Most of us don't welcome illegal aliens but special interests do

To The Daily Sun,

Do you want illegal aliens here? James Vervaeke says “we” do (see Laconia Daily Sun, 7/24/18). I, and I suspect most Americans, don’t want them here. No one should be rewarded for breaking our laws, especially when so many illegal aliens harm American citizens and create a burden on American taxpayers.

Yes, some illegal aliens come here for a better life, intending to be law-abiding and self-supporting, and work hard to support their families. But there are hundreds of millions of people who want to come here legally with the same intent, so we can and should pick and choose carefully.

A nation exists to benefit its own citizens, not citizens of other countries. We generously accept about one million legal immigrants annually, plus hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and students, refugees, and asylum seekers. We should only accept people as immigrants who will become good American citizens that benefit our country and the American people.

Many illegal aliens either burden American taxpayers or harm Americans, or both. The cost to the American taxpayers of supporting (e.g., welfare, housing, education, medical care, etc.) illegal aliens and their families exceeds the pittance they pay in taxes by over $100 billion annually.

Illegal aliens commit an enormous number of crimes. A recent Texas study showed that illegal aliens commit nearly 100,000 crimes annually including nearly 400 homicides in Texas alone. It costs taxpayers about $8,000,000 every day to imprison illegal alien criminals.

Drugs kill far more people, over 40,000, than are murdered with guns annually; many of those drugs are brought here by illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens flood the low-skilled labor market. Businesses love having excess workers so they can pay less and demand more, this makes life more difficult for the most desperate American workers.

Many low-paid workers qualify for various types of welfare, so the real cost of this labor is about $15/hour; it’s just that the cost to a business is $8-10/hour, taxpayers subsidize businesses by paying the rest. With a tight labor supply, businesses would have to pay the full cost of labor.

Illegal alien children increase the cost of public schools and degrade the education opportunities for American children.

Illegal aliens bring diseases that were eradicated from our country long ago. The burden of treating illegal aliens has driven hospitals out of business.

Obviously, powerful interests want illegal aliens here; these include businesses, politicians, and groups promoting immigration (often taxpayer funded).

Businesses want illegals to drive down wages and don’t care that illegals increase the burden on taxpayers and low-skilled Americans.

Some politicians, and their supporters, want illegal aliens for campaign workers, agitators, and voters for the purpose of passing laws that American citizens oppose.

Groups promoting immigration, legal and illegal, do so for their own interests, often to change America against the wishes of current American citizens.

People promote and protect illegal immigration for their own personal benefit. But, these people rarely feel the pain that illegal aliens inflict on other Americans; illegal aliens don’t live in their safe neighborhoods, illegal aliens don’t threaten their jobs or wages, illegal alien children don’t go to the same schools as their children, illegal aliens go to hospitals rather than private doctors for their health care, etc.

Illegal immigration is allowed because of the greed of special interests, politicians (and their supporters), businessmen, and advocacy groups, who don’t care about the harm done by illegal aliens to American citizens, taxpayers, and to our American way of life.

Don Ewing

Meredith