The Problem Is Not the Immigrants : Simi Valley congressman would blame wrong people for rising cost of illegal immigration

Can you think of any immigrant group that has come to this “nation of immigrants” and not faced some measure of initial hostility from the folks that preceded them? No surprise, then, that the most recent waves, mostly from Asia and Latin America, engender similar reactions from otherwise reasonable people.

Consider the unusual proposal recently put forth by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). The congressman, concerned about the impact of illegal immigrants, has offered several bills to do something about it. Among other things, he wants to bolster the Border Patrol. That’s fine, but Gallegly also wants a constitutional amendment to repeal that part of the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States. He says it would keep U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants from qualifying for costly services, such as welfare and health care, for which non-citizens do not qualify.

That’s an oddly indirect way to attack a problem that could be solved a lot more easily. At its worst, it is a mean-spirited and divisive proposal.

Immigrants and their children do add to the cost of social services that largely must be paid for locally. But the answer is not to penalize those immigrants, and certainly not their children. After all, most research indicates that, taken as a whole, new immigrants do pay their own way--through taxes and the added economic activity of their labor. The hitch is where their taxes wind up. The problem is the federal government, not the immigrants. It doesn’t return to California enough money to pay for all the services immigrants need, especially schools and public hospitals. Even when the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) set aside $4 billion to help newly legalized immigrants, Congress stole from this Peter to pay the Paul of other programs.

If Gallegly really wants to help local governments reduce what they must pay for immigrants and their children, he should work to help California get the money it is entitled to under the IRCA amnesty program. He must join the California congressional delegation in applying the political muscle needed to get Congress and the Bush Administration to increase, rather than decrease, the money California gets for immigrants’ services. Frustration over the “immigrant problem” shouldn’t lead to attacks on a resource that made this nation great: its immigrants.