One of those things that those who are against immigration railed upon is their mistaken belief that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, take advantage of our welfare system, and thus take money away from the general public, which is unfair and imprudent However, what these complainers don’t seem to understand is that the vast majority of those that immigrate here are either in the prime of their working lives, or soon will be so, or are very young and have their entire working life ahead of them. In other words, immigrants are workers, and workers are the foundation on which our welfare system depends, because they are taxed and also productive in the goods and services they help create. In fact, cato.org tells us that “… immigrants consumed about 24 percent less in welfare benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis.”
On the other hand, when we study welfare, it becomes rather obvious that many of our senior citizens are not gainfully employed while also using a high percentage of our Social Security funds, as well as Medicare or Medicaid funds for healthcare. This signifies that in order to right our fiscal ship that countries such as the United States, need to have a constant replenishment of young people to help carry the load of our welfare state, which because the population of America has never had so many senior citizens, signifies that without these immigrants as well as newly native born or naturalized Americans, that this government would spend even more per capita on welfare, which as structured is a budget item not easily susceptible to budgetary cuts.
It would seem for a lot of people, especially for those that are personally struggling in making ends meet, that for them there needs to be an excuse, or a bogeyman to blame their ills and problems upon, and regrettably, immigration seems to be the scapegoat for many a person, but this is only because these underachieving citizens do not understand that young immigrants are actually beneficial to America. Additionally, for those who are crossing the border illegally, it has to be admitted that only those who are in good physical shape are going to be the ones who are going to succeed in that dangerous endeavor, which reflects that they are often in robust health, and because healthcare is one of the biggest expenditures that this government has to deal with, signifies that they won’t, in aggregate, be a burden upon it.
Those that want to complain about the sheer amount of money being spent on the welfare state, may indeed have their point, but their issue should not be about immigrants, but rather should be about the efficiency, as well as the allocation of how those monies are expended, for it has to be acknowledged that there are a fair amount of Americans that receive benefits, that are probably underserving of such, and in many a case, could contribute something of merit or labor to do their fair part for this benefit. This thus means that the citizens of America need to concentrate their complaints on what the true source of their troubles consists of, which probably has little to do with immigration at all.