aliens

Illegal aliens are currently big in the news.

If I understand right, and it's always possible I don't, this being a social issue, people are upset that someone illegal is taking a job a good American could have, and using up all the welfare money, to boot.

So, if we are admitting that 11 million people is too many extra (and that isn't an annual growth, that is simply how many were counted in 2008), why is it okay that we add 27,855,843 a year (9% growth a year)?

If we are going to block illegal immigrants, shouldn't we also make population growth laws? Seems kind of hypocritical to get upset about population numbers if we don't look at our own objectively. And the fastest growth is among the poor who are most likely to need government assistance.

With the economy in such a slump, someone else having the job is a valid complaint. There's a reason the fuss is loudest now, not when people had jobs. However, if they have a job you'd be willing to take, they are also paying taxes, and spending money back into the economy. Certainly there are some with a US born child who get government help. There are also Americans scamming the welfare system. If I could find reliable numbers I'd tell you who was wasting more of our money.

"In fiscal year 1995, about $1.1 billion in AFDC and Food Stamp benefits
were provided to households with an illegal alien parent for the use of his
or her citizen child." gao.gov

"The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) had previously reported that over 39.6 million people, equivalent to one in every eight Americans, were receiving food stamps during February." PressTV but I saw this stat on several articles.

The big issue is I cannot find any set of articles that agree on numbers for welfare, legal or illegal, honest or scamming. Basically, they all agree that we are in financial distress as a nation and more people are on government aid than before, but every state needs to cut the numbers down because we can't fund the number of people that need assistance.

Illegal or not, times are tough. My confusion is that people are in an uproar about illegal aliens (who if working are paying into taxes) and not to all the people scamming the system and avoiding working, paying taxes, and just mooching off the rest of us. Why aren't there protests and petitions for welfare reform to be stricter so that we aren't funding scammers? I can't find any good studies on actual numbers, but in my own experience, over half the people I've known getting government assistance could have been working. And of those, about half bragged about it and about half complained about how rough their lives were while they sat around not doing anything to better themselves (like job hunting).

And if someone has legal US children, born in the US, are you going to deport the parents and keep the kid? It's probably far more expensive to foster the child through college (foster kids are eligible for a lot of grants!) than to just let the parents stay and raise them, even if they do get food stamps. According to a government website, each child is at least 1400 a month to raise in a foster home.

Or are you going to deport a US citizen and send the kid back with their parents? If so, what rights does that mean any US citizen has?

Whatever your opinion on it, all I'm saying is to think it through carefully. Anyone we boot out is no longer giving us money (and most they catch are illegally hired, tax paying, services buying people). There are plenty of US Citizens scamming for money. And I have to wonder if it costs more to find the people, prosecute (and house during the prosecution process) and then deport than it costs to just give them all food stamps (not saying they are all on food stamps. I'm just wondering if that would be cheaper). Since the argument is mostly financial, think carefully on what is actually the least costly. I'm not sure. I've not found numbers yet.

My thought is that if they steal a social security number, prosecute them and kick them out. If they find work (and I should put honestly in quotes, but at least not through outright theft) and are paying into the system and trying to make ends meet to support their family (and usually US born kids), good on them. If they are scamming the system (welfare and food stamps), they need to go. I feel that way about US born citizens too, for the record. If they're scamming, make them work off what they stole. I fully agree with the "why are we supporting all these people who aren't giving back?" crowd. I just play it across the board, US, immigrant, or illegal immigrant.

Then again, I think everyone on government assistance should be required to do community service to give back in some small way. I'm not really big on welfare as a concept.

Where I got my population numbers:
Google Public Data

World Population Clock

Illegal Immigration Stats per wiki

EDIT: Someone else had the same idea... visit takeourjobs.org :D