I usually avoid what can be construed as political debates. Personally I believe politics and politicians were best summed up by the late Will Rogers in his statement, “politics has ruined many a good man. After entering them he is never good for an honest job again.” But the controversy surrounding illegal immigrants in the United States transcends politics. It is a matter of national security and economic survival. With this in mind I’d like to forward some food for thought.
Nonsense about the situation is being blathered from both sides of the isles in Washington. From the right we hear Guillaini criticising Romney for his “sanctuary mansion” on the left we hear Clinton agreeing with the New York govenor’s plan to license illegals, before she disagreed with it. We have to face it, out politicians in Washington are out of touch with the real world and the wishes of those who put them in office. They offer us no real solutions to the problem. And it is a very real problem. A perfect example can be found in Dallas, Texas. And I quote from Snopes here:
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:
1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963
2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after
3. Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later by coincidence
On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That’s almost 44 per day — every day)
A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.’ Crikey, that’s 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas. According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.
The average patient in Parkland’s maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay. OK, fine. That doesn’t mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do.
Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE. The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child — her previous two were also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries were
free and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won’t turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.)
How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects? Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the U.S. illegally — now she is having her own child there as well. (That’s right, she’s technically a U.S. citizen.) These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula.
Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable.
Because these women are illegal immigrants they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate identification — no proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income — an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word.
My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care is good, we Navy wives don’t get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does!
As I mentioned, the care I have received is perfectly adequate but it’s bare bones, meat and potato medical care — not top of line.
Their (the illegals) medical care is free — simply because they are illegal immigrants? Once again, there is no way to verify their income. Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the ‘free’ care is not so easy for Americans.)
There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County. So the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this?
As if that isn’t annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish.This was apparently a great injustice to her.
In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement.
The above information illustrates the very real problem that is faced in just one city in a border state. Each and every state in the country is negatively impacted by this continuing situation. To hear it from our friends on the left you would think that without the illegal immigrants in our midst we would face a labor crisis that would border in severity with our present oil crisis. Not true.
The cost of illegal immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].
The truth is they are costing us a fortune. Not only in taxpayer money, but also in lost jobs. To listen to the pundits in Washington you’d think they were performing a public service by coming here and “taking jobs Americans won’t do”. What they are doing is coming here, being hired by unscrupulous employers and undercutting the honest mom and pop businesses by underbidding contracts. They pay less, make more and have an unfair advantage. If Americans were hired they would have to pay the prevailing wage and competition would take on real meaning.
So people ask, what can we do about it? Do we send them all back to Mexico?
Well Arizona has come up with a solution that seems to be working. Maybe it is time the rest of the states look into the Arizona plan seeing as how our constitutional officers in Washington will do nothing to defend us. Arizona has passed a law that effective January 1, 2008 those employers who employ illegals will face substantial fines and the loss of their business licenses. The illegals are leaving in droves.
In Arizona, a stiff new employer sanctions law gives the state power to suspend and even revoke a business license if the employer is found to have knowingly hired an illegal immigrant.
On Friday, an Arizona federal judge refused to block the Jan. 1 start of the law. There will be a Jan. 16 hearing before that same judge on the preliminary injunction sought by the Arizona Contractors Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.
“Differences are bound to arise where Congress has left it to the states to regulate a given area concurrently with the federal government,” Judge Neil Vincent Wake wrote in his decision.
At issue for many businesses is whether the Arizona measure will get cloned around the country.
Perhaps if we put enough pressure on our candidates this year they will finally address this growing problem. We don’t need to mass deport these illegal immigrants, if we make the laws and enforce them they will deport themselves.
For months, immigrants have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the state’s new employer-sanctions law, which takes effect Jan. 1. The voter-approved legislation is an attempt to lessen the economic incentive for illegal immigrants in Arizona, the busiest crossing point along the U.S.-Mexico border.
And by all appearances, it’s starting to work.
“People are calling me telling me about their friend, their cousin, their neighbors — they’re moving back to Mexico,” said Magdalena Schwartz, an immigrant-rights activist and pastor at a Mesa church. “They don’t want to live in fear, in terror.”
Martin Herrera, a 40-year-old illegal immigrant and masonry worker who lives in Camp Verde, 70 miles north of Phoenix, said he is planning to return to Mexico as soon as he ties up loose ends after living here for four years.
“I don’t want to live here because of the new law and the oppressive environment,” he said. “I’ll be better in my country.”
“It’s attrition by enforcement,” State Representative Russell Pearce said. “As you make this an unfriendly state for lawbreakers, I’m hoping they will pick up and leave.”
I agree with the Representative from Arizona. I also think it is time we made our own state lawmakers look into a solution to our problem here. What do you think?
