WSJ: You Must Be Joking!

05/29/2007

The Wall Street Journal did a piece called Immigration and Welfare | Most of them will pay at least as much as they collect. [May 24, 2007], which was an attack on Robert Rector’s work on the economic impact of immigration. Robert Rector’s work on the economic impact of immigration. [The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer, by Robert E. Rector and Christine Kim, May 22, 2007] Rector has sent them an angry letter in reply, pointing out their errors, one of which is that they're putting productive immigrants, (H-1Bs who are taking good jobs from Americans) in with the agricultural laborers, who are a net loss, and the other one being a specious claim that immigrants are not eligible for welfare.

They are in fact eligible for all kinds of government benefits, whether legal or illegal, and amnesty, if it’s allowed to happen will make the current illegals eligible for ordinary welfare.

But it’s simply obvious that the Journal is wrong. I could tell that without even reading the article.

Most immigrants these days are from Mexico.
Mexico is a poor country, and the people who emigrate from Mexico are not the cr?¨me de la cr?¨me of Mexican society, but the people who are poor in Mexico, including Indians who can’t even speak Spanish.
Every one who comes north of the Border is automatically entitled to free emergency room care, education for all his or her children, legal aid, and a host of other things that are paid for by the American taxpayer.

It simply boggles the mind that the Wall Street Journal thinks the Treasury is going to recover all that from the taxes of a man who makes eight dollars an hour.

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