The costs of a government-sponsored crisis
Accusations of child neglect are surfacing in the United States as leaked photos from Arizona and Texas border patrol processing centers show hundreds of migrant children sleeping in razor-lined cages. Thousands of unaccompanied minors, who have narrowly escaped from dangerous, cartel-infested areas of Central America and Mexico, have been brought into federally-run boarder patrol centers, only to receive further inhumane treatment. The photos reveal that minors – many young girls under the age of twelve – are left unsupervised, crowded into caged cells along with hundreds of their peers, and forced to sleep on the ground.
Since the leak, new regulations have come into effect. According to Patrol Agent Charge Leslie Lawson’s memo obtained by Townhall, steps were taken on June 6th to change procedures at one of Arizona’s border detention facilities:
Effective immediately, the use of personally owned cellular phones, cameras, or recoding devices in the Nogales Dentition Facility and Nogales Processing Center is strictly prohibited.
Forget the living standards of the kids; Patrol Lawson decided to get tough with the whistleblowers instead.
Despite (tragically) popular belief, millions of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. are hard workers, adding net value to the U.S. economy. Roughly 11 million illegal U.S. immigrants are providing nearly $11billion worth of revenue per year through state and local tax payments – an amount that is estimated to skyrocket by billions if more immigrants earn a legal status (not citizenship – just a legal status). Furthermore, over half of illegal immigrants voluntarily choose to pay income tax, knowing they’re very unlikely to see a social security paycheck or Medicare subsidies down the road.
Meanwhile, the U.S. spends over $18 billion a year on immigration enforcement to keep their young counterparts locked in cages.
Yes – we can debate the specifics of immigration reform; but U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants alike can probably agree that $18 billion is far too much to be spending on a government-sponsored humanitarian crisis.