanimity, asgainst all common sense. One may well understand the resentment that citizens feel in being forced to do so.
"A suggestion is to look and act globally since we are one big world family."
Suggest all you want, but your thoughts mean nothing, as most of the world is out for itself and keen on their own survival, even at the expense of others. The first function of our government, as stated in the preamble to the Constitution, is to promote the welfare of ourselves and our posterity, which does not include that of non-citizens. We are are a sovereign nation, and we do for ourselves first, and assist those of other nations to help themselves, as do those who live beyond our borders. One world family? With strife in South West Asia, Bosnia, Africa (Darfur), Al Quaeda terrorizing the world, the Russians turning to dictators, Tibet being oppressed by the Chinese who have thoughts of dominating all of Asia, such thinking is laughable.
"How would you like to be treated if you were born someplace outside the U.S. and had to raise a family?
What would the Pope say?"
Who cares about the Pope. I'm not catholic and he's no holier than the postman to me. He believes the U.S. to have deep pockets and subject to the imposition of millions onto the public welfare roles without so much as as asking our permission. All he thinks in terms of is how may pews he can fill and how much money is put in the collection plates. He should pay more attention to the root cause of illegal Mexican immigration, the failure of the sending nations, rather than regale us with admonitions. If I barged in to another country without a visa, I would expect to be deported, which is exactly what our friends south of our border expect to be done to them. Our invaders to the south do exactly that to our people and others when we cross their border illegally.
Posted by: Horace | Apr 17, 2008 9:15:15 PM
The right of being a human should be a given if a person from another country comes her whether legal or illegal. They should be treated with these rights because they are stated in our constitution and what kind of country would we be if we didn’t follow what the fathers of our countries expected us to do? This is not the first time in our history with immigrants that families have been separated our fallen apart.
Back in the 1940’s just after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the government created a way to keep the Japanese under their watch. They created “internment” or “war relocation” camps, which was where they held people of Japanese descent living in America. This group included both generations of Immigrants living there at the time. These camps were built in order to keep track of Japanese spies and questioned Japanese immigrants patriotism. The total number of Japanese people interned was about over 150,000 whom most were U.S Citizens. These camps though were not prisons made the Japanese feel like they were criminals for being what they were. Also, because of these camps many families were separated and ruined in the process of being transported to the camp and some of the riots that broke out while in the camps.
Another example of mistreated immigrants is the wetback operation of 1953. In this operation, 1,000’s of Mexican immigrants were treated like criminals and were deported to their country. In this operation President Dwight D. Eisenhower hired 1,000 border troop agents to sweep Mexican-American neighborhoods and “randomly check” any people who looked like they were Mexican. Now, this did deport a lot of illegal immigrants but the fact of the matter is that all of these “Mexican looking” people were treated like criminals and were checked just because of that, which is just morally wrong. (Good thing we don’t do that anymore) Plus, it just shows how desperate our government can get when it comes to illegal immigration. This also shows how immigrants have been mistreated for years.
I truly agree with this saying that the policy is unhealthy for children. It’s unhealthy to everyone who comes into this country with a family. What the government needs to do is have a system when people under this country where families cannot get separated and children under the age of 6 are never by themselves. Along with that, there needs to be a way for immigrants to learned about these human rights and remember to pled it if someone is going against it. I know that is a vague description of what the government should do but it’s the only way I can describe what needs to be done in order to fix this mistreated.
Posted by: Whitmans | Apr 23, 2008 4:24:36 PM
The right of being a human should be a given if a person from another country comes her whether legal or illegal. They should be treated with these rights because they are stated in our constitution and what kind of country would we be if we didn’t follow what the fathers of our countries expected us to do? This is not the first time in our history with immigrants that families have been separated our fallen apart.
Back in the 1940’s just after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the government created a way to keep the Japanese under their watch. They created “internment” or “war relocation” camps, which was where they held people of Japanese descent living in America. This group included both generations of Immigrants living there at the time. These camps were built in order to keep track of Japanese spies and questioned Japanese immigrants patriotism. The total number of Japanese people interned was about over 150,000 whom most were U.S Citizens. These camps though were not prisons made the Japanese feel like they were criminals for being what they were. Also, because of these camps many families were separated and ruined in the process of being transported to the camp and some of the riots that broke out while in the camps.
Another example of mistreated immigrants is the wetback operation of 1953. In this operation, 1,000’s of Mexican immigrants were treated like criminals and were deported to their country. In this operation President Dwight D. Eisenhower hired 1,000 border troop agents to sweep Mexican-American neighborhoods and “randomly check” any people who looked like they were Mexican. Now, this did deport a lot of illegal immigrants but the fact of the matter is that all of these “Mexican looking” people were treated like criminals and were checked just because of that, which is just morally wrong. (Good thing we don’t do that anymore) Plus, it just shows how desperate our government can get when it comes to illegal immigration. This also shows how immigrants have been mistreated for years.
I truly agree with this saying that the policy is unhealthy for children. It’s unhealthy to everyone who comes into this country with a family. What the government needs to do is have a system when people under this country where families cannot get separated and children under the age of 6 are never by themselves. Along with that, there needs to be a way for immigrants to learned about these human rights and remember to pled it if someone is going against it. I know that is a vague description of what the government should do but it’s the only way I can describe what needs to be done in order to fix this mistreated.
Posted by: Whitmans | Apr 23, 2008 4:26:21 PM
