John Stossel Needs to Think Harder

    On Saturday, August 22, 2015, at 7:49pm EDT, John Stossel wrote an article called "Immigration foes don’t have facts on their side." Here's the response to his claims*:

"Clearly, lots of Americans are mad about immigration. But we libertarians believe that people trapped in horrible countries deserve a chance at a better life and that free trade in labor, not just products, is a good thing."

    Everyone thinks everyone should be able to have a better life, but not at the expense of others (as in slavery/tax/indentured servitude).

"Why would I think that when my Facebook "fans" tell me things like: "Most immigrants, legal & illegal, get food stamps & welfare"?

Because that’s not true."

    It's strange that I just stumbled across this today.

"Of course, some immigrants cheat, many hospitals lose money treating undocumented people and immigrants’ kids get free public schooling. On average, the lifetime fiscal impact of the average immigrant is negative $3,000, says the National Research Council."

        Imagine a poor Mexican illegally comes to America, making $20,000~ a year, and has three kids. ONE child PER year of school costs $10,000. Three kids times $10,000 = $30,000 taxpayer money, times 10 years of school = $300,000. American citizens can't even pay off their $30,000 student loans, so how can immigrants take $300,000 solely through education and actually pay it back?

"But the NRC goes on to say that descendants of the immigrant make a positive fiscal contribution of $83,000." 

    "Rich" Americans put money into the government, grow old, and take money out (and we still struggle with money our whole lives). This results in an $18 trillion debt. Yet Stossel thinks poor immigrants can succeed with a better life in America while living a worse life than Americans and contributing more in taxes than Americans while taking less out? If immigrants help our economy, why didn't they just help theirs?

"Even illegal immigration helps delay the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. Young illegal workers pay into the system — but most don’t collect. “Medicare and Social Security — the biggest welfare programs,” says Nowrasteh. “Immigrants subsidize those programs massively.”

    That's a brilliant plan. Charge foreigners money to pay for our seniors. The problem is they will get to collect Social Security (and Obamacare) when they get amnesty. Here's what Ann had to say about it:

"...Considering as we're always being taunted [that] immigrants are so young and vital, whereas the white people, they're old; they're dying off. Well... you would think, in your later years, that's when you might need a little more government assistance, not when you're... at the peak of your earning power."

    Now, back to Stossel:

"Health policy journal Health Affairs says in 2009 immigrants contributed $13.8 billion more to the Medicare Trust Fund than they collected in benefits. In the same year, native-born Americans took out $30.9 billion more than they paid in."

    But you want illegals to get amnesty, hence the ability to collect Medicare?

"Coulter says that the new immigrants don’t assimilate the way Europeans did. Maybe that’s true, but I pointed out that immigrants from Nigeria, Jamaica and Ghana are more likely to be employed than native-born Americans and twice as likely to get a college degree. "I don’t believe it," answered Coulter."

    Is that taking college degrees and employment from Americans? Either way, all immigrants from Nigeria, Jamaica, and Ghana combined equals 1 million. That's 2% of immigrants. Assuming Stossel chose the best 3 countries, those immigrants equal 2% of immigrants. 2% of immigrants get an A+; 90% get an F.

She also argues that America admits too many immigrants, but how many is too many? Thirteen percent of America’s population is now foreign born (down from 15 percent in 1915).

    Yeah, leave out the fact they were only 4% in 1970. (And income inequality mirrors how many immigrants are in the US.)

"Immigrants make up 27 percent of the population in Switzerland and Australia."

    They pick their immigrants; our immigrants pick us. The majority of immigrants to Australia are from Britain. The largest immigrant group to Switzerland is Italians. They pick their immigrants; we should too.

"Of course, it would be good if all immigrants came here legally. But America makes that difficult."

    America takes more immigrants than the rest of the world combined. Yes, a couple of countries have immigrants as 27% of the population, but America taking more in than the entire world? That has to count for something.

"Forbes says a computer programmer from India who wants to work in America legally must wait an average of 35 years. A Mexican teenager would have to wait 131 years. No wonder people give up on the legal approach and sneak in."

    Mexicans are the largest immigrant group and they wait 131 years? Then immigrants from Britain must be waiting about 1000 years. Look at all of the discrimination.

"Donald Trump calls immigrants "criminals," and some are. We don’t know how many because America doesn’t know how many illegals are here. But a count of prisoners shows that more Americans are jailed than immigrants."

    Immigrants make up 14%~ of the population. Of course there should be more Americans in jail. Either way, like Ann says, ZERO immigrants should be criminals.

"Social Science Quarterly found ":cities with greater growth in immigrant ... populations ... have steeper decreases in homicide and robbery rates.""

    One could say, "Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have low immigrant populations and low crime," or one could just say, "Correlation does not equal causation."

"The facts show that immigration is mostly good."

    For Americans?



*The formatting of Stossel's article has been stripped.