In action has decimated America.
With the stroke of a pen, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law what the ACOU dubbs one of the most radical anti immigrant bills ever passed by any state.
Simon Bill four is now law in the state of Texas.
S before creates a new state crime for a legal entry into Texas, gives local police the power to arrest and judges the power to remove violators.
But the problem is far more than just numbers.
Well, it sounds dramatic to say the strictest laws ever passed by any state. Well, states aren't supposed to pass laws about a federal issue like illegal immigration. But the point is the federal government is doing nothing about it.
So I guess we'll try. And as we talked about earlier in the show with Tim the lawyer, Tim Sandefer, you know, this will probably get hung up in the courts, but there is a chance that the Supreme Court says the federal government is actually not addressing something they're supposed to address, and so we'll let the states do it. There's a possibility that could happen. By the way, something back on December fifth, two weeks ago, twelve thousand migrants
were encountered at our border. I don't know who decided to use this language. Migrants encountered, illegals crossed most of the time, getting in and staying here. Twelve thousand. That was the highest ever in a single day, a record. Back on December fifth, two weeks later, yesterday, fourteen thousand encountered at.
The border, a new record.
Everybody, nice job setting new records regularly for illegal immigration. Unbelievable. As we often do whenever we're talking about this topic, we turn to the Center for Immigration Studies in a variety of people we've talked to over the years, and today we're going to talk to Stephen Camarata, lead author of a report saying the majority of immigrant households use welfare. I would like to know more about that, Stephen, Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Thanks for having me.
So what can you tell us about who use it? Because one of the arguments, well there are two arguments. One of the arguments for closing down the borders so that people come across and they drain our resources and cost taxpayer money.
Taxpayers money.
Then colleges come out with these sophisticated studies and say, no, they actually contribute to the economy more than they take. So what have you found?
Yeah, so okay, A lot of times people say different terminologies. A couple of things. When we talk about immigrants overall in this data, the first number, fifty four percent of all immigrant households use one of the major welfare programs. A lot of it is the non cash programs like food stamps and public housing and the earned incomes tax
credit and all that sort of stuff. So when we're talking about that, we look at the fiscal impact of immigrants on the United States, all the taxes they pay and all the services they use, that looks to be negative. One of the things you have to decide though on that, just methodologically, is what do you do with children. So a person has a child who's enrolled in school, and that child's on Medicaid, and that child is reskiving free lunches, or is on the Wick program or what have you.
How do you count that since the child was born here. If you want to make the immigrants not seen like they're a fiscal burden, you just exclude all that and you say none of that matters. Yes, the parent is not able to provide for the child. So the child technically is getting the food stamps. The child is on Medicaid right, the child gets wick, but none of that that's all counted for native expenses because the child was born here. If you count the children of immigrants with
the young children, they're dependent children. If you will with the immigrants themselves, you usually end up with a negative number. That doesn't mean that the children will not grow up and be at least average. That doesn't mean that, but it means right now and for the foreseeable future, the immigrants and their kids are net fiscal drain. Now. One other point, if you want to go a little deeper all just play is because we live in a society that's unwilling to tax itself for all the things that
we want, and that we borrow so much money. That's also another factor that consider is that the average person is basically in fiscal deficits because we're not willing to raise taxes to pay for all this stuff we want to give out at the federal level, at the state level where you have to have balanced budgets. Whenever we do a calculation, immigrants are unambiguously a fiscal drain, paying less than taxes than they use in services if you
count the kids. Now on the final point, the economics, which I won't go much into, there's no question that the US economy is hundreds of billions of dollars, actually well more than a trillion dollars larger than it otherwise would be because we have so many more people in the country. Whether that is a benefit to the native born that increases the per capita GDP in the United
States totally different questions. But there's no question more people means a bigger economy, more economic activity, more labors, more consumers. That doesn't mean you're richer, because if all that mattered was the aggregate size of the economy, well then people would say that Bangladesh is much richer than New Zealand because it is its economy is much larger. Right, of course, what matters is per capita. When we look at per capita GDP or to capita income, it doesn't seem that
the native born population benefits very much from the immigrants. Ah, but the immigrants do benefit in that sure consider.
Yeah, that's interesting.
You know that was a great lesson the last few minutes in the great Mark Twain quote of the three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics. I mean, because obviously you can use a lot of those statistics to make arguments whatever direction you want to make. But that that's really interesting stuff, well done.
And I also think.
I don't know how much of it is when you when you see people's reaction to immigration, And I don't know how much you want to differentiate between legal immigration and illegal immigration. Obviously we've got a ton of illegal immigration going on right now. But I think people see, you know, in their schools, you got a bunch of people that don't speak English and their schools struggling to deal with it. Your er is the regular hospital for a lot of people who are here who don't have
any sort of healthcare or insurance anything like that. And clogs, I mean, there's a lot of guming up the works of systems that weren't designed for this. Isn't that where a lot of people's attitudes come from? Do you think?
Sure? Sure?
I mean, people don't know the statistics. Here's what you get again. You get fifty four percent from the Survey of Income and Program Participation shows of immigrant households using one or more welfare programs we estimate that it's fifty nine percent for illegals percent for legal immigrants. Yeah, both are very high. And the illegals can receive more receive use more programs, but the legals can use programs to get more benefits. So it's a little bit complicated, but
the short answer is they're both really high. Let me tell your listeners this though, so they don't have to leave with that. The rate for the native born is thirty nine percent. Yes, that's right. It's extremely common in America for the native born population. And you don't want to know what it is in California. I mean in California it's it's even higher. It's forty one percent for native born households use one or more of the welfare programs. And even if you say now, you might say, well
which programs can you exclude some and get a difference. Yeah, you can exclude the free school lunches and breakfasts, but you still get thirty five percent, and in California you still get fifty three percent. For the immigrants, you still get for the illegal immigrants you get fifty six percent, and for the lead immigrants in California, excluding the free school lunch program, you still get fifty three percent. No one program drives the numbers. They're just using a lot
of programs across the board. And again, Native welfare use is very high, and immigrants is higher still, and California kind of is the tops. They're the most one of the most generous states.
Now generous, I like the word generous.
Yes, they're generous.
Well, I'm glad I'm being so generous. I didn't realize I had a choice.
That's right, you're being generous. The other thing tor members people said, well give but wait, how can the illegal immigrants get so much? The short answer is, I can run through it quick. It's the usborn children. They can receive anything. Also, not all programs are barred, like free school lunch and WICK. Anyone can receive those programs. Also a number of states, including California, provide medicaid even to illegal adults, and of course all their usborn children could
get it. And there are other states that provide the food stamps. Also, because we give out I know this sounds shocking to people, we could explain it. We give out work authorization to illegal immigrants, so they're technically illegally in the United States. They're called inadmissible aliens if you want to know the term. But we've given them social Security numbers so they can work. But this allows them to access cash benefits from the earned income tax credit.
You don't pay any federal income tax if your incomes low enough, and you get sometimes a check for four or five thousand dollars from the government. And yes, illegal immigrants can and you get that check because they have the work authorization. They're just so you understand that that happens. Now, that's not all illegal immigrants. Don't get me wrong, Sure, that's what happens.
Well, And just to make it clear, I mean we always say this. I don't begrudge anybody doing this. Man, if you knew you could get in and have a kid in the United States and what the path that's going to set them on, Hell yeah, I would do that, right And look.
The other that's right. Look, we have no evidence that's probably happening, but that's not what drives the numbers. No evidence. This is fraud. And let me tell you something else. Eighty three percent of immigrant households have at least one worker. Ninety four percent of illegal immigrant of illegal immigrants, it's eighty three for all immigrant households, and it's ninety four percent for illegal immigrant households have at least one worker.
The comparison with the native borns is seventy three percent. But work, Yeah, work and welfare go together just fine. All the programs we've been discussing. You couldn't get the Well the Earn Income Task Credit is for workers, but you can get wick and free school lunch, and live in public housing and be on Medicaid and many other things even if you work. If your income is low enough, So if you're like a family of four and you make less than forty thousand a year, most welfare programs
are open to you. And in California and specific the income thresholds tend to be high, so they tend to give you a lot and you're eligible for just about everything. Other states like Texas or Florida more restrictive, but still you can get lots of programs. Work does not in any way preclude welfare use. If you had to put this whole phenomenon in a bumper sticker, when it comes to immigrant workers, it's there's a high cost to cheap labor,
but it's born by taxpayers. The costs are diffuse. They're born by everyone. Whereas the employer and maybe the consumer who's using the services, they get the benefit, but everyone has to pay got.
So you get your lawn mode for what you feel like is a really great price, or house cleaned or whatever, but your taxes are so high.
Right, And I think that's the way to think about it, exactly. And so the short entw is okay, but maybe we need these workers. But I would add one other thing, and that is that one of the things that's happening in America, one of the most troubling trends is all the US born people of all races, black, Hispanic, and white. We've seen this phenomenon sitting on them sidelines. That is, they neither work nor do they look for work, which means every unemployment number you see does not include So
let me give you just one exgo. If you look at men who have only a high school education or less in nineteen sixty, only seven of them. We're entirely out of the labor market, neither working nor looking for men looking for work today it's twenty five percent. So we have no millions of less educated Americans sitting on
the sidelines. So if we really do need workers, my solution is that it would make more sense to let wages rise and help the working for and this would help attract Americans who are sitting on the sidelines back. But you'd probably need to reform the welfare system and especially the disability system. Yeah, a long explanation. A lot of these numbers reflect what happened, is we reformed welfare and everyone just went on disability.
Yeah, I mean.
That's a gross oversimplification.
Hey, this is talk radio, that's what we do.
I got to interrupt you just because you hit us with the blizzard of stuff there. All of it really really good man, you're speaking our language. We cover those topics so often. And the number of healthy men who are who can choose not to work. I mean, when in world history have you ever been able to choose not to work as a healthy man, you can choose not to work. On our current society, you might have
to change based on all those stats. Change it from the Center for Immigration Studies to the Center of We're already a socialist country studies.
Right, I mean, people have that misconception. There's really not the extensive nature of America's welfare system is not that different than many Western European countries. I mean, the European countries differ. But that's one reason why if you have a relatively laxed immigration system, which our legal system is mostly based on family relationships, not skills, and of course
illegal immigration is not very selective at all. And so what the administration is doing by releasing so many people in the United States, that's the part I think the public still doesn't quite get. It's not that people people are doing this in enormous numbers, slipping past the border patrol,
but that's not mostly what's happening. They're being caught and then released, or they're presenting themselves at the border and being presented and being released under a variety of what I would argue is abuse of the lag using parole and asylum and such. But the point is that's what's happening. So if you had a wall that no one could ever get past between the ports of entry, it might not make that much difference.
Right, I see your point, because it is being released. Right, Hey, we gotta take a break. I really enjoyed your time. I'm glad we could get you on. We're gonna talk to you again, Stephen Camarada with the Center for Immigration Studies.
That was great stuff.
Thank you very much, thanks for having me.
Yeah, man, he was good. We gotta have him on again when Joe's here. Love that stuff so interesting, looking at statistics from a number of different ways, which people rarely do. Anyway, we got to introduce Katie Green to one of the worst Christmas songs we've been playing for years. I bet she hasn't heard this.
Coming up next, Armstrong and Getty