Thanks for the link. It was a thorough and comprehesive article with which I have a few disagreements that are only a matter of degree.
Of course the article supports my position that thru time the negative impact of immigrants(legal and illegal) turn positive. Your reply #22 misrepresented the article since you chose to mention only half of the impact and ignore that impact approaches zero thru time.
As I said on the first paragraph of this reply, I disagree with some of this article by degree and this section on economic impact is one of those. Whereas this article states that the impact evens out in the second generation, I suggest that that evening out occurs sooner. Let me explain why.
If you would reread that section you will see that the author first blends legals and illegals, then seperates them, then reblends them. Although he tries to put some numbers to the blend, he omits any numbers for the illegals. There is a good reason for this.
Other articles/studies on this subject point out that since the illegals are a shadowy, undocumented group, no one can say with certainty to what level they participate in health and welfare programs. It is generally accepted that they participate at a much lower level than legal immigrants because legals are entitled and illegals are not entitled
A second thing that skews the number is that a surprisingly large number of legal immigrants, although they are entitled, chose to consume health and welfare benefits at an undocumented level, masquerading as an illegal. They do this because they know that it doesn't count against them.
A third thing that skews the numbers is that in areas/cities/towns close to the border, Mexican citizens consume health and welfare benefits. These people are not illegal aliens but the costs are usually attributed to illegals.
Because of these examples, I suggest that average economic impact of the illegals turn positve sooner than the article indicates.
I have mentioned only health and welfare and ignored education. If you seperate the costs of HEW benefits, you see that, by far, the educational costs are the largest.
I tend to sgree with a number of credentialed anslysts who say that educational costs of the illegal children should not be counted as a negative economic impact.
We have large numbers of legal and illegals in the country for only one reason, a low birthrate. Had our legal immigration policies been more realistic, there would be far fewer illegals and far more legals here and those illegal children we are educating would be children of legal immigrants. Taken a step further, had we maintained a higher birthrate, the children of the legal and illegal immigrants that we are educating would, instead, be the children of native born citizens. Either way, society has to pay the costs of educating them.
We have bee discussing the merits of Pres. Bush's Guest Worker Program, in which illegals will be issued six year visas, at the termination of which they will be required to return to their native land. This is what you stated you were a supporter of.
Since all the "Guests" will be required to leave after six years, there will not be another generation (mostly from unwed households, and with exceedingly low levels of education) from which we will reap the bounty of tax revenue promised in the study.
The "Willing Workers" report is an advocacy study extolling to the extent credibility allows the manifold benefits of massive illegal migration. They have buried, minimized and qualified the $89,000 per alien figure with professional zeal. If that figure is used in the report the Administration bases its policy on, the figure is incontrovertible.