ICE: Tab to remove illegal residents would approach $100 billion

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain and remove all 12 million people believed to be staying illegally in the United States, the federal government estimated Wednesday.

Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave the figure during a hearing before a Senate committee Wednesday.

She acknowledged it was based on "very rough calculations."

An ICE spokesman later said the $94 billion did not include the cost of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs -- dollar amounts that are largely unknowable.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/12/deportation.cost/index.html

---

That shouldn't bother the Republicans: they're never worried about budget deficits before....

[rodeodance]

1. and what would it cost to round up all the employers who hired them?

[MadMaddie]

2. Ding Ding...ding..

Here in WA they are going to deport a 16 year old girl that has been living in the US since she was 8 years old...her mother left Mexico and an abusive husband....she works and helps provide for her family...she wants to be a teacher in the US....her siblings born here won't be deported and her mother won't be deported

They are deporting her..she is no criminal....

The adinistration to save money has lumped all immigrants illegal or legal in the same bucket and have decided that it's not worth asking the questions to see if they are worthy to stay, if they are contributing to the good of the society.....

I have no problem deporting the criminals...but I do think that people like this 16 year old should be given a chance to earn their citizenship...she made no concious choice to come here..her mother did..

[sendero]

4. Exactly..

... what an utterly bogus bunch of tripe this "estimate" is.

[olddad56]

3. how much to remove Bush and Cheney.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

5. Great ... more no-bid contracts for Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, et al. (n/t)

[Nevernose]

6. Awesome! A simple tool to determine if we want illegals deported "tomorow!"

To be fair, I suck at actual math, but mind you I'm not bad at the THEORY behind actual science...

Anyway, it seems like if we wanted to begin deporting ALL illegals tomorrow, we just need to figure out "the math" for the following situation: Take the impact the economy would receive from the absence of illegal aliens and compare it to the effects of illegals of illegals being here.

The problem with this whole "taking American jobs" thing or the "taking jobs Americans don't want" thing, of course, is that the illegals taking American jobs are peasants in their own nations, and essentially slaves in ours. I've read statistics that say if we paid illegal migrant farm workers -- fruit pickers -- an actual living wage, then the price for our groceries would go up five whole cents a pound of vegetables (which would indicate more of a problem in Big Agro than anywhere else). Yet a guy who SHOULD be making 25 an hour putting together a tract home in Vegas is only making 10 dollars an hour, because that's literally ten times what he made back home -- not to mention that running water, electricity, and air conditioning are things she's never experienced before (and then, of course, the middle-class, US-born, carpenter is out of work...).

Unions are the answer. That, and helping other countries as much as we help ourselves (which isn't much, but that's a whole 'nother thread).

[DBoon]

7. The problem isn't unrestricted immigration

it is unrestricted hiring.

The lack of effective labor standards leads to an endless pursuit of the cheapest possible labor

If they don't have enough starving desparate displaced peasants to work for them, they will just pass a "free trade agreement" to create some more.

[Screwfly]

8. Or

the government could simply outlaw the transfer of U.S. currency via money order, check, or wire transfer to non-U.S. citizens in Latin American countries. Illegals in this country could try smuggling cash home in letters or packages, but I doubt very much of it would get through mail system without getting stolen. If illegals can't send money home regularly there's no incentive for them to stay in this country, or even come here in the first place.

[pampango]

12. Unless you're proposing to prevent anyone in the US, including

citizens and legal immigrants, from sending money to a Latin American country, you would have to allow a pretty big loophole for them to send money to their families. Heck, my wife (legal immigrant, now a citizen) is Filipino and regularly sends money to her family there. I assume that people here with African connections do the same with their families in Africa.

To be effective your ban would have to apply to anyone in the US who wants to send money to anyone in the Third World.

[Fovea]

9. And how much with the Bush admin charge per capita

those governments who do nothing to curb the illegal exodus of their citizens?

Would that be zero?

[Nihil]

10. Ummm ... disconnect?

> It would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain and remove all
> 12 million people ...
> ...
> An ICE spokesman later said the $94 billion did not include the cost
> of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs ...

:crazy:

So did they really mean "It would cost at least $94 billion to remove
all 12 million people" as they've just negated the other two stages ...?

:wtf:

(Edit for format)

[DavidDvorkin]

11. The War on Illegal Immigrants!

The Long War.!

The Cultural Purity War!

The War to Preserve What It Means to Be an American! Um, better not use that one.

[pampango]

14. I would love it if someone would come up with a historical example

of a country or economy that declined in the long run due to immigration, either legal or illegal. Greece? Rome? China? Egypt? Great Britain? France? Spain? The US? I would guess that the US has been the destination of more immigrants than any country in history? Many came before there were any immigration laws, many were legal after laws were enacted, and some have been illegal. While there was fierce resistance to immigration from Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe, our country and economy have not been devastated by their presence.

Would we be better country today if the Continental Congress had prohibited all immigration, including slaves (perhaps with an element of deportation as with current Hispanic immigrants)? If effective, we would be a much be a much whiter (no Asians, few Africans, only the Hispanics who lived in the Southwest when we took it from Mexico), much less heterogeneous, and much smaller in terms of population. Would that be better? I don't think so, but each of us is entitled to an opinion.

"But it is different now." A sentiment that was undoubtedly expressed by those opposed to the immigration of the Irish, and the Italians, and the Eastern Europeans, since they were viewed as a threat to jobs and wages. Immigration opponents in those days, just as many today, knew that you could not criticize immigration in theory, since almost all of us are descended from immigrants, but you could get a lot of public support from those already here to oppose the "next wave" of immigrants, say the Irish.

Then once the Irish immigrants become Irish-Americans, opponents could hope they would join in preventing Italians from immigrating here, the Italian-Americans to stop the Chinese, the Chinese-Americans to stop the Eastern Europeans, and so on and so on until the latest campaign to stop Hispanic immigration.

Maybe when I am 100 and the opponents to some future wave of immigrants gear up I can provide them with the slogans that have proven so effective over our history. "We are not opposed to immigration, just to these immigrants." "We are just protecting American jobs and wages." "It is not that we are xenophobic or racist, it is just that these immigrants are too poor, too lazy (or too hard-working, this one is flexible depending on the stereotype), and besides they speak a funny language."

[Javaman]

15. I'm waiting for the illegal immgrant czar. nt

[Lance_Boyle]

13. Pssshhh. They could hire illegals to do the roundups, and save millions!

n/t