ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

© 2013 Rick Adamson

By Rick Adamson 2.27.13

Candy Store

Who can really blame poor folks for trying to improve their situation by wanting to come to the United States?  Especially since we do not secure our borders and at the same time we appear to be a candy store offering a better way of life and abundant benefits.  We offer jobs even though it is against the law to hire undocumented workers. We offer to educate and feed their children for free, we offer citizenship to their children who are born here and we offer free emergency health care, among other benefits. If they commit crimes they are not punished like citizens, rather they are deported giving them an opportunity to come back and commit more crimes. Further, long waiting lines and high cost contribute the illegal immigration.

And it is not only the poor folks from Mexico and South America who are here illegally.  It has been estimated that up to 40 percent of our undocumented immigrants are here on expired visas.  Think 9/11, these terrorists were admitted legally but did not leave when their visas expired.

Length of Time and Cost to Legally Immigrate

Immigration to the United States is often a difficult process. In addition, there may be long delays due to backlogs.  In order to maintain an orderly immigration process, the U.S. has established a waiting list system.  While this makes for an orderly process, it can create backlogs of many years for certain countries and certain categories. For example:

"To emigrate is a very complicated process; it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of money," Isabel Rubio said. "Because of a close to 20-year backlog for residents of Mexico, people don't feel like they have 20 years to wait in line.[1] Long waits are why some come in illegally.[2]

The average wait time is 6-7 years.[3] The average cost is 5-7 thousand dollars or more depending on the category of the individual.[4]

See here for a brief description of the immigration process.[5]

We need major reforms which should include eliminating the automatic citizenship for children born to illegals in this country, eliminating all benefits for unregistered illegal aliens and their families, a guest worker program that allows registered aliens to come in to work and then return home, simplification of the legal immigration process (which is a mess) and a reevaluation of the total number of immigrants to be allowed in each year. We need more severe punishment for those who enter illegally. For the 12,000,000 or more illegals already here, we need to have them register, check their criminal history and put them in the guest worker program discussed above. The criminal components should be deported immediately. Those registered (and in the guest worker program) could then apply for citizenship in the normal way. Those apprehended, for one reason or another, who have not registered should be deported immediately.

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[1] http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/07/14_million_mexicans_waiting_to.html

[2] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700049081/Long-immigration-waits-show-why-some-come-illegally.html?pg=all

[3] http://www.ehow.com/how_4845246_legally-immigrate-america.html#page=1

[4] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080418160352AAOFTZK

[5] http://www.mdcathcon.org/library/resources/documents/immigration/process-immsupplement.pdf

Federal Civilian Employees

© 2013 Rick Adamson

By Rick Adamson 3.1.13

The Federal Government employs approximately 2,841,143[1] people as of 2010 excluding uniformed military personnel (about 1,500,000).[2] A review of the referenced charts will give you an idea of how many people work in each department. They will also give you an idea of what they are paid – an average of $73,908 excluding the postal service that only averages $53,304. These numbers do not include benefits which could easily equal the wages paid resulting in a doubling of the above figures.

It makes me wonder what in the world all these people do! You may note that homeland security personnel was zero before 9/11 but now has 183,455 employees. Note also, that there are more people working are the veteran’s administration than at the social security administration which seems a little odd to me.

A 2011 Government Accountability Office[3] report gave a sampling of what could be cut or consolidated. It identified 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100 billion-$200 billion. Nobody has taken the report seriously.

What we need is a good turnaround guy or gal to come in and eliminate waste and inefficiency. A good candidate would have been Mitt Romney. That is what the man did for a living. Too bad this administration has no experience in this area and, in fact, is not interested in cutting the size of Government.

For more information on this subject see the recent article entitled Hail Armageddon by Charles Krauthammer.


[1] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8-ofA03F4YBOTUzZm5XSE93YjQ/edit?usp=sharing

[2] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8-ofA03F4YBVkRZX0VSSVRSblU/edit?usp=sharing

[3] http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/315920.pdf