What will the DREAM Act cost the US taxpayer?

That sounds like a simple question—what will the Dream Act—the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2009, cost the US taxpayer? Having spent a great deal of time trying to find an answer, I have come up confused.

I could use President Barack Obama’s State of the Union cost projection--$9 billion, according to the National Taxpayers Union. That was projected for “immigration reform.”

I could use old figures from the Congressional Budget Office. In 2004 when S 1545 was originally costed out, the estimate was that “enacting S. 1545 would increase direct spending by an insignificant amount in 2004 and $90 million over the 2004-2014 period.”

I could settle for one aspect of illegal immigration and use figures from the conservative organization Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR said, “Education for the children of illegal aliens constitutes the single largest cost to taxpayers, at an annual price tag of nearly $52 billion.”

I could cite a figure based on research done by Frank Medina, National Immigration Examiner at the Examiner website. Medina wrote, “The costs to the U.S. taxpayer of subsidizing the tuition of the approximately 1.23 million illegal aliens who would benefit from the DREAM Act over the first two years of its enactment would be $19,207,500,000.” Incidentally, Medina has several columns devoted to explaining the DREAM Act. 

As yet it’s hard to tell whether Sen. Harry Reid will attempt to repay his political debt in the Lame Duck Session in return for support that kept him in Washington after the midterm elections. It’s tempting to ask if all those votes were cast by legal voters, but that isn’t the point of my inquiry and is simply a product of my incredulity that anyone would vote for a man like Reid.

I wonder, however, what the DREAM Act or even what our current immigration chaos costs legal immigrants, and unskilled White, Hispanic, African-American workers and others? Those who come here illegally work for low wages and ask for few rights. What, I wonder, is the impact on the labor markets that employ such workers—the hotel industry, ski resorts, construction industry, landscaping?

Considering record levels of unemployment, those questions are relevant.

Do unskilled workers who are citizens lose out on jobs they might otherwise be able to get? Do those who complete applications for visas and work permits lose out to those who simply come in the back door hoping to send money home and eventually return home as well rather than assimilate?

Obviously the federal government has placed the rights of legal immigrants and US citizens on a second tier status. Dilution of the 287-G law, for example, recently made it impossible for a Florida sheriff’s officers to do anything about workers they suspected were here illegally. The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency wasn’t interested in looking into what the police discovered when they took a call they first thought involved a fight between roommates.

Moreover the federal government has sided with Mexico and other countries by filing a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for trying to do something about the refusal of the feds to do anything about a situation that state believes critical to public safety.

In 1986 Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Leon Panetta were two members of Congress who played a key role in writing the amnesty bill. Do we know what that cost?

Here’s what we know for sure, those of us who remember 1986. We were assured this would be the solution to chaos and we would not have to deal with this again because the borders would be secured.

We were lied to in 1986. Hopefully we’ll be smart enough to know we could easily be lied to now.

Meanwhile The Heritage Foundation said millions of seniors will lose Medicare Advantage health programs now that the government healthcare bill passed.

How do Democrats who still hold the majority in the Lame Duck Congress justify cutting entitlements for seniors but increasing them for those who have broken federal law?

What will the DREAM Act cost? It's anybody's guess.

Comments

[Francis]

THE DREAM ACT IS AN UNDISCLOSED ROAD TO AMNESTY AND MORE CHAIN MIGRATION

The Dream Act is not in the law books yet and never should it be? The Dream act is a very clever deception employed to give hundreds and thousands of children of illegal aliens, a financial advantage against out-of-State citizen children or legal residents. The cost will be yet another yoke upon the taxpayers as usual, that shows Liberals remain indifferent to the economic consequences of this law. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is the main mastermind of the Dream Act along with his hard-core Liberal Extremists like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and other Liberals. (Some ethical group should question Nancy Pelosi, about the illegal aliens employed on her Central California plantations?)What the progressives are not telling the public is that they can guarantor their immediate family, of Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, Uncles and Aunts to live in America that taxpayers will finally have to subsidize? Then that immediate family can then sponsor other family members, which is called Chain Migration.


There is no finality to this matter and can reach into the future and adjoin millions to our populace. The Dream Act is a very artful piece of law, which is unfair to American school children. Why is it the children of foreign nationals should be given special preferences over the children of citizens? In Houston Texas there is a contentious battle materializing over Voter Fraud. The King Street Patriots are counter suing Democrats over the discovery of Voter Fraud in Harris County. Catherine Engelbrecht, filed a counter suit in Austin on last Monday, claiming defamation. This is because her group detected election abuses disclosed, documented, by the King Street Patriots which included multiple voter registrations, illegal aliens voter registrations, fraudulent voter information, counterfeit voter signatures and election officials and orally harassment of the electorate to either change their ballot choices or vote a straight Democratic label.

[Intangible costs]

This is an excellent article that I will quote often. You only left out the intangible costs.

Illegal aliens are adopting a very rude attitude that anyone who disagrees with them is ignorant, uneducated, racist, cruel, and so on. I am tired of being insulted by people or children of people who were told 10-20 years ago not to enter this country. Their predicament is not our problem to fix. Yet they want us to vacate our jobs for them, relinquish to them our benefit and security nets, give them somewhere between a sizable fraction to the majority of the limited number of college places we hold dear for our children and grandchildren, and displace our culture and language.

I know many nationalities are in the mix, but it is the Hispanics who are the main offenders when it comes to not respecting our immigration laws or employment laws. I am sick and tired of having all the blame placed on American employers. Meg Whitman was deceived and I believe it. The employment agency she used charges around $3,000 to place a nanny, so I am sure she thought she had paid the price to get someone with legal permission to work.

What is getting really troublesome is that ever since Obama spoke directly to the Hispanics, calling American citizens "the enemy" and encouraging illegal aliens to fight for justice, Hispanics in the U.S. have become more belligerent and demanding. Articles appear “Democrats owe Latinos”. I am sorry, what is it that Latinos think they are owed? Obama may think this is the modern day civil rights movement, but I beg to differ. Illegal aliens crossed our borders voluntarily with the clear intent to seize what rightfully and lawfully belongs to American citizens. Yes it is certainly true that people have historical crossed borders and taken property by force, but that isn’t that called war? Did Obama incite Hispanic illegal aliens to declare war on American citizens? I hope not.

So my point is that the intangible costs are a fractured society, not an assimilated union. No matter what the vote and final outcome is on this issue, no one will be happy about it. Obama has created hatred between the races by giving the appearance he thinks Latinos are being wronged in the same way that blacks once were. Obama squandered the opportunity to further heal the wounds between black and white by overreaching and confusing those issues with illegal immigration.

[Kay B. Day, Editor]

Francis, thanks for sharing that. I will look into that case.

Intangible, I appreciate your thoughts on this.

I believe Reid is pretty desperate to push this Act.