By: Mark Wyland - Commentary
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.
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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.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/01/17/opinion/commentary/1_16_0519_20_02.txt">Mexican Government Benefitting from U.S. Largesse