[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by Raven

if you had a magic wand ...........

and with one sweep suddenly deported every single illegal alien
never to return.............

the economy would crash so hard it could never recover.

Originally Posted by scottw

let's give it a shot and see what happens the economic forcast is pretty bleak, we could just pull an Obama if it fails and claim that things would have "been even worse" if we'd not done it

Gotta agree with scottw. With the amount of money spent for social services, increased law enforcement, insurance costs due to crime and free hospital care, it'd be tough to convince me that we wouldn't see a net-benefit.

Here's an old study:

The Center for Immigration Studies reported in 2004: "Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household."[

And that's just the cost to the federal government. Also, the illegal problem has increased significantly since 2002.

Here are some numbers for the County of Los Angeles:

Michael D. Antonovich, Los Angeles County Supervisor for the 5th District, announced in August 2009: "Figures from the Department of Public Social Services show that children of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County collected nearly $22 million in welfare and over $26 million in food stamps in June 2009. Projected over a 12 month period, this would exceed $575 million dollars. Annually the cost of illegal immigration to Los Angeles County taxpayers exceeds $1 billion dollars, which includes $350 million for public safety, $400 million for healthcare, and $500 million in welfare and food stamps allocations. Twenty-four percent of the County’s total allotment of welfare and food stamp benefits goes directly to the children of illegal aliens born in the United States."

How about:

Harvard's George Borjas says the average American's wealth is increased by less than 1 percent because of illegal immigration.[

I'd gladly give up 1% of my wealth to be rid of the problems that come with illegal immigration.

Then there's the cost to states to give these people who have no respect for our laws an education:

Using the U.S. INS statistics on how many illegal immigrants are residing in each state and the U.S. Dept of Education's current expenditure per pupil by state, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, known for its anti-illegal alien stance, has estimated cost of educating illegal alien students was as follows:[27]
State Illegal Alien Students
California $3,220,200,000
Texas $1,645,400,000
New York $1,306,300,000
Illinois $834,000,000
New Jersey $620,200,000
For all 50 states $11,919,900,000

...

During April 2006, Standard & Poor's analysts wrote: "Local school districts are estimated to educate 1.8 million undocumented children. At an average annual cost of $7,500 (averages vary by jurisdiction) per student, the cost of providing education to these children is about $11.2 billion."[

But, I'm just a crazy moonbat liberal...