Response to Mr Peterson

All,

The following is my response to the office of Mr Peterson. Though you may find it quite tedious, it contains a great deal of information on the impact of immigrants on state and federal spending and economics. The studies cited herein date from 1976 to 2004, and I have included citations. Unfortunately, I highly doubt that anyone in the Congressman’s office is paid enough to read the rambling rants of his constituents. Nevertheless, one can dream…

-W.

Mr. Peterson,

Thank you for your swift reply. Either your staff has done an excellent job crafting their form-response letters, or I received (much to my surprise) one written specifically in response to my first letter. Either way, it was well-written: the author deserves a raise.

However, I have a few questions about the letter. According to your response, illegal immigration "damages the social fabric of our society by placing an undue burden on social programs such as welfare and Medicare, as well as the court system. Illegal immigrants should not be eligible to receive benefits from programs intended for citizens and immigrants legally living and working within our borders." Thus, you support increasing penalties, setting mandatory minimum sentences, etc. Most importantly, you support increasing the numebr of law inforcement personnel on the border, and the creation of the border fence.

First, I would like to see the sources you are using to estimate the above costs concerning social services. I have read extensively on this matter, and I have found the following conclusions: According to the National Research Council's 1997 study, "The New Americans," legal and illegal immigration adds anywhere from between $1-$10 billion per year to US GDP "and has little negative effect on job opportunities for most citizens." The report does conclude "that immigration generates federal benefits and state costs ," though this would imply that the debate in Congress should focus on federal/state relations and reimbursment rather than the detrimental economic effects of stronger enforcement (migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=1246_0_2_0). Indeed, though the Center for Immigration Studies claims that they used this report as the primary evidence for their conclusion that there is a net (though practically miniscule) burden on fiscal spending from illegals' use of social programs, they appear to have misrepresented the report quite a bit (www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html). The National Center for Policy Analysis claims that "the most recent and comprehensive" data on the subject comes from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. Though two decades old, it provides a nice comparison. It concludes that in every way illegals provide a net gain for the federal budget: (1) "immigrants continued to recieve less in tax-funded retirement benefits than did American-born families." With regard to other social programs, the report claims that immigrants receive less cash in federal benefits throughout their entire lives per year than American-born families average (www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba400). Ironically, the report emphasizes that immigrant family households pay more in taxes per year than the average American-born family (1995 Cato Institute study: illegals pay 46% as much in taxes as American-born citizens, but only receive 38% as much from the government). In general, all the information I have found concludes that illegals are less of a burden on social services than American families (partially because they are not eligible for a good deal of time after they arrive), that the widespread belief that illegals do not pay taxes is patently and demonstrably false (a majority apparently pay payroll taxes, and these reports do not even take into account regular sales taxes--every time an immigrant buys something they help both the economy and local, state, and federal budgets).

Second, I am curious as to the irony of increasing ciminal and law enforcement activity as a response to the immigration problem. You state in your response that illegals cause a financial burden on our courts. Yet how will increased enforcement assuage these costs? However one crunches the numbers, those in favor estimate it at $2.2 billion and those opposed at $7 billion. All analyses (pro and con) of this fence agree that it will simply lead illegals to seek more dangerous means of crossing the border, which will result in higher emergency medical care costs for the federal government whether they succeed or are apprehended by border patrol. When one adds these concerns to proposed increases in the number and budget of border patrol agents, how could it ever prevail in a cost-benefit analysis of the status quo?

Finally, is there any reason to believe that these security measures would be effective? From what I can gather, since 1996 the U.S. Border Patrol budget has increased by 383 percent (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13770931.htm). The number of border patrol officers has shot up from 3400 in 1993 to 9000 in 2004 (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114090,00.html). And yet these measures, costly as they must be, by all accounts have failed to slow illegal entry into this country. Even given long-term speculation as to the effectiveness of border security at reducing the number of immigrants, even given the most pessimistic economic study as to the impact of illegals on the state and federal level, how could the proposed costs of enforcement ever be seen as an answer to the status quo, let alone plans (like that supported by Mr. McCain) that involve fines and/or guest-worker programs?

In short, could anyone at your office tell me where you are getting your information? All the numbers that I can find paint the current Congress as at best misguided, or at worst trying to benefit from a widely misinformed public during an election year. Can your office provide me with some studies that offer data which supports Congress' intentions? Considering the relevance of this issue in my current and future classes, I would be overjoyed to present my students with a favorable pictue of Congress' decision-making capacity; at present, most of what I have derived paints the policy proposals under discussion as self-serving.

To whatever intern who made it to the end of this long and convoluted email, I thank you greatly for your time. Again, you deserve a raise.

William H. Harwood