Re: Dean Baker on immigration
Marta Russell wrote:
On Apr 18, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:
Marta,
I think the point many of us are trying to make (some more tactfully than others) are that the problems you point out about SSI and health care have little or nothing to do with immigration.
Yes, they are serious problems, and yes, we should solve them.
However, even with the harshest immigration policies–boot ‘em all out, no social services–all the problems you identify will persist for disabled people in our society. The immigrants aren’t the problem. It’s strange to me that you’re using them as a scapegoat.Miles
Miles,
What do you think about this: A study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that in 2004 the annual uncompensated cost of medical care for illegal immigrants in California was $1.4 billion.
The most recent data for California health expenditures http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/nhestatehealthaccountstables.pdf was $126 billion in 2000. If that’s increased in line with national expenditures, that was probably about $170 billion in 2004. So, $1.4 billion is 0.8% of the total. Big damn deal, eh?
Noted medical lawyer Madeleine Cosman, J.D., Ph.D., wrote in her online journal on August 27, 2005, “Promoters of open borders and elevating the status of Illegal Aliens brilliantly use Americans’ medical compassion against ourselves.”
That’s pretty funny. Are 46 million uninsured a result of all that compassion too?
The medical literature reports that many undocumented immigrants sequester within their bodies infectious and fatal diseases that long ago were fought and eliminated by American medicine Now illegals may carry drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, malaria, polio, leprosy, plague, dengue fever and Chagas disease.
Oooh, walking toxin containers they are. Who needs suicide bombers when we have biological warfare delivery systems on legs?
Doug