Another look with facts checked.......
http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/13/im...irrationality/
"In early page in the poll, headlined "Biggest Concerns About Illegal Immigration," featured the public responses to a set of concerns that were identified by the pollsters as the most common issues raised in focus groups, letting the poll respondents say what their "one or two biggest concerns about illegal immigration today" might be. They ran thus:
Immigrants receiving free public services such as health care (48%)
Immigrants not paying taxes (35%)
Takes jobs from Americans and lowers wages (20%)
Too many immigrants aren't learning English (20%)
Weakens our security against terrorism (18%)
Causing crime problems in many communities (17%)
If you look down that list, something stands out: Each item reflects a fear based either on outright false information or on gross distortions from a highly selective set of facts.
Readers of our earlier discussions of the immigration debate will already be familiar with the groundlessness of most of these concerns, but it's still worthwhile going through them, and getting the requisite reality checks, so we can see just how far astray from anything rational we're wandering in this debate."
Some excerpts among many....
http://rand.org/news/press.06/11.14.html
Just a small fraction of America's health care spending is used to provide publicly supported care to the nation's undocumented immigrants, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.
Overall, immigrants to the United States use relatively few health services, primarily because they are generally healthier than their American-born counterparts, according to the study by the nonprofit research organization.
The report – which appears in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs – estimates that in the United States about $1.1 billion in federal, state and local government funds are spent annually on health care for undocumented immigrants aged 18 to 64. That amounts to an average of $11 in taxes for each U.S. household.
In contrast, a total of $88 billion in government funds were spent on health care for all non-elderly adults in 2000.
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/factchecks/C...ck10-16-07.pdf
Although the undocumented immigrant population doubled to about 12 million from 1994 to 2005, the violent crime rate in the United States declined by 34.2% and the property crime rate fell by 26.4%.2 This decline in crime rates was not just national, it also occurred in border cities and other cities with large immigrant populations—such as San Diego, El Paso, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami.
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/special_report/sr_022107.pdf
Crime Rates Have Declined as Immigration Has Increased:
Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.
Cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami also have experienced declining crime rates during this period.
Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates than Natives:
Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born.
The foreign-born incarceration rate in 2000 was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for nativeborn non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born black men.
Native-born Hispanic men were nearly 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men in 2000, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost 3 times higher than that of foreign-born white men.
Foreign-born Mexicans had an incarceration rate of only 0.7 percent in 2000—more than 8 times lower than the 5.9 percent rate of native-born males of Mexican descent.
Foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men had an incarceration rate of 0.5 percent, compared to 3.0 percent of native-born males of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent.
?
