Mexican President Vicente Fox's government has decided to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying local, state, and federal officials in the United States for more lenient policies towards illegal immigrants. This interference in our government's policies is outrageous and should be condemned.
The political and financial leaders of Mexico are using the United States as a safety valve for millions of underemployed Mexican citizens. Encouragement as massive waves of their poorest citizens cross into the United States allows the Mexican ruling class to continue to avoid real economic, social, and political reform.
Not only does the Mexican government rid itself of millions of its own underemployed citizens in this process, the government gets the added benefit of money sent back to Mexico from its citizens working in the United States. These funds now represent Mexico's second largest source of foreign income, right after oil and ahead of tourism! This subsidy serves to mollify tens of millions of Mexican citizens while the economic benefit of spending those dollars here, in the country that has provided the jobs, is lost.
Some would argue that illegal immigrants are only coming here to do work Americans would not do, and that their labor and taxes actually have a positive impact on the economy of our nation. This is untrue. Economic studies demonstrate that illegal immigrants use literally billions of dollars more in taxpayer funded services than they contribute to the economy either through their labor or taxes. And that doesn't count the economic loss of sending billions of dollars to Mexico rather than spending them here, where the jobs are created.
In fact, the labor of illegal immigrants has a devastating impact on America's most vulnerable citizens —— our working poor and legal immigrants. After all, illegal immigrants are not taking the jobs of elite university professors or corporate board members —— they are taking lower-paid, hourly wage jobs that millions of Americans depend on. Nor should already overburdened California taxpayers be forced to shell out billions of dollars simply because some businesses and special interests benefit from cheap, illegal labor.
In real dollars, the cost of unchecked illegal immigration to the California taxpayer is about $10.5 billion. Tax receipts from illegal immigrants working in California are estimated to be $1.7 billion. Thus, illegal immigration is costing taxpayers some $8.8 billion per year —— money that could have made a real difference in improving California's overcrowded schools, fixing our gridlocked freeways or putting more police on our community streets.
As a state legislator, my first priority is to protect the people of California. That is why I have submitted a Constitutional Amendment on the floor of the Assembly that would require proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, collecting government services or applying for driver's licenses. Unfortunately, the liberals who still run the Legislature in California will probably not even allow this bill to be voted on by the members of the Assembly, which is why I have also helped in the effort to qualify an initiative on the ballot to address this issue.
The government of Mexico requires any person registering to vote, applying for government issued documents, or seeking government services to provide proof of citizenship. That is reasonable and we need to do the same in the United States.
Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Del Mar, represents the 74th Assembly District in North County.
