J.D. Hayworth Book Excerpt

BOOK EXCERPT: J.D. Hayworth

Whatever it Takes

CHAPTER ONE: OVERRUN

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.” —United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 4

ARIZONA HAS BECOME the new illegal gateway to America. As a congressman representing the fifth congressional district of Arizona, I am all too aware of the chaos caused by the illegal invasion taking place in the state I love and call home.

At minimum, almost 4,500 people cross into Arizona illegally each day without getting caught, while another 1,500 are apprehended.

This means for every illegal alien caught at the border, three make it in, although I have seen some estimates claiming the ratio is as high as one to ten. Try getting odds like that in Vegas.

This invasion has overwhelmed the Border Patrol, devastated communities, ruined the environment, and tested the patience and pocketbooks of Arizona’s citizens. And it has become increasingly violent.

In one particularly brutal instance, rival gangs of human smugglers had a rolling shoot-out along Interstate 10 in southern Arizona. Four people were killed and several others wounded. Ironically, at the time of the shoot-out, Mexican president Vicente Fox was on his way to Phoenix to talk trade and what he impertinently calls “migration” issues.

The vast majority of illegal border crossers are Mexican. But there is a growing number of what the Border Patrol calls OTMs, or “other than Mexicans.” These OTMs come from El Salvador, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Russia, China, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Time magazine estimated that in the first nine months of 2004, as many as 190,000 OTMs “melted into the U.S. population.”1

And don’t think illegal immigration is a problem only for border states. In the blue-collar town of Danbury, Connecticut, about 20 percent of the town’s population (75,000) is estimated to be illegal. The situation is so out of control that town officials found thirty cots in the basement of one home, each being rented for five dollars a night. Danbury mayor Mark Boughton told FOX News, “In terms of our social services, this presents a tremendous strain, particularly on quality of

life of our neighborhoods, our schools, our health care system.”2 He wanted state police officers deputized as federal immigration officers to deal with the problem.

Here in Arizona, we can feel Danbury’s pain—and then some. A June 2004 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that the cost of illegal immigration to Arizona taxpayers comes to about $1.6 billion a year. Put another way, illegal immigration costs each Arizonan almost $700 a year—a hidden tax that subsidizes illegal aliens and those who hire them.

For most illegal aliens, Arizona is just a big transportation hub from which they travel to other parts of the country, and it is not unusual for immigration agents to find drop houses with over a hundred illegal aliens waiting for transport. We are routinely treated to headlines like these:

■ “160 illegals caught in upscale Valley home”

■ “Scottsdale home yields 71 illegal immigrants”

■ “Another drop house found”

When I was first elected to Congress, I was pulled aside many times by concerned flight crews and flight attendants at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. They told me, “Congressman, please do something. Every night we are taking planes full of illegal aliens back east on red-eye flights. Where is the Border Patrol?” The real question is: where are the politicians?

I’ll tell you where they are: they’re AWOL.

Our Border Patrol is doing its job against incredible odds, but our immigration laws and a lack of resources work against it in sometimes shockingly stupid ways. Illegal aliens have learned to work the system.

For example, OTMs cross into the United States from Mexico and immediately surrender to Border Patrol agents. Why? Simple. Since they are not Mexican citizens, OTMs cannot immediately be released back into Mexico, but must be deported to their home country, which can take months to arrange. According to Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, “Today, a non-Mexican illegal immigrant caught trying to enter the United States across the southwest border has an 80 percent chance of being released immediately because we lack the holding facilities.”3

Before being released, the illegals are given a court summons, better known as a “notice to appear,” which allows them to legally remain in the U.S. pending an immigration hearing. The Border Patrol more accurately calls them “notices to disappear,” since some 98 percent never show up for their hearing. This dodge is particularly popular with Brazilians, who don’t need a visa to travel to Mexico.

According to a Copley News Service story, [The OTMs’] quick and well-rehearsed surrender was part of a growing trend that is demoralizing the Border Patrol. . . .“We used to chase them; now they’re chasing us,” Border Patrol agent Gus Balderas said. . . . The result is an unintended avenue of entry for a rapidly growing class of illegal immigrants from Central and South America who now see the Border Patrol more as the welcome wagon than a barrier.4

It is hard to believe we could be more welcoming than we have been. How many illegal aliens are in the U.S. today? It’s impossible to say. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the illegal alien population increased from 1.9 million in 1988 to 10.3 million in 2004. In fact, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report, since the mid-1990s the number of illegal aliens coming to the U.S. has exceeded the number of new legal immigrants.5

A report published by Bear Stearns Asset Management concluded that the number of illegals may be as high as twenty million, or equal to the population of New York state. The Bear Stearns report also found:

■ Since 1990, an average of 962,000 illegal aliens entered the country annually, although several reputable studies indicate that the rate could now be as high as three million.

■ There are between twelve and fifteen million jobs in the U.S. currently held by illegal aliens, or about 8 percent of the workforce.

■ Cell phones, the Internet, and low-cost travel have made it easier for illegal aliens to cross the border, find employment, and circumvent immigration laws.6

Not all of these illegals came across the Mexican border. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 30 percent of all illegals are here because they’ve overstayed their visas, although the Government Accountability Office says that is probably somewhat understated. It is safe to say that three to four million illegals have overstayed their visas and that up to 150,000 join them every year.7

Rampant illegal immigration has a huge impact on crime and prison populations. It is an enormous burden on our health care, education, and welfare systems. It is changing our culture. But the biggest threat comes from the deadly combination of porous borders and weapons of mass destruction finding their way into the hands of terrorist groups.

Terrorists know all about our contradictory immigration policies.

They have taken advantage of them before, and there is no reason to think they will not do so again. We ignore that fact at our own peril. In a post–September 11 world, we must not allow “political correctness” to cloud our thinking about the threat we face or to encourage terrorists to exploit that confusion. And we must ensure that Congress and the president act before the terrorists do.

THE TERRORIST THREAT

More than 500 million people annually cross U.S. borders at legal entry points, about 330 million of them noncitizens. Another 500,000 or more enter illegally without inspections across America’s thousands of miles of land borders or remain in the country past the expiration of their permitted stay. The challenge for national security in an age of terrorism is to prevent the very few people who may pose overwhelming risks from entering or remaining in the United States undetected. —The 9-11 Commission Report

In the summer of 2004, I took a helicopter tour of the Arizona-Mexico border. We flew over a rugged desert terrain of small mountains and valleys. A Border Patrol agent told me that most illegal aliens avoid the higher elevations, stick to known trails between the mountains, and travel in large groups.

But what stayed with me most was something else the agent said: that a determined and properly equipped enemy with military training—especially Islamic terrorists trained in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan—would have no problem striking out over those mountains and sneaking into the country.

In testimony in February 2005 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA director Porter Goss, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Admiral James Loy, and FBI director Robert Mueller offered a chilling assessment of the threats posed by al Qaeda against the American homeland. America’s highest-ranking intelligence officials all agreed that terrorist organizations remain committed to obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, with Goss stating, “It may only be a matter of time before al Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.”8

Some time ago a captured terrorist related al Qaeda’s plans to smuggle a nuclear bomb into Mexico and then across the border to the U.S. Admiral Loy testified:

Recent information from ongoing investigations, detentions, and emerging threat streams strongly suggests that al Qaeda has considered using the southwest border to infiltrate the United States.

Several al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.

However, there is currently no conclusive [emphasis added] evidence that indicates al Qaeda operatives have made successful penetrations into the United States via this method.9

But what would conclusive evidence look like? Another September 11? A mushroom cloud? Some of the September 11 terrorists were in America for more than a year before they struck. They rented apartments, got driver’s licenses, took flying lessons, and traveled freely.

Several even had contact with law enforcement authorities. How do we know another such terrorist team is not here already? Again, the headlines say it all:

■ “Syrians caught; in U.S. illegally”10

■ “Mesa man accused of smuggling Iranians”11

■ “Zarqawi Planning U.S. Hit? Intelligence officials say operatives may infiltrate via Central America to strike at soft targets on American soil”12

■ “U.S. Calls Entry Point in San Diego a Possible Security Risk”13

In 2004 Border Patrol agents arrested more than 650 suspected terrorists from countries of “national security interest” trying to cross our southern border.14 Remember, it is safe to assume that at least three illegals make it across the border for every one who is caught. As you do the math, keep in mind that it takes only a handful of committed terrorists to strike a devastating blow. It took only nineteen on September. It becomes even more unnerving when you pick up the newspaper and see headlines like this: “Border agent said to also be smuggler.”15

That’s right. A Border Patrol agent in San Diego was charged with conspiring to smuggle illegal aliens across the border. But the story took an even odder twist when it was discovered that the Border Patrol agent was himself an illegal alien who had used a fake birth certificate to get the job.

Sadly, these types of stories are getting to be more common. In another disturbing case, immigration enforcement officials arrested three illegal aliens, two Indonesians and a Senegalese, working as language instructors at the Army’s Special Operations Command Center at Fort Bragg. These illegals also used false documents to get their jobs.

And let’s not forget our Canadian border. As Admiral Loy stated: In addition to the problems posed by the southwestern border, the long United States-Canada border, often rugged and remote, includes a variety of terrain and waterways, some suitable for illicit border crossings. A host of unofficial border crossings can be utilized when employing the services of alien smugglers, especially those winding through mountain ranges and across the vast western prairie.16

Canada—with which we share an almost 4,000-mile-long border patrolled by only about 1,000 Border Patrol agents—poses particular problems because it has been a refuge for terrorists. In his book Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism to the World, Stewart Bell writes that “Canada has become a source country of international terrorism,” providing “money, propaganda, weapons, and foot soldiers to the globe’s deadliest religious, ethnic, and political extremist movements.” He says Canada has tried to “smother terrorism with kindness,” something he calls a “typically Canadian approach.” He laments that Canada’s “most valuable contributions to the war on terrorism may well be its terrorists.”17

We all remember the case of the alert Border Patrol agent who caught Ahmed Ressam trying to cross from Canada into Washington State in a car packed with explosives. Ressam’s plan was to blow up Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations.

Canadian intelligence had apparently known about his terrorist links for years, yet did nothing to stop him.

Then there is the case of Fateh Kamel, who was jailed in France for terrorist-related crimes, including conspiring to blow up Paris Metro stations. After he was released he returned to Canada, where, according to the National Post, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “was not even at the airport to greet him. As far as they’re concerned, he is an ex-convict who has done his time and has committed no crimes in Canada.”18

Even more recent, after the breaking up of a terrorist cell of an Islamist militant group, the Canadians allowed the al Qaeda–trained ringleader to freely leave Canada. Since Canadian law does not make it a crime to belong to a terrorist group, it is likely Canadian authorities felt they could not arrest or convict the terrorist. So instead they merely confronted him, prompting his voluntary departure.

Even in the wake of September 11, many of Canada’s laws make it a safe haven for terrorists. David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for Canada’s counterpart to the CIA, claims that more than fifty terrorist organizations have a presence in Canada. He says, “Canada has essentially said, if you put your foot in Canada and you declare yourself a (Geneva Convention) refugee, then by and large you are. All of that has implications; it means that we’re quite susceptible to penetration.”19

To be fair, there has been limited progress in Canada. But there are still too many “ex” terrorists north of the border.

TERRORISTS ON VISAS

Terrorists aren’t limited to sneaking across our porous borders; they can, like many of the September 11 hijackers, enter on visas. What makes it all possible is document fraud. According to the 9-11 Commission, “for terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons.”20

Indeed, document fraud has become big business—and sometimes government employees are involved.

A 2004 sting operation in Arizona by federal authorities resulted in the arrest of twenty-six state workers who were charged with illegally issuing phony driver’s licenses and other identity documents to human smugglers, illegal immigrants, and drug dealers. Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles employees were charging $600 to $3,500 for each document.

More recently, a sting operation in Virginia led to the arrest of a Department of Motor Vehicles official, his wife, and another man for selling valid driver’s licenses for as much as $3,500 (apparently the going rate!) to illegal immigrants. The Commonwealth is very sensitive about its driver’s licenses, after seven of the September 11 terrorists were found to have had valid Virginia driver’s licenses and state ID cards. (According to the 9-11 Commission, all but one acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud.) Virginia now requires applicants to provide documentation that they either are U.S. citizens or are in the country legally.

Federal authorities also uncovered a crime syndicate specializing in the distribution of millions of phony documents to illegal aliens nationwide (three million to the Los Angeles area alone), including high quality Social Security cards, resident alien cards, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, marriage licenses, work authorization documents, vehicle insurance cards, temporary vehicle registration documents, and utility bills from both Mexico and the U.S. It was so sophisticated that syndicate leaders would charge franchise fees for smaller cells to operate in the U.S.

What does the operational imperative to obtain documents mean in practice? Former 9-11 Commission counsel Janice Kephart studied ninety-four foreign-born terrorists who operated in the U.S. Here is what she found:

■ About two-thirds committed immigration fraud prior to taking part in terrorist activity.

■ In at least thirteen instances, terrorists overstayed their temporary visas.

■ Fraud was used not only to gain entry into the United States, but also to remain in the country. Seven terrorists were indicted for acquiring or using various forms of fake identification, including driver’s licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and immigration arrival records.

■ Once in the United States, twenty-three terrorists became legal permanent residents, often by marrying Americans. There were at least nine sham marriages.21

Congress and the president have made important reforms since September 11 to address many of these issues. However, there are still too many gaps in the system. The Department of Homeland Security has now instituted a plan to track visitors entering and leaving the country. Called US-VISIT, the program requires that U.S. consulates obtain an index fingerprint before issuing a visa. The fingerprint is matched against a database to ensure the applicant is not a known criminal or terrorist. In the United States, immigration authorities check that the visa fingerprint matches the visa holder. US-VISIT is a good program that has already successfully prevented criminals and terrorists from entering the United States. Unfortunately, because the program exempts those coming from Mexico or Canada, it applies to only about 15 to 20 percent of visitors.

That’s bad enough, but the really big question is this: What will happen when US-VISIT starts identifying large numbers of visitors who have overstayed their visas? Will the government take action to track them down and deport them? Or will they simply become another illegal alien statistic? According to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, it is likely to be the latter.

The inspector general found that “deficiencies in the apprehension and removal process result in a minimal impact in reducing the number of overstays in the United States.” Out of 301,046 leads received in 2004, just 4,164 were pursued, resulting in 671 apprehensions. Even then, the inspector general says, “very few” of those will be deported unless they also have a criminal record or are detained.22

Another problem is the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which allows citizens of twenty-seven friendly countries to travel to the United States without a visa. The London bus and subway bombers would have all qualified for this program. Government officials say that with tamper-proof passports (now required) we will be able to verify that the holders are who they say they are. But even then, without the scrutiny that goes with getting a visa, VWP could be an easy route into the country for Islamist terrorists from places like Germany, France, Spain, and Great Britain.

The Wall Street Journal once scolded that lawmakers need “to distinguish between immigrants who bus tables and those who hijack airplanes,”23 without giving any practical advice on how to make such a distinction. Here’s the distinction I make: if the busboy is illegal, he should be deported. The hijacker should be executed.

Many who share the Journal’s point of view claim that the solution is a guest-worker program that would legalize millions of workers now in the country illegally. One Border Patrol agent, Lee Morgan, a decorated Vietnam veteran, sums up the national security argument for such a program in a very personal way: “What if another 9/11 happened and I’m responsible? What if the bastards come across here in Arizona and I don’t catch them because I’m so busy chasing a busboy or a gardener that I don’t have time to do my job—my real job—catching terrorists? I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.”24

I can assure Morgan that if terrorists cross into Arizona from Mexico and perpetrate another September 11, it will not be his fault—it will be the fault of our elected leaders for not doing what we know needs to be done. The Border Patrol agents confronting this enormous problem are truly national heroes. But they are overworked, outmanned, and up against an impossible task. Testifying before Congress, former Immigration and Naturalization Service agent William D. West tells it like it is:

Border intercepts of terrorists are rare exceptions and not the rule. Cases identifying such suspects generally result from multi-agency counter-terrorism investigative efforts conducted within the interior of the U.S. well after these suspects have entered. The case of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, an alleged Lebanese Hezbollah operative indicted in Detroit last year for terrorism support charges, who was found to have been smuggled across the U.S. Mexico border, is a recent example.25

Given its current resources, the Border Patrol can’t be blamed for failing to find Kourani out of the million-plus illegals that come across the border every year from Mexico. And as we will see later, any guest-worker program would only make the Border Patrol’s job harder. We need to dramatically increase the size of the Border Patrol and give it the resources necessary to do the job. Additionally, maybe it’s time to think about what even I believed unthinkable just a few years ago—putting troops on the border until we can get the situation under control.

MILITARY READINESS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

Leo Banks is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona, who captures the reality of life for Americans living along the Arizona-Mexico border:

[M]ost are decent folks caught up in the daily invasion of illegals who tramp across their land. Ranchers in hard-hit areas spend the first hours of every day repairing damage done the night before.

They find fences knocked down and water spigots left on, draining thousands of precious gallons. And then there’s the trash: pill bottles, syringes, used needles, and pile after pile of human feces. . . One rancher told me about illegals who rustled one of her newborn calves. The intruders beat the twelve-hour-old animal to death with a fence post, then barbecued it on the spot.26

I have been to the border many times and I can tell you that Banks’s description is spot on. The border is an ecological nightmare, and the costs of its repair are largely being borne not by the government, but by citizens—taxpayers who not only pay Uncle Sam every April 15, but who also foot the bill for illegal aliens from all over the world. Indeed, I’ve been told that repairing the property damage caused by illegal immigration can cost individual ranchers $50,000 or more a year.

At the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation in southern Arizona, along the Mexican border, tribal leaders estimate that illegal aliens traversing their land leave behind six tons of trash every day.27 At the nearby Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, which I have visited on several occasions, they tell me that environmental damage caused by illegal aliens threatens the habitat of two protected species, the flat-tailed horned lizard and the Sonoran pronghorn sheep.

But the danger isn’t just to property and animals. Our citizens are also threatened. The Fort Worth Star-Telegraph reported on south Texas rancher Kerry Morales:

She says illegal immigrants move daily through her eighty acres outside Hebbronville, about fifty-four miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

They’ve cut down her fences, stolen her pickup, and even broken into her home—once rampaging into the bedroom and nearly strangling her, sparing her life only after she grabbed a gun.

“Maybe twenty years ago the illegals were innocent, hardworking people,” she said. “Not anymore. Now, they’re extremely dangerous. They mean violence.”28

I hear similar stories every time I visit the border. People will not let their children play in the yard unless they are with them and have armed themselves. Their dogs are routinely poisoned by illegals, who don’t want them barking and alerting homeowners. Certain roads are too dangerous to drive on after dark. According to Banks, “If you’re not careful they’ll come around a bend at 100 mph and run you into a ditch or worse.”

No one is immune. Illegal aliens broke into the home of Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe, ironically a sponsor of major guest-worker legislation, and made themselves right at home. They ignored valuables, but “showered, prepared a meal in the microwave, and helped themselves to a change of the congressman’s clothes.”29

Illegal aliens even brazenly cut across the borders of Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona, a sprawling U.S. Army facility that is home to the country’s premier military intelligence school. In 2004, 3,086 illegal aliens were caught by Army personnel and turned over to the Border Patrol. Ironically, Fort Huachuca hosts units and military training commands from. . . the Department of Homeland Security!

The Boston Globe reported that “Marines preparing for combat in Iraq or Afghanistan have lost significant amounts of training time because undocumented immigrants from Mexico have constantly wandered onto a bombing test range in Arizona.”30 In 2003 the Marines intercepted more than 1,500 illegal aliens on the Barry M. Goldwater Range, which is used as a bombing test range by Marines at the nearby Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. According to the Marines, illegal aliens traipsing across the range in 2004 caused the loss of more than 1,250 training hours, or more than fifty training days. This has a detrimental effect on the readiness of our troops and hurts our national security. Bill Richardson, a retired police officer, is outraged by what goes on, for good reason: “My son is a Marine and flies on a helicopter. His good buddy is a helicopter crew chief who’s headed to Yuma, then Iraq. They belong to the Second Marine Air Wing. Will continued training interruptions cost them their lives?”31

When the Mexican government is asked for its help in stopping its citizens from overrunning our border, trespassing on our military installations, threatening our citizens, and destroying the private property of Americans, its officials demur. They claim they can do nothing because of a provision in their constitution that allows for freedom of movement (Article 11 begins, “Everyone has the right to enter and leave the Republic . . .”), even though under Mexican law it is illegal to leave the country except at designated crossing points.

So the “staging areas” in towns on the Mexican side of the border, from which thousands of illegal aliens of all nationalities make their way into the U.S., are left alone. (The use of the military term “staging areas” is appropriate since it is from these places that the illegal invasion of our country is launched. Paramilitary drug smugglers also use these areas as a base of operations.) In the immortal words of General Norman Schwarzkopf (used in a different context), the excuses constantly proffered by the Mexican government are “bovine scatology.”

If the roles were reversed you can be sure that the Mexicans would be demanding restitution from us or would be taking us to the World Court. Maybe we should start demanding restitution from Mexico.

THE ECONOMIC THREAT

President George W. Bush’s leadership in the War on Terror has been bold and inspiring. But when it comes to illegal immigration, he has been uncharacteristically and disturbingly vague and indecisive.

Instead of the moral clarity we’ve come to expect, we get such politically correct buzz phrases as, “If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job.”

That’s not a policy—it’s a verbal tranquilizer meant to soothe the nerves of Americans who have had it with rampant lawbreaking on our border. As long as Americans have to compete with illegal aliens who will work for next to nothing, how can we know what jobs they won’t take? There are many hard, dangerous, and dirty jobs that Americans would gladly take if they were paid a decent wage. Some open-borders conservatives—an oxymoron if ever there was one—call this competition with illegal aliens a “flexible labor market.” In truth, it is a subsidy to businesses that exploit illegal labor.

There is no way to square free markets with illegal immigration.

Illegal immigration actually distorts the free market, because it shields certain segments of the economy from the true cost of labor and prevents the “creative destruction” that is necessary to keep an economy competitive. “Creative destruction” is the term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the process by which some jobs disappear as a result of innovation and eventually are replaced by better, more productive jobs. We witnessed this process throughout the 1980s, as low-skilled factory jobs were lost and replaced by high-tech jobs. By providing a bottomless supply of cheap labor, illegal immigration impedes that process of innovation and creative destruction.

Still, the temptation to hire illegals can be irresistible at times. For example, Time magazine reported this story:

The two Tyson managers who pleaded guilty contended that they had been forced to hire illegals because Tyson refused to pay wages that would let them attract American workers. One of those two managers was Truley Ponder, who worked at Tyson’s processing plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee. In documents filed as part of Ponder’s guilty plea, the U.S. Attorney’s office noted, “Ponder would have preferred for the plant to hire local people, but this was not feasible in light of the low wages that Tyson paid, the low unemployment rate in the area from which the plant drew its workforce, and the general undesirability of poultry processing work when there were numerous other employment opportunities for unskilled and low-skilled employees.

“Ponder made numerous requests for pay increases in Shelbyville above and beyond what the company routinely allowed, but Tyson’s corporate management in Springdale rejected his requests for wage increases for production workers. This refusal to pay wages sufficient to enable Tyson to compete for legal laborers, plus the limited workforce in the local area, dictated Ponder’s need to bring workers in to meet Tyson’s production demands.” Needless to say, hiring illegals had benefits for Tyson. A government consultant estimated that the company saved millions of dollars in wages, benefits, and other costs.32

If employees work “off the books,” the companies that hire them can save even more. One analysis done by Newsday found the cost in New York of hiring an off-the-books worker for $499 a week was just that, $499 a week. The cost for that same worker to an employer who obeys the law? Over $1,000 a week.33 No wonder so many jobs are going to illegals in the underground economy.

Yet the same liberals who profess outrage at companies “outsourcing” American jobs to places like India couldn’t care less when American workers lose their jobs to “insourced” illegal aliens. While Senator Ted Kennedy rails that “outsourcing enables profits to grow by sending American jobs abroad,”34 he also claims that legalizing millions of illegal workers will protect “American workers’ rights and wages, too.”35 Not so.

Harvard professor and immigration expert George Borjas estimates that between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of American-born men by $1,700, or about 4 percent.

American-born men without a high school education were hit even harder, with their wages reduced by 7.4 percent. Borjas also found that the “negative effect on native-born black and Hispanic workers is significantly larger than on whites because a much larger share of minorities are in direct competition with immigrants.” Wages of black and Hispanic Americans who were born in this country were reduced by 4.5 and 5.0 percent respectively.36 Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton when you need them?

The Wall Street Journal editors once wrote of the “human tide” overrunning our borders, “Mexico’s loss is our gain.”37

Whose gain exactly? No gain for workers, that’s for sure. Borjas found that immigration actually widened the gap between rich and poor. While poor and less-educated Americans saw their wages drop, businesses and the wealthy were able to take advantage of a cheap, abundant supply of labor. As a result, according to Borjas, tens of billions of dollars were redistributed from low-income workers to rich folk.

One can only imagine the hue and cry if Congress proposed raising taxes on the poor by tens of billions of dollars so that the wealthier among us could enjoy more leisure. Yet that is the net result of rampant illegal immigration. It is a corrosive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. But far from being outraged by it, the open-borders crowd wants to codify it!

In a revealing opinion column in the Arizona Republic, liberal “community activist” Bill Searle spilled the beans, writing: “With no compassion, we recently voted for Prop 200 [a ballot initiative that denied public benefits to illegals], which coldly marks all ‘illegals’ as unwelcome in our midst—even as they willingly perform chores shunned by most of us, yet are essential to the privileged lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.”38

There you have it: the real reason so many liberals and elites are willing to look the other way on illegal immigration. For them, it is not about the rule of law or national security or American workers—it is all about preserving their “privileged lifestyle.”

So when the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations asked both “opinion leaders” and the public about guest-worker legislation, the results were predictable. A majority of the public (52 percent) said they opposed the plan, while 71 percent of the “opinion leaders” said they favored it—a gulf wider than the one named after Mexico.39 Since these “opinion leaders” don’t have to compete with illegal aliens for jobs and actually benefit from illegal labor, the results are not at all surprising. But where is the compassion for Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder?

The attitude of the open-borders crowd seems to be that as long as the lawns are groomed, the crops are picked (particularly the lettuce; more on that later), the dishes are washed, and the kids get their diapers changed, who cares?

PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LAWLESSNESS

So how much does illegal immigration cost America? According to the Bear Stearns study, a lot. An estimated five million jobs have shifted to the underground economy, where workers collect wages on a cash basis and avoid income taxes. As a result of circumventing labor laws:

■ “The social expenses of health care, retirement funding, education, and law enforcement are potentially accruing at $30 billion per year.”

■ “On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.”40

This does not include the other costs associated with illegal immigration, such as welfare payments for Americans displaced by illegal workers. Brian Gatton, a professor of history at Arizona State University, sums it up: “Economists concur that unskilled immigrants constitute a net cost to American citizens, using more in public services than they pay in taxes. Only two groups profit: the immigrants themselves and their employers, who pay a wage so low that other costs are passed on to taxpayers.”41

Let’s put these costs into perspective. As of this writing it is estimated that the federal government will spend a staggering $200 billion to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Yet that is about what three years of illegal immigration costs. If the government knew there would be a Katrina every three years and did nothing about it, wouldn’t you say the government was being negligent? So why do we let it get away with ignoring illegal immigration and its costs?

Illegal immigration is a net economic loss for the United States, but is a big gain for countries like Mexico. Illegals send back (relatively) big paychecks and are one of Mexico’s largest sources of foreign exchange. Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Población (National Public Council) estimates that Mexicans working in the United States contributed $17 billion to Mexico’s economy in 2004 (up sharply from $13.4 billion in 2003), making them one of the top three sources of income in the country.42 Illegal immigration is, as we’ll see, Mexico’s only growth industry.

SCHOOLS FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS

Since the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, school officials cannot ask students about their citizenship or refuse them a free public education. Since the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (Article I, Section 8), the Court’s decision blatantly usurped congressional authority—yet another example of why we need strict constructionists on the Supreme Court.

As is often the case when the court legislates from the bench, the results have been disastrous. According to one study, the children of illegal aliens (a category that includes illegal alien children and U.S.-born children of illegal aliens) account for more than 15 percent of the K–12 student population in California. In Texas, Arizona, Illinois, and Nevada it is 10 to 15 percent. In eleven other states it is more than 5 percent.

The cost of educating these children runs to almost $29 billion a year—$12 billion for illegals and $17 billion for the U.S.-born children of illegals. In California alone the total cost is almost $8 billion. Take a look at the chart below of the ten states with the largest illegal immigration education costs.

WHAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION COSTS EDUCATION43
(IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS)

ILLEGAL ALIEN U.S.-BORN CHILDREN
STATE STUDENTS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS TOTAL

California $3,220.2 $4,508.3 $7,728.5

Texas $1,645.4 $2,303.6 $3,949.0

New York $1,306.3 $1,828.9 $3,135.2

Illinois $834.0 $1,167.6 $2,001.6

New Jersey $620.2 $868.2 $1,488.4

Florida $518.0 $725.3 $1,243.3

Georgia $396.7 $555.3 $952.0

North Carolina $321.3 $449.8 $771.1

Arizona $311.8 $436.5 $748.3

Colorado $235.0 $329.1 $564.1

Naturally, any attempt at weeding out illegal students is met with howls of protest. In 2002, two brothers and their cousin were barred from attending a New Jersey public school when the superintendent discovered their parents were in the country illegally (the mothers were Canadian citizens here on expired tourist visas).44 How do you think the parents reacted when they realized they had been discovered? Did they:

A. skedaddle back to Canada

B. beg the superintendent not to turn them in to federal authorities

C. contact their immigration attorney, who had the kids back in school the next week

If you guessed C, you’re starting to get the hang of this! But why was the issue “when will these kids get back to school?” when it should have been “when will these families get back to Canada?” It’s crazy. But it gets even more bizarre. In Arizona, an investigation by state school superintendent Tom Horne found that Mexican residents were attending Arizona schools. They weren’t just crossing the border and hopping the bus—the owner of a trailer park was renting empty lots to Mexican parents and offering utility bills to prove county residency.

You can find similar situations all along the border, from Texas to California, so that is not even the weird part of the story. Before the investigation was completed, the Arizona Republic reported: “The controversy has put the small school district in Ajo . . . in turmoil.

Already facing declining enrollment, the district stands to lose more than $425,000 in funding if the estimated eighty to eighty-five students who now catch the bus at the U.S.-Mexico border are culled from its rolls.”45

Hard to believe, but since more students mean more dollars, school districts want to boost enrollment—even if it means hordes of illegal students. That’s because the goal isn’t ensuring that American kids get the best education possible; it is ensuring that the schools get the maximum funding possible. As the Ajo superintendent said at the prospect of a funding cut, “It would be a major blow. It would mean layoffs of staff.”46

At a time when school budgets are under strain nationwide, it makes no sense to take on the burden of educating citizens of other countries to the detriment of our own students. And there can be no doubt that those most hurt by the influx of illegal students are American minority children already most at risk of failing school—many of them Hispanic.

Since the vast majority of these illegal students are Mexican citizens, this rip-off amounts to a huge subsidy to the Mexican government that it neither appreciates nor deserves. In fact, the billions we spend to educate Mexican children in our public schools dwarfs the $71 million in foreign aid we’re sending to Mexico this year. It is another cost of illegal immigration that could be avoided by getting serious about enforcing our laws and securing our borders.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson notes that illegal immigration affects education in another way: it saps resources that could be used for other, better purposes. In California, he writes, “the question of concern for the underprivileged seems not always to extend to our own citizens.

California, for example, has over 14,000 illegal aliens incarcerated in its prisons, costing yearly more than twenty times the annual budget of the underfunded new University of California at Merced—a college located where it could best serve underrepresented poor and minorities.”47

Liberals always love to use that rhetorical tactic whenever the debate is over military spending or tax cuts. “Instead of tax cuts for the rich, we should be helping the poor!” Yet when the choice is between illegal aliens and America’s poor, the liberals side with the illegals—another wonderful example of liberal compassion.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER

You might be surprised to know that not only do we bear the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens, but our hospitals, by order of the federal government, have to provide illegals with free universal health care. Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, illegal aliens cannot be turned away for “emergency” medical treatment. As you probably guessed, these days nearly everything is considered “emergency” care, from a splinter to a drug overdose, and woe be unto the physician that turns away a patient on “nonemergency”grounds. The trial lawyers and immigrants’ rights groups will be waiting in line to sue.

Of course, the same rules don’t apply if you are an American citizen, as this report from FOX News makes clear:

“We’re citizens here. Why should somebody from another country that’s here illegally get anything that we can’t get? I mean that’s dumb, that’s not right,” said Don Schenck, whose son is mentally disabled. Though the Schencks are uninsured, and considered poor by county standards, his father had to find a way to pay for Bill’s care while thousands of others, in the country illegally, get it for free. “It makes you feel pretty bad when you’re born in that country and you’re handicapped and you’ve got a learning disability and you can’t get medical,” Schenck said.48

Illegal aliens know they can’t be turned away for care, so they tend to use emergency rooms like a regular doctor’s office. Meanwhile, the Border Patrol permits Mexican ambulance drivers to bring indigent patients to U.S. border hospitals under “compassionate entry.”

Jim Dickson, the CEO of Copper Queen Community Hospital in the border town of Bisbee, Arizona, told Time magazine that his hospital has become “the trauma center for that stretch of northern Mexico” and that half of the free care his hospital gives goes to patients brought across the border. This has led to calls for using your tax dollars to build new clinics . . . not for Americans living along the border, but in Mexico!49

Some illegal aliens come here just for one expensive medical procedure or another. According to Ray Borane, mayor of Douglas, Arizona:

“The city of Douglas is the major crossing point for illegals and there have been some people who have come over here specifically to get dialysis or complicated eye surgery. They’ve established illegal residency in this country in order to thrive off the health care system.”50

But that’s not all. Children of illegal aliens born in the United States are American citizens and are thus entitled to welfare benefits, including Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability payments.

Madeleine Cosman, writing in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, shows how this taxpayer rip-off has grown:

“Immigrants on SSI, including legal aliens, refugees, and illegals with fraudulent Social Security cards, numbered a mere 127,900 aliens (3.3 percent of recipients) in 1982. By 1992 the numbers expanded to 601,430 entitled (10.9 percent of recipients). In 2003, this figure was several million (about 25 percent of recipients).”51

When you add it all up, the costs are astronomical. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in 2004 the cost of unreimbursed medical care was about $1.4 billion in California, about $850 million in Texas, and about $400 million in Arizona.52

Although federal law demands that physicians and hospitals provide the care, the government is under no obligation to pay for any of it and goes to great lengths to avoid it. Again, according to Time magazine:

The Border Patrol officers—on orders from Washington—have refused to take [injured illegals] onto the hospital property after taking them into custody. Instead, the officers have called an ambulance for the injured. If the officers were to arrive at the hospital to make their drop-off, then the Border Patrol (make that the U.S. government) would be responsible for paying the medical bill. And that’s something the federal government (make that Congress) will not do.53

This outrageous unfunded mandate has to stop. The government won’t fulfill its obligation to control the border and it insists that illegals must be given free medical treatment—it should pay for it. In return, hospitals should be required to obtain citizenship information on their patients. The Medicare prescription drug plan enacted in 2003 did provide for modest payments to hospitals that treat illegal aliens, but these payments are only a fraction of what’s needed. It also required that medical workers should “make a good faith effort to obtain citizenship information.” Good faith isn’t good enough.

In 2004, some of us in Congress tried to do something about this loophole. My Republican colleague Dana Rohrabacher of California offered an amendment to require hospitals to collect from all patients five pieces of information that would be submitted to the Department of Homeland Security: proof of citizenship, immigration status, address, current or former employer, and a biometric identifier such as a photograph or fingerprint.

In a post–September 11 world, this only makes sense. Yet even though hospitals collect vast amounts of information from patients already, this amendment was seen as “undermining the relationship of trust between health care providers and their patients.” As ultraliberal congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee put it, “The effect of this amendment would be to require physicians and other health care providers to become part-time Border Patrol agents.”54

Actually, when you see how the open-borders crowd strenuously objects to any enforcement of our immigration laws, it becomes clear that they don’t even want Border Patrol agents to act like Border Patrol agents.

Incredibly, the House bought their nonsensical arguments and the proposal was rejected 331–88, an ominous sign of how difficult it will be to enact immigration reform centered on enforcement.

Far from being outraged by the situation, many on the Left insist that illegal aliens aren’t getting enough free health care. A recent study published by the far-left American Journal of Public Health (AJHP) claims that immigrants actually use less than half the health care services provided to native-born Americans. According to the authors, “Our study refutes the assumption that immigrants represent a disproportionate financial burden on the U.S. health care system.”55

Really? Someone needs to notify Los Angeles, where seven emergency rooms and sixteen clinics closed down in 2004 alone. They can tell the same to administrators at hospitals in Arizona and Texas that are sinking under the weight of providing free medical care to illegal immigrants. (Jim Dickson says his hospital in Bisbee will probably have to shut down in three years.)

Far more telling than anything in the AJHP study is that illegal aliens make up anywhere from 3 to 7 percent of the population, but are 15 percent of the uninsured, maybe more. Who pays the medical bills for these freeloaders? Taxpayers and charities do.

Furthermore, what about Medicaid and other health-related welfare payments given to America-born children of illegal aliens? While the direct beneficiary of such payments is a U.S. citizen, the illegal alien parents receive a substantial indirect benefit. Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies estimates Medicaid payments for such “anchor babies” cost the federal government—that means you—$2.5 billion in 2002.56

And it gets worse. Illegal immigration is not just bad for America’s health care system—it may be literally bad for your health. This headline above a story in the Palm Beach Post says it all: “Perilous Infectious Diseases Up in County.”57

They could have written “Country.”

The increase is largely due to the huge influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal. As Madeleine Cosman writes, “Many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis.”58

Since illegal aliens are not screened for diseases, they can walk in with whatever disease seems to be the flavor of the day—drug-resistant tuberculosis (which can cost up to $1 million to treat), Chagas, acute hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Luckily, the number of immigrants with these dangerous diseases is small . . . at least for now. But health professionals worry that America will begin to reflect what is happening in the rest of the world, where many of these diseases, particularly tuberculosis, are reaching alarming proportions.

Someone petitioning to get into the country legally with any of these diseases would be denied entry. Yet an illegal alien with any of them who shows up at the hospital must be treated and released, no questions asked. And with many experts predicting that it is only a matter of time until we face a worldwide avian flu pandemic, securing our borders takes on an even greater urgency.

Health care is like every other facet of illegal immigration—the illegal alien gets the benefit, the American people get the bill. It’s enough to make you sick. . . perhaps even terminal.