Corporations: the missing factor in immigrant-health care debate
Child of a migratory farm laborer in the field during the harvest at FSA labor camp, Tex. Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr
Two Republicans, Senators Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have requested numerous major changes in the health care reform proposal drafted by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The changes include things like prohibiting the use of federal money to pay for abortion, but while the tiny coterie bickers over that admitedly major provision, they agree that illegal immigrants should not benefit from the health care overhaul in any way.
Actually, Enzi and Grassley go further by requesting a five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to receive tax credits, or subsidies, to help them buy insurance. While the legal immigrant waiting period may seem excessive to invidiuals who possess souls and beating hearts, similar statements about illegal immigrants have become commonplace. Of course we shouldn’t provide health care for illegal immigrants! They’re illegal! Illegal is bad!
However, once the discussion is permitted to evolve past shallow slogans, it’s obvious that providing health care for all immigrants (illegal and legal) actually benefits everyone. Last week, I attended a town hall meeting in New Jersey during which Rep. Rush Holt (D) explained that if an immigrant, legal or otherwise, arrived at a hospital and was diagnosed with meningitis, he would want that immigrant to stay in the hospital instead of infecting his or her entire community.
In addition to the infectious disease issue, Newsweek recently argued that adding immigrants to the insurance pool would actually lower costs for everyone because immigrants are relatively young and healthy when they come to the United States (health care expenditures for the average immigrant are 55 percent lower than for a native-born American citizen with similar characteristics). “Insurance in principle has to cover the average medical cost of all the people it’s serving,” says Leighton Ku, a professor of health policy at George Washington University. “So if you add cheaper people to the pool, like immigrants, you reduce the average cost.”
The article goes on to explain that if illegals were covered, the hidden $1,000 annual tax Americans pay for the uninsured would decrease, further lowering premiums and “relieving some of the financial burden on state and local governments,” according to Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago professor who specializes in poverty and public health.
There appears to be a giant missing chunk of blame in this whole illegal immigrant-health care debate, and that is the role of business. Employers currently have incentive to hire undocumented immigrants, who don’t require health care coverage. That means blue collar Americans lose jobs to their cheaper, uninsured counterparts.
Newsweek argues that a plan mandating insurance for native workers but not their illegal counterparts actually makes “life harder on Americans competing for jobs (and railing against immigrants) because it means that hiring them will cost more than hiring a recent transplant from Mexico City.” Unfortunately, poor working stiffs fail to blame their fat cat bosses for exploiting cheap labor, and skip to screaming in the confused faces of Mexican immigrants. It’s the poor fighting the poor, and it’s an ugly thing.
We need to face the reality that immigration is inevitable. Back at the town hall meeting, Holt made the argument that unless we’re ready to live in a total police state where every American citizen must carrry an ID card proving they are a natural born citizen, and our country’s borders (north, south, east, and west,) are entirely sealed off, there will be legal and illegal immigrants entering the United States. That’s the way it’s always been.
Meanwhile, corporations will continue to rush for the bottom line with cheap labor, which includes finding the poor, desperate migrant who can’t afford to wait for health care, and legal U.S. citizens can either kick the already downtrodden or fight for better conditions for all workers.
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Well, finally. I’ve been waiting for someone to write this. We’d all be better off if unauthorized immigrants were included in our health care system. People have always followed available means of livelihood. If jobs and money flow freely across the border (and they do), then workers and their families should be allowed to do the same. Our nation shouldn’t be defined by meanness and stinginess. We’re all better off when we take care of each other.
I have one bone to pick: Please don’t call people who come here without authorization “illegals.” “Illegal” is not a noun, it’s an adjective. “Undocumented” or “unauthorized” are much better adjectives.
It was only last year in May that the federal government started treating the misdemeanor of unauthorized immigration as a criminal offense. And all that has accomplished has been to terrorize whole communities and target Latinos, whether citizens or immigrants.
Legal immigration is a great thing, and we should reform our laws to promote it.
Illegal immigration is a scourage on the nation and will bankrupt this country if it is not reigned in.
Paul Samuelson, the noted economist, has pointed out that high skilled immigrants put more into the economy than they take out. Low skilled pull out more than they put in. He has stated we must be selecting our immigrants, bringing in the highly skilled people, and then we can have economic the economic base to admit some low skilled workers. To do otherwise is to bankrupt the country.
Other first world countries are picking the best and the brightest. We should be doing the same.
What we have right now is unskilled people flooding into the country illegally, thousands a day, who are overwhelming our economic system. Sure, some dishonest employers are making out like bandits, but the economy as a whole is suffering.
Cheap labor does not produce national wealth. Don’t believe me? The countries in the world with the cheapest labor are the poorest, and those with the most expensive labor are the richest.
Look to CA which has 1/4 of the nations illegal aliens. It is costing the taxpayer $1.2 billion a year in subsidized medical care for just the adult illegals. Totat estimated cost of subsidizing the illegal population is over $10 billion a year, about 1/2 of California’s budget deficit. Uneducated foreingers here illegally have skewed the California economy.
Then there is the rule of law.
How do you teach your child to follow the law when the kid sitting next to them in school, and his entire family, is breaking law, after law, after law and laughing about it. Illegals have on the average 3 fake ids. They entred illegally. They drive illegally. They don’t pay for insurance or registration. If caught they use a fake id. They use document fraud and stolen ids to work illegally, obtain government benefits illegally, and avoid paying their bills.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, almost all illegals are Hispanic.
Why should lawbreaking Hispanics be given greater rights to immigrate here than law abiding people of all other races and ethnic groups?
Why should Hispanic Americans have a greater right to family reunification with their lawbreaking relatives than Americans of all other races and ethnic groups do for their law abiding relatives trying to come in legally.
Pro amnesty = racism.
Amnesty violates the equal protection of the laws clause of our consitition.
No one in America, not even illegal aliens, should be above the law.
We must halt illegal immigration and either deport or cause illegal aliens already here to self deport.
And yes, it is easy.
1. Require E verify for all employers.
2. Require the Social Security Adminsitration to advise all employers of duplicate and fraudulent SSN of their workers.
3. Jail employers who hire illegals.
4. Create a new law so that companies that do it right can sue those companies who hire illegals for triple damages for unfair competition.
5. Require verification for all social benefits.
6. Provide emergency medical treatment, but when stablized, the illegal is immediately deported.
7. Require all landlords use E verify when renting, so illegal will not be able to rent.
If necessary, we start sweeps. President Eisenhower, with 700 men, in 4 months, rounded up 1.5 Mexicans and deported them. He made it miserable on purpose so they would not come back. It worked. He kept his oath to defend this country. Our present leadership is not.
It is time to stop being the world’s bank.
This is our country. Anyone who wants to join us must do it legally. That is who we are as people. Those who come illegally, get the boot.
bettyb, I really would like to have a constructive conversation with you, but it is obvious that you’ve already made up your mind. Have you ever met an “illegal” immigrant? Do you have any real world experience that would qualify you to make such wild claims? As it so happens, I do. I am a social worker that works primarily with undocumented immigrants and I can assure you that they are not “laughing” about breaking the law. As a matter of fact, they are generally working harder than you for less money while paying the same amount of taxes, but not qualifying for social programs.
I hope that someday you forcibly separated from your family. What you advocate is already happening and it is a huge problem and I find it shocking that you can be so callous to the plight of other people. Personally, I wish you the worst of luck.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jamie H. . Jamie H. said: RT: @allisonkilkenny Corporations: the missing factor in immigrant-health care debate http://tinyurl.com/nxs4uq [...]
The bombardment of American voters at the doors of Congress must be heard, to make E-Verify a permanent illegal immigrant enforcement tool? It’s incredulous that we are winning small wars against our lawmakers beneficiaries–the special interest lobby. LEGISLATORS ARE FINALLY HEARING OUR ANGRY VOICES. Rep. Joe Wilson C-SC opened the eyes of millions of Americans, who are been left unaware of the cloaked–AMNESTY–committees that is going to rip the fabric of every voters life apart. Any detail in the national media has been subdues or intentionally omitted, as with the crowds of Tea Party opponents. Sen. Harry Reid could be stretching his neck out for the headsman in his re-election campaign, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They both have used their political influence in trying to overturn E-Verify. Pro-Illegal alien lawmakers could table it, under the “Sunset Provision” on September 30?
President Obama’s direction towards an unmentionable path to citizenship for all those who broke our law is abhorrent. After the controversial eruption in the Session of Congress, they surely must be aware that imposing immigration reform on the people could break them? Americans taxpayers are already supporting business welfare? Corporate entities want these destitute people here to exploit, but don’t want to pay for their health care, schooling or towards the massive numbers surviving in prison. They leave that to the fading middle class taxpayers who carry the tax burden? Over a decade has passed since illegal people started coming here in droves and with little or no laws, to blockade their arrival we are now talking over 20 million. Nor does it stop there? Owing to the clarion call of Amnesty ringing out in the slums and ghetto’s of foreign criminals, sick, elderly and those without means, from all over the world will descend on us. IT MEANS OVERPOPULATION?
Bad as it may be now, who is going to subsidize the new arrivals? Not the business cartels that’s for sure? Once again taxpayers will be heavily taxed to pay for the new shipment of poor, uneducated from every region. How can we expect to have any government public option for our own people, when our gates remain wide open for “Anchor Babies” and the illegal millions expecting a free handout? A nurse in a Nevada hospital indicated they have a row of beds of illegal immigrants on dialysis, which was costing weekly $18.000 dollars for each treatment. Tell me who pays for that? The US government pays a small portion; the rest is acquired from the hospital or taxpayer.
I want a single payer system for homeless veterans, seniors, single mothers with children and poor American families. But I refuse to pay for everybody who climbs, crawls under the fence or bluffs the Federal officer at shipping ports and airports of entry. It’s not our responsibility. DON’T WAIT! PESTERYOUR SENATOR OR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY AT 202-224-3121? Find true facts by GOOGLING NUMBERSUSA, JUDICIAL WATCH & IMMIGRATION COUNTERS
This article makes me wish you had a print-friendly link, Miss Kilkenny.