EDITORIAL: More Steps Needed To Curb Illegal Immigration

The Dorchester Times has long lamented the impact of illegal immigration on the Saline County community and the rest of our nation. The current economic downturn has brought renewed urgency to the issue.

Nebraska lawmakers and Gov. Dave Heineman recently enacted new legislation prohibiting the issuance of public benefits to illegal aliens. It also requires public employers and businesses with state government contracts to use the E-Verify system before hiring.

While the new law does not address the loss of an estimated $126 million a year in state taxpayer funds for education, emergency medical care and incarceration of illegal immigrants, it does save much-needed funding that might have gone to pay for public housing, retirement, welfare, food assistance, and unemployment for illegals

Our own state Sen. Russ Karpisek played a key role in the passage of the new law. We thank him for his efforts.

Now the state and local communities need to take further steps to discourage illegal immigration in Nebraska, since the federal government lacks courage to do so. If we do not, we can expect the same woes currently facing California, which is currently issuing IOUs to its citizens -- including to taxpayers (legal citizens) who are due tax refunds!

Despite having one of the highest income tax rates in the nation (10.55%), California is raising taxes on legal residents and companies while paying about $80 million a day in unemployment insurance benefits. This month alone, California is expected to pay more than $1.5 billion in unemployment welfare. While another ballot proposition could be in the works to cut off some benefits, it may be too late. The state is insolvent and legal residents are leaving en masse.

A recent editorial by Investor's Business Daily notes, "California is a leader in both government debt and the sanctuary city movement," which prohibits enforcement action against illegals. As a result, "illegal aliens constitute about 7% of the state's population" and state officials say that illegals "add about $4 billion to $6 billion in costs, primarily in the area of schools, prisons and jails, and emergency rooms." According to statistics released by the FBI, more than 95% of arrest warrants issued in Los Angeles for the crime of murder are for illegal aliens, while "nearly 25% of the California prison population (and that of the rest of the nation) consists of illegal aliens."

Education costs for illegal immigrants exceed even the prison expenses. In Nebraska, for example, a 2004 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that educational expenditures for illegal immigration were costing Nebraska taxpayers $104.1 million dollars a year.

We hope that the State of Nebraska will make public the percentage of its incarcerated prisoners who are in the United States illegally. Then, to highlight the scope of the problem, state leaders should send the bill for incarceration expenses to the prisoners' countries of origin -- knowing full well, of course, that Nebraska taxpayers would ever be reimbursed.

We would also like to see Nebraska leaders disclose the cost of educating illegal immigrants and their children. Finally, we believe health providers and hospitals, both of whom receive large sums of taxpayer reimbursements every year, should announce their annual expenses for providing emergency care to uninsured illegals. The figures for these two sectors in the Crete area alone would be staggering. Perhaps those who employ illegals should be asked to foot the bill.

Of course, cost are only half the problem caused by undocumente residents. The growing presence of gangs, drug trafficking, communicable diseases, a growing underclass, and a cultural disconnect are the other side of the illegal immigration story. (We should note that one Crete professional tells us that as many as a dozen Mexican gangs have set up shop in the Crete area.)

Ultimately, only increased border and interior enforcement -- followed by timely deportation -- and requiring legal immigrants to renounce citizenship from their country of origin, will address the problem. Only the feds can do that. Sadly, it seems the Obama administration has even less political appetite for such action than the Bush administration in its early years.

One thing is clear. As stated by IBD, it is getting harder to argue that illegal aliens are here to do the jobs Americans won't do. And nowadays, there are fewer jobs, period.

Legal residents of Nebraska and the rest of the country -- those who file taxes and provide almost all of the tax revenue to local, state and the federal government -- should get to decide who gets free education and medical treatment. Legal taxpayers should get to decide who to resides in our nation's borders.

Illegal immigration is no longer just a question of law and borders. Now it is a question of economic survival.