Illegal Immigration

Annually, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, from around the world, come to the United States. These immigrants come because they want an opportunity at a better life. Many people think the United States is the greatest place to chance their life. There is more freedom, protection, and benefits, which seems like a good deal to immigrants. But the massive number of immigration is affecting the current citizens of the United States. Taxpayers are forced to pay for the welfare and schooling for many of these immigrants, some who are illegal immigrants.

About half of immigration into United Stated are illegal; consequently we can see this impacts our health care system greatly it also significantly effects public service (Glueck). Many illegal immigrants come to this country to find better opportunities but also to get free benefits in this country. This situation gets even worse when these illegal immigrates have a children here in the USA and those children are automatically granted American citizenship and now qualify for welfare and food stamps for their children because they can’t afford to take care of them on their own (Martin). One question that I ask myself is if Societies have the responsibility to provide health care for these illegal immigrates and if we are responsible for their health? In my opinion we should not be responsible to take care of illegal immigrates health care, but is our responsibly to take care of their education because their children will be here for many years to come and they will be the part of the next generation of this country.

United Stated spends a lot of money in health care and welfare in legal and illegal immigration. Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that state governments spend about $11 billion to $22 billion to provide welfare for the children of illegal immigrants (FAIR). However many of the welfare programs are not included in the previous figures, including food stamps, pre-natal care, child care service, health clinic and nutrition programs this mean that we are spending a lot more money than is described in the above numbers (FAIR). In 1996 welfare changed a lot of their programs in order to cut the costs, but that wasn’t enough because a lot of people keep immigrating to this country every day to get receive these opportunities. Almost all of the immigrants have immigrated here illegally; these people are usually very poor and uneducated and abuse our public services. This is becoming and increasingly bigger problem as the years go on. We can’t just keep spending and spending money for people that don’t contribute to the programs. According to President of FAIR “Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate ” (Longley). To see a prime example of the look at California, people have seen their taxes increase and that have watched as their public service have steadily been taken away. Some hospitals in this state have had to close because of lack of funds and people not paying their bills. According to Michael Glueck “Many California hospitals cannot afford to absorb cost and many are forced to close due to financial mandates for treating illegal immigrants. As recently reported, 84 California Hospitals are closing their door forever. Hospital closure degrades help care to all in the community and result in job losses” (Glueck). We can’t continue to give health care for illegal immigrates because many illegal immigrant don’t pay the bills when they go to the hospital we can’t continue to foot the bill for them. This situation will get worse because congress suggested to make legal immigrates eligible for Medicaid and State Children’s insurance program this mean that we will spend about $2.24 billion more over ten years (FAIR).

Illegal immigration also has an enormous impact in our society. We are spending a lot of money to support illegal student. It costs about $12 billion to give them free education through primary and secondary school. It becomes even more expensive when we have to spend extra money to help teach these children English. This problem gets even worse when the children born here by illegal immigrants because it more than doubles the cost. It costs around $28 billion annually (Martin). We have to know that usually these children come from families that are living in poverty and the state has to give them food stamps just so that they can survive. Many states provide tuition discount for illegal students or student of illegal immigrants the cost these tuition cuts cost us between $839 million to 1.092 billion in 2004 “Efforts are underway in several States and in congress to allow illegal