Posted on 02/19/2024 8:49:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In recent months, stories from both the legacy media and the independent media have continued to pile up on how undocumented foreign nationals - also known as "migrants" and "illegal aliens" - are able to take advantage of a vast network of taxpayer funded benefits in daycare, medical care, housing, and more.
For example, both the New York Post and Denver Post report that these foreign nationals have "overwhelmed" the Denver Health hospital system in Denver, and that the situation is "unsustainable." Meanwhile, public schools report classrooms are filling up quickly with the children of these foreign nationals. Denver is hardly alone. The New York Post notes that both the City of New York and the state government have expanded local welfare programs, including pre-paid credit cards, to further ensure that migrants continue to receive cash and resources from American taxpayers. This is in addition to the approximately 66,000 foreign nationals who are housed in hotels and shelters, care of both New York and federal taxpayers. USAToday reports that colleges "across the country" are receiving millions in taxpayer money to offer housing to migrants at no charge. Chicago's mayor is bragging he's giving away $17 million in taxpayer-funded giveaways to "asylum seekers" who are presently living off the sweat of the taxpayers in government shelters. This, of course, is just a downpayment on many more planned giveaways.
Just how much in taxpayers' resources is going to foreign nationals? It's difficult to estimate for a number of reasons. The spending is done through numerous different government agencies at various levels of government. Moreover, much of the money if filtered through non-profits (i.e., "NGOs") that are labeled "charities" but are simply adjuncts of the regime.
Once we add up $1 billion here and $77 million there, after a while we're talking about real money, and one thing becomes abundantly clear: the regime and its partners are subsidizing the influx of foreign nationals who are promised a variety of both cash and in-kind benefits. It must also be noted that, contrary to certain myths, the largesse is not reserved for only the so-called "illegal aliens." Legal immigrants can take advantage of the generous and well-funded American welfare state even more readily than can the undocumented migrants.
What is the effect of subsidizing a particular product or activity? It is usually the same everywhere we look: you get more of what you subsidize. This is true of student loans, it's true of ethanol, and it's true of migrants. Economic theory tells us that the government cannot possibly know the "correct" number of migrants, nor should the regime be free to centrally plan some arbitrary number. On the other hand, it is extremely unlikely that the number of migrants—even with lax border enforcement—would be as high as it is without the regime's incessant subsidization of migrants, both legal and illegal.
According to the Congressional Research Service, it is estimated there were approximately 45-46 million foreign-born residents of the United States in 2022. Of those, about 53 percent, or 24 million, are naturalized citizens. In addition to this there are 12.9 million legal permanent residents (LPRs) and approximately 11 million more are so-called "illegal" immigrants. All combined, we find that 23 million non-citizen US residents—i.e., "foreign nationals"—are living in the United States. That's about 51 percent of the overall foreign-born population. As we will see, many of them receive financial support and resources from US taxpayers.
(This measure does not count the approximately 3.2 million nonimmigrant workers, students, exchange visitors, diplomats, and their relatives who have sought only temporary residence in the United States. These nonimmigrant groups are not eligible for public benefits.)
Among immigrant foreign nationals, most are eligible for some form of taxpayer-funded "public" benefits.
For example, undocumented foreign nationals may legally access "treatment under Medicaid for emergency medical conditions," a variety of in-kind services such a soup kitchens and temporary housing, and "programs for housing or community development assistance or financial assistance administered by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development..."
That's just the direct federally-funded services. State and local government may elect to provide additional services at local taxpayers' expense.
The welfare programs available to legal foreign nationals are far more broad. Legal foreign nationals (LPRs) can access most federal welfare programs after an initial five-year period. This includes non-emergency Medicaid, CHIP, TANF (i.e., cash assistance), food stamps, and SSI.
Access to these programs have been further broadened by state governments. As noted by the National Immigration Law Center:
Over half of the states have used state funds to provide TANF, Medicaid, and/or CHIP to immigrants who are subject to the five-year bar on federally funded services, or to a broader group of immigrants. A growing number of states and counties provide health coverage to children, young adults, or pregnant persons regardless of their immigration status. Several states offer or will offer health coverage to older adults regardless of their immigration status. And five states (California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington) and the District of Columbia offer or will offer public or private health coverage with state subsidies to all otherwise eligible immigrants regardless of their immigration status.
It is not necessary to be employed to maintain legal permanent resident status, even if one is of working age. After all, LPRs are not the same at temporary nonimmigrant workers like H1B visa holders: "Green card holders [LPRs] can also collect unemployment compensation the same way citizens do ...nor can a legal permanent resident be deported for being unemployed."
Legal immigrants do not jeopardize their legal status by applying for additional taxpayer funded benefits such as food stamps: "SNAP enrollment will NOT affect your ability to remain in the United States, get a green card/permanent resident status, keep your green card/permanent resident status, or become a U.S. citizen."
In short, nearly the full gamut of taxpayer-funded welfare programs are open to legal foreign nationals after the initial five-year bar. Moreover, many migrants aren't even held to that, including "[r]efugees, people granted asylum or withholding of deportation/removal, Cuban/Haitian entrants, certain Amerasian immigrants" and other specific groups are exempted from the waiting period.
All these foreign nationals, regardless of status, are free to send their children to government childcare centers known as "public schools."
A variety of organizations have attempted to quantify the extent to which both naturalized immigrants and current foreign nationals use welfare programs. This study from the National Academies concludes that the data
show[s] that the immigrant households use several programs, most notably food assistance and Medicaid, at higher rates than do households led by the native-born. ...This higher use of welfare programs by immigrants is attributable to their lower average incomes and larger families.
In the NA study, immigrant households with children utilized welfare programs at higher rates in nearly every US state. In California, 61.5 percent of households utilized welfare while 40.7 percent of immigrant households did. In Texas, the same measures are at 66.3 and 44.2 percent, respectively. Similar proportions are found in Florida and New York.
This report unfortunately does not differentiate between naturalized immigrants and foreign nationals. However, given that naturalized immigrants tend to earn 50 to 70 percent more than non-citizen immigrants, it is safe to conclude that foreign nationals utilize welfare programs more than naturalized immigrants, and therefore more than the native population.
An increasingly important addition to legal immigration in recent decades has been the population of immigrants legally designated as refugees. In total, this all costs the taxpayers nearly two billion dollars per year, or $80,000 per refugee per year in the form of federal and state programs including food stamps, child care, and public housing.
The Center for Immigration Studies has published studies similar to the NA study. These CIS studies show similar results.
In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households. Welfare in this study includes Medicaid and cash, food, and housing programs.
Immigrant households have much higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives) and Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent).
Note that these conclusions reflect immigrant households rather than immigrant individuals. This is an important distinction because many immigrant households contain citizen children who became citizens at birth due to being born in the United States. Thus, the household may contain both citizens and foreign nationals—some of whom may be illegal foreign nationals. These households, however, enjoy access to welfare programs by virtue of the underage members' citizenship. Thus, immigrant households can access taxpayer funded healthcare, food stamps, housing programs (and more) through the native-born children. Similar trends persist when non-citizen households are measured separately from all immigrant households combined.
Some researchers insist that welfare benefits for foreign nationals ought to be measured only on an individual, per capita basis. For example, in this report from the CATO institute, the researchers conclude that for 2020, native-born residents, on average, cost welfare programs $8,335 per capita while immigrants cost welfare programs $6,063. These proportions can vary by program. For example, the per capita Medicaid cost for immigrants is $1,859, while the cost for native-born residents is $2,081. The use of food stamps is similar ($190 per capita for immigrants versus $214 per capita for natives), Immigrants usage of SSI is slightly higher ($188 per capita) than it is for natives ($169 per capita).
How much taxpayer funding are we talking about overall? The CATO report estimates that the total cost of welfare going to non-native US residents in 2020 was $290.4 billion, That's a sum equal to the combined budgets of the Departments of Education and Homeland Security. Yet, only about half of non-natives are non-citizen foreign nationals. To find the sum used by non-citizen immigrants, we can't just divide the sum in half because foreign nationals tend to use welfare more than naturalized immigrants. So, given the $290.4 billion total for immigrant welfare spending, we can estimate that at least $150 billion of that is consumed by foreign nationals—a sum about equal to the combined budgets of the Departments of Education, State, and Housing and Urban Development. (This spending total excludes state and local spending on government schools for the children of foreign nationals.)
An older CATO study (from 2013) does break out non-citizens from immigrants overall. Here, the researchers conclude that low-income immigrants use food stamps more than naturalized immigrants, and only slightly less than native-born residents. When it comes to taxpayer funded healthcare: one in five non-citizen immigrants collect this benefit while slightly more than 1 in 4 natives collects this particular form of taxpayer largesse.
The Migration Policy Center reports that in 2021, 32 percent of immigrants (both citizen and non-citizen) used government health insurance. That's comparable to 38 percent of natives.
Yet, even by this conservative measure of immigrant welfare usage, the best we can say is that immigrants use welfare at a rate slightly lower than that of natives. One could argue that, at the low end, immigrants receive (per capita) about 70 to 75 cents for every welfare dollar that goes to natives. That's not exactly "good news" given that overall federal spending on social benefits amounts to about half of the annual $6.3 trillion budget and is clearly out of control. The fact that natives get most of this is hardly an exoneration of immigrants. It's more of an indictment of native-born Americans, millions of whom exploit their most productive fellow citizens every month to keep the government benefits flowing.
In any case, we find tax money flows freely to foreign nationals, and immigration to the United States is heavily subsidized. We should not be surprised when a lot of immigrants show up to get their share.
Quotes from the 1951 Refugee Convention:
Article 23 - Public relief
The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals.
Article 17 - Wage-earning employment
....
2. In any case, restrictive measures imposed on aliens or the employment of aliens for the protection of the national labour market shall not be applied to a refugee...who fulfils one of the following conditions:
(a) He has completed three years’ residence in the country;
....
(c) He has one or more children possessing the nationality of the country of residence.
Article 34 - Naturalization [and getting the right to vote (and buy AR-15s)]
The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-relating-status-refugees
Article 44 - Denunciation [getting out from under the Refugee Convention]
1. Any Contracting State may denounce this Convention at any time by a notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
2. Such denunciation shall take effect for the Contracting State concerned one year from the date upon which it is received by the Secretary-General of the United Nations....
NOTE: I do not trust any politician who has not called for invoking Article 44 to get the US out from under the Refugee Convention.
And my distrust extends to Trump and DeSantis.
The Refugee Convention must be removed from the Democratic Party toolbox by invoking Article 44.
Americans, particularly libtards, have their heads screwed on backwards. No other country would actually welcome illegal criminal invaders, let alone put them up in hotels, cater to their favorite foods, clothe them, find them permanent housing, give them thousands of dollars of spending money, phones, education medical and legal care, etc. No wonder they stream over our borders. Not only are they a non-sustainable financial burden, but they are decreasing wages for many people by underbidding them, bringing diseases, drugs, and crime with them, and representing a considerable terrorism threat. Biden & the rest of his illegitimate regime should be tried and executed for treason.
The only ‘foreign nationals’ using American health care for free are illegal aliens...
IMMIGRANTS have to pay like everyone else...
“11 million illegal immigrants”
Ah ha ha ha
That’s the number in just the last 3-4 years
Try triple that number
Calling economic migrants political refugees is a fraud and a sham. It needs to stop.
Same thing here in many countries of Europe, including my hapless one.
Enoch Powell, the best Prime Minister Britain never had, said it best :“We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to permit the inflow of 50,000 dependents, who are, for the most part, the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population.
It is like a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.“
And that was 1968. His prediction has come more than true, but as I like to emphasize again and again, it is not“we“ who are to blame for this utter dog‘s breakfast of a situation, but our evil, corrupt power elites and their lickspittles in the media and elsewhere, who are to blame entirely.
No-one else🙁
Yes.
And the betrayal by supposed “conservatives” is the most odious.
In Canada, “Conservative” Prime Minister Mulroney DOUBLED immigration from the levels set by Pierre Trudeau.
Hello, Reverend. So good to see you 😀
Yes, I remember that, and at first, I hadn‘t believed it, but it is the harsh truth. 🙁
And the US government drastically increased legal immigration after 1965, and again in 1990 (but I think this matter has been discussed in detail before here on FR), and in Western Europe there was the influx of guest workers (so called).
Later, since the Eighties, the emphasis shifted to accommodating bogus refugees, which is still the case now. And the disastrous UN agreement from 1951, which made and makes it all possible, is still in force (it was to be understood as a Cold War measure at the time, iirc. After all, the Cold War had become „hot“ in Korea one year before, so the Communist threat was all too real).
It‘s a real pattern that can be seen all over the First world, and it has evolved into the holiest cow of the Evil left. It had its justification in the height of the Cold War, but it has been overstaying its welcome for decades now. It is highest time now to take it to the slaughterhouse 😡
How Augustus did it:
“Considering it also of great importance to keep the people pure and unsullied by any taint of foreign or servile blood, he was most chary of conferring Roman citizenship and set a limit to manumission. When Tiberius requested citizenship for a Grecian dependent of his, Augustus wrote in reply that he would not grant it unless the man appeared in person and convinced him that he had reasonable grounds for the request; and when Livia asked it for a Gaul from a tributary province, he refused, offering instead freedom from tribute, and declaring that he would more willingly suffer a loss to his privy purse than the prostitution of the honour of Roman citizenship”.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html
Every anglosphere country drastically increased immigration in the mid-1960s.
And they also threw it wide open to the Third World, where previously it had been preference to White, English speaking countries.
(and abortion, and legalized homosexuals, all at the same time...)
Canada was also a massive refugee destination. More so in the 1980’s and 1990s.
I think that immigration has become so massive they just come in as immigrants now. (500.000+ in 2023. The equivalent for the USA would be 5 million)
Yes, it really was the wave of the „new left“ making itself felt.
But whose fault was it? I blame several things, among them the unprecedented prosperity of the Fifties and Sixties, but also the bad conscience of many people towards the nations of the Third world.
Some have said that this might have been the fault of the „Greatest Generation“ but maybe the „Silent Generation“ helped more. The Boomers were, I think, for the most part too young to have had much political influence before the late Sixties and Seventies.
” But whose fault was it? I blame several things, among them the unprecedented prosperity of the Fifties and Sixties, but also the bad conscience of many people towards the nations of the Third world. “
I think for countries outside the USA, it was their own version of “Civil Rights” and “Desegregation”.
So, for these other countries, as they watched what was going on in the USA, activists and agitators were able to create a fuss over racially and numbers limited immigration, and allow in large numbers of the Third World.
We saw a more extreme version of the Globalized Americanized culture during the George Floyd nonsense. Where countries like Ireland protested against themselves and their history of anti-black “racism” - even when no such past conduct existed.
Bookmarked. Thank you.
Is it any wonder that illegal aliens are coming here in droves when they can expect free meals, free accommodations in luxury hotels, free medical care, free transportation around the country, free schools for their kids and free cash handouts. Ever notice that the illegals all seem to have cell phones as they get on the busses? Who wouldn’t want to come here illegally and be given the red carpet treatment.
More sinister is that these illegals are enriching the Mexican drug cartels who are paid a bounty for smuggling them across the border and serving as mules to carry fentanyl and other drugs into the US. We should be terrified that an increasing number of military age Chinese males and some on terrorist watch lists are entering the country disguised in the hoards of other illegals likely to form sleeper cells for attacks in the US. We should also be concerned about communicable diseases be brought from third world countries as there is virtually no health screening before the illegals are shipped into the country.
Still sobering.
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