Illegal Immigration: Who Benefits?

Why are over 11 million foreign nationals residing illegally in the United States? If we can answer that question, then we can fathom the purpose of “comprehensive immigration reform,” and understand why special-interest groups mostly favor what the majority of Americans oppose. Illegal immigration goes on because, in the Roman sense, it serves the interest (cui bono?) of tens of millions of people. In practical terms, “comprehensive immigration reform” is a way not to end the present chaos but to legitimize it.

Let us count the concerned beneficiaries.

1) Mexico. Someday Mexico, a nation rich in natural resources, may achieve rough parity with the other North American economies and develop truly consensual and transparent government. Someday the declining birth rate in Mexico may make Mexico City husband its suddenly precious manpower...

That someday, however, is not now. At present, Mexico views the United States as a safety valve for potential social unrest, seeing it in much the same way as Easterners once envisioned the American West — a place that the impoverished but audacious might flee to rather than agitate against vast inequality at home.

No one knows how many billions of dollars illegal aliens annually send back to Mexico and other Latin American countries, but the figure may exceed $30 billion — a source of foreign exchange as valuable as oil exports or tourism. That Mexico’s own citizens residing in the United States often live in poverty in order to budget for their weekly remittances, or that U.S. taxpayers subsidize such beneficence through entitlements, is of little, if any, concern to Mexico City...

2) Business... In an economy of long-standing 7-plus percent unemployment, employers could surely find American workers, but not, by and large, workers as industrious as Mexican nationals, and not as low-paid, since the assorted costs of the Mexican workers’ achieving nominal parity with American citizens are borne by the society at large. Do not expect business to favor any reform that changes the advantageous status quo...

3) The elite...

4) La Raza. The presence of 11 million illegal aliens — largely from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the majority non-English-speaking and without high-school educations — warps all civic statistics about the upward mobility of Latinos...

5) The Democratic party. If it was true that under the 1986 amnesty, less than half of the concerned foreign nationals chose to become citizens, that would not be the case with an updated version. Much has changed politically in the last 30 years...

Solutions? Close the border. Deport illegal aliens who are not working and have been regularly on public assistance, have violated U.S. criminal laws, or have just recently arrived.