Kenders' Musings

This post has been a long time coming. Let us forget for a moment that the people that sneak into America are commiting a FEDERAL OFFENSE. If you or I, dear fellow American, committed a federal offense we would be looking at time in a federal prison. These guys? Nope. They get slapped on the wrist and sent back home only to come right back. Unless they comit a crime here. Then we spend the money to lock them up here for however long and when they get out, IF American citizens are lucky, they get deported then.

Let's not forget for a moment that these people that sneak in here very often take the money they make, that they, for the most part don't pay taxes on, and send it back to family in their home countries. It is estimated that the immigrants from Latin America ALONE send 30 BILLION a year home.

And Bush wants them to send more!

Of course not all of that is from illegal immigrants, but I am going to be kind here and go with a figure that is from
here
and will consider that 43% is a fair estimate. Tell you what. To save the liberals that may cry about this post let us lower that to 33%. One third. That is 10 BILLION dollars. That is alot of money to be sent out of the country every year. Maybe we should factor that number into 'foreign aid' figures huh?

But that is not the point here.

The point is that today kids we are going to examine how much money these criminals cost us, as a nation, in healthcare, education and incarceration.

HEALTHCARE:

The tab is rising as the number of immigrants continues to swell from coast to coast. The American Hospital Association reported that its member facilities provided $21 billion in uncompensated health-care services last year.

While not all those costs can be attributed to undocumented aliens, new Census data show that non-citizens are, by far, this country's largest group of uninsured residents — 43 percent of the total.
link to story

There's that pesky 43% again. Forty three percent of 21 Billion is about 9 billion dollars and change. Take that by 33% and roughly we get 3 billion dollars. I know this is probably a low number for what illegal immigrants cost us in health care, and is a relatively small drop in the big bucket, but that is 3 BILLION dollars that we could save, minimum just from healthcare alone.

I know this number is low because California alone spends 1.4 billion on healthcare for illegals every year. One state. We aren't the only border state either.

Some stats for you.

"Although a national total of annual unreimbursed medical expenses for illegal aliens is not available, it is clear that those costs are more than one billion dollars, given estimates for Texas ($393 million), Los Angeles ($350 million), Florida ($40 million), and U.S.-Mexico border counties ($300 million)."

Further:
"The problem is on the rise: Immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived between 1994 and 1998 and their children accounted for 59 percent of the growth in the size of the uninsured population in the last ten years."
FIFTY NINE PERCENT!!!!! This is part of the national healthcare problem people.

Enough on this. I could go on for hours about healthcare alone.

On to EDUCATION:

Providing K-12 Education to Illegal Immigrants: Costs to States

Seven point nine Billion!!!


On to INCARCERATION:

In 1999, the latest year for which full data is available, states claimed expenses of $1.5 billion for incarcerating illegal aliens that were either A) serving time for a federal crime or two misdemeanors. This doesn't include quite a few of these criminals in their costs, so we will leave that total at 1.5 BILLION.


Now let us total that up shall we?
Healthcare: 3 BILLION
Education: 7.9 BILLION
Incarceration: 1.5 BILLION

These are very lowball figures. They equal 12.4 BILLION a year in costs from illegal immigrants.

This is how I know these figures are too low.

If one state can rack up 10.5 billion a year in costs then the true figure is probably well over 20 billion and could well be over 30 billion. But like I said, I am trying to be fair.

You can do more of the research on this. I fully expect it. You are bloggers after all. I have tried to be fair and understate the costs. Believe me, I know these costs must be higher, however, reading all this research is making my head spin.