Reprint from the Last Reporter - First of a multi part report
August 19, 2007
Last Reporter - Chet DembeckEditor's note: This is the first part of a multi-part series where Last Reporter will explore Maryland's growing illegal immigration problem. The series will also examine the politicians, nonprofit advocates and businesses that are fostering this quiet invasion, and the economic conditions that are fueling it. Last Reporter will attempt to define the negative consequences of illegal immigration is having on Maryland and show what the average citizen can do to voice his or her opposition to this economic, cultural and legal threat to our state and country. The series will also explore some real solutions to this serious issue.
The Quiet Invasion
Illegal immigration and illegal aliens were two terms that never entered the minds of most Marylanders until the mid-1990s.
Unlike Western and Southwestern states such as California,Texas and New Mexico, Maryland had never experienced the massive influx of illegal aliens it has come to know, until the last decade.
At first, the average citizen didn't know what to make of the phenomena.
But soon, residents of towns throughout the state began to see large groups of Latino men gathering on their street corners running over to and surrounding the trucks of small and larger business owners, who would show up everyday to hire them.
As of 2000, the
Pew Hispanic Center estimates Maryland's illegal population had swollen to 225,000 to 275,000 -- and growing.
Cheap labor for employers but costly for taxpayers
Local businesses hired and continue to hire this labor because it is cheap in so many ways.
In reality, it gives business owners a way to shift the cost of their operations onto taxpayers and their competitors, who are playing by the rules.
For example, employers hire illegals because they can pay them under the table and not withhold federal, state and FICA taxes, which is required by law when hiring legal immigrants or U.S. citizens.
In a recent study, the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, found that illegal immigrants only paid 2 percent of the region's taxes, while they made up more than 4 percent of its households.
This simply means the vast majority of illegals pay no taxes.
It also means those hiring them do not have to pay workman's comp, or contribute toward the illegals' medical benefits or unemployment insurance.
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So when an illegal worker gets injured on the job or becomes ill, he is often driven to the nearest emergency room and dropped off.
Since federal law forbids hospitals from refusing anyone medical care regardless of their ability to pay, illegals are treated in emergency rooms, which is the most costly and inefficient method of providing health care.
It also means that citizens, who may have a true emergency, are often faced with crowded emergency rooms, with doctors busy seeing illegal alien patients suffering from such minor ailments as colds or upset stomachs.
Since most illegals have no insurance and cannot pay, hospitals absorb the costs, and at the end of the year show these charges as unpaid bills.
Health insurance premiums raised
In some states, such hospitals with too many bad debts are forced to close their doors. But in the Free State, the Maryland Health Care Commission steps in and simply allows the hospitals with bad debts to raise their rates for all of us.
This is part of the reason, you and I face 20% to 30% health insurance premium increases every year.
In effect, you and I are subsidizing the health care benefits for the cheap labor unscrupulous businesses use to increase their profits and gain an edge against their more law abiding competitors.
This is no accident.
The oligarchy running the Mexican government offers no economic opportunity for its uneducated masses and encourages them to go North in an attempt to systematically transfer the cost of its citizens' health care to states such as Maryland.
In addition to depressing wages for entry-level, citizen workers, illegals cost Maryland taxpayers an estimated $331 million annually -- just to provide them basic services such as education and to cover incarceration costs, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR).In 2010, FAIR estimates illegal aliens will cost Maryland taxpayers $551 million and by 2020 nearly $1 billion.
Cultural Cost
But aside from the dollars-and-cents issues, the quiet invasion of Maryland by illegals is exacting a major toll on the state's language and culture.
For example, all of our state agencies have been forced to hire interpreters for Spanish speakers, and in some areas, signs are now in English and Spanish.
In fact, Spanish has become the dominant language being spoken is large portions of Montgomery County and other parts of Maryland.
A new study by FAIR shows that limited English proficiency is rising in Maryland schools, as are the costs of teaching children in Spanish.
But it's just not our language that is suffering, it is our culture.
Unlike my great grandfather, who had to pass a physical, sign a statement renouncing his former country and its leaders, and be expected to speak English when he entered the state -- illegals have no such obligations.
In many cases, they have no desire to assimilate, and since they came to our state by breaking the law, they have no respect for it.
No, from the get go, they have and are being taught that obeying the law is an inconvenience, which does not apply to them and it keeps them from getting what they want.
So, it is not surprising that some illegal aliens are joining dangerous street gangs, doing nothing to assimilate into our culture, and only want to make money and wire it to destinations South of the border.
That is not to say that all illegal aliens fall into these categories, but the fact is -- at the very least -- they are guilty of jumping in front of hundreds of thousands who have been patiently waiting in line for years to get a chance to migrate to Maryland legally.
How did it happen?
How we reached this point in the quiet invasion of Maryland is similar in many ways to the non-fiction story "The Perfect Storm," depicting the horrific storm in 1991 that formed off the coast of Gloucester Massachusetts and was responsible for the demise of many fishermen.
*We will continue this discussion in Part Two of "The Quiet Invasion." *
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