Illegal Alien Statistics

Via email:

While we may need to reform our immigration policies (again), it seems only reasonable (and mandatory) that we secure our borders first.

So often, we get caught up in a debate over political semantics and end up ignoring the hard-shell realities of what we're talking about.

According to ImmigrationCounters.com, here are some of the realities that Flake-Gutierrez would airbrush out of the picture:

Number of Illegal Aliens in the Country
20,807,645

Money Wired to Mexico City since January, 2006
$22,213,001,672

Cost of Social Security Services for Illegal Aliens since 1996
$397,450,739,563

Number of Children of Illegal Aliens in Public Schools
3,958,789

Cost of Illegal Aliens in K-12 Since 1996:
$13,965,063,431

Number of Illegal Aliens Incarcerated
332,594

Cost of Incarcerations Since 2001
$1,398,127,429

Number of Illegal Aliens Fugitives
642,799

Skilled Jobs Taken by Illegal Aliens
9,872,838

Figures can trick your eyes. Take particular note that items above in dollars - These reflect BILLIONs not Millions of dollars -- and that item 3 above exceeds one-third of a TRILLION dollars.

Can you imagine how much it will cost taxpayers if we triple the number of Illegals entering this country!

So what's in a Billion anyway?

Granted... this is from the US perspective! The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

And while we are the subject, an article in the New York Post, "Rewarding Lawbreakers" by Kris W. Kobach, has a few more interesting items:

...the text is now circulating on Capitol Hill, and the content is astonishing. Just when it is becoming clear that overwhelming majorities of Americans - of all parties and all races - say they want to see stronger enforcement of our laws, the bill would take the country full speed in the opposite direction.

As promised, the bill will legalize most of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens now in the country via a new "Z visa." Each would pay $3,000 - only slightly more than the going rate to be smuggled into America.

But provisions buried in the fine print are far more outrageous. Here's a sampling:

1) To qualify for the Z-visa amnesty, an illegal alien need only have a job (or be the parent, spouse, or child of someone with a job) and come up with a scrap of paper suggesting he was in the country before Jan. 1 of this year. Any bank statement, pay stub, or similarly forgeable record will do.

Expect a mass influx unlike anything this country has seen before, once the 12-month period for accepting Z visa applications begins. These rules are an open invitation to sneak in and present a fraudulent piece of paper indicating that you were already here.

2) Supporters of the bill call the Z visa "temporary" - neglecting to mention that it can be renewed indefinitely until the visa holder dies. Thus, we have the country's first permanent temporary visa. On top of that, it's a super-visa - allowing the holder to work, attend college or do just about anything else.

Are you a law-abiding alien who's interested in switching to this privileged status? Sorry. Only illegal aliens can qualify.

3) Many criminals and terrorists will find it easy to get a Z visa. The bill allows the government only one day to conduct a so-called "background check" on the applicant. If the (already overstretched) feds can't find anything in that single day, the alien gets a probationary visa that lets him roam at will and seek employment legally.

Plainly, the bill's authors don't have a clue how the government maintains info on criminals and terrorists. It has no single, searchable database of all dangerous people. Much data exists only in paper records that can't be searched in 24 hours. Other information is held by foreign governments.

The article is continued here.

We know that something must be done, but this isn't the way to do it...