Illegal Immigration

"...A mighty woman with a torch whose flame...glows world-wide welcome. Cries...GIVE ME YOUR TIRED YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATH FREE...I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

These words adorn our beautiful woman in green - the statue of liberty. With these words we accepted lady liberty as a gift from the French and made her ours forever, naming her with the love and liberty within our American hearts.

Its 120 years since America accepted and erected the Statue of Liberty on our lands, a welcome to immigrants of every kind. Today we still stand firm in our beliefs of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all mankind. As a strong supporter of immigrants and the benefits they bring our society, I will defend illegal immigration from an economic perspective and an educational one.

Economic issues:

Immigrants are determined people. If nothing else, they made a decision to pick up and leave their homelands and all they knew, to carve out a new life in this country and despite any difficulties, they made it here and started over. As the technology age takes over and more and more people are looking towards get rich quick plans, our country lacks the hard workers that once built her up. It is the foreign born workers that provide our country with the workforce to be the capitalism center of the world. Our lack of workers is no new phenomenon. Documented in "Immigration and Illegal Aliens" of the Information Plus Reference Series, three times during the course of the 20th century, America begged Mexican and South American workers to join our labor force, across the border, since American workers were not pulling their weight and the government needed help.

So we have hard workers from foreign lands but the economic benefits they provide are well worth their differences. According to the National Immigration Law Center, $154 Billion dollars, revenue is brought in annually by undocumented workers in this country. And revenue aside, in 2002 illegal workers paid $16 billion in taxes. In fact contrary to popular belief, about three-quarters of non legal immigrants work on the books and therefore pay payroll taxes. That's according to Stephen Goss, Social Security's chief actuary.

Take that one step further. Illegal immigrants contribute more to Social Security and Medicaid than American citizens themselves do. With the taxes taken out of the paycheck like all U.S. workers, illegal immigrants are contributing to the nation's retirement fund yet never reaping the benefits.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the net gain for Social Security & Medicaid is a 7 Billion dollars surplus per year, cutting the Social Security long-term funding hole down 10 percent. The immigrants take the loss of their money as part of the hardships of starting fresh in the U.S. What American sits still to contribute a little extra to their country?

But of course we haven't mentioned the toll they take on this country despite the benefit they bring. Oh wait, what toll? Those illegal immigrants who are taking advantage of all the government programs and soaking up American tax money? Actually according