Immigration in Reverse

By Alan Caruba

America has an estimated twelve million illegal immigrants and, for an increasing number of them, the downturn in the economy, particularly in the housing construction sector, is even worse for them than for native-born Americans.

An Associated Press report out of San Diego says that “Thousands of Latin American immigrants both legal and illegal are going back home…” Hard hit along with housing construction are the landscaping and restaurant industries.

The reverse immigration out of the nation will hit Mexico hard and officials there are predicting that between 20,000 and 30,000 above the usual number will head home, not just for the holidays, but because there is no work to be found here. They will return to a nation suffering from the increasing carnage of bodies resulting from the wars between the drug cartels.

The hard times are reflected as well in the fact that illegal aliens are sending less money back home. It has been between $25 and $50 billion a year in good times. Many from Latin American nations have come here illegally to support their families and they are not just Mexicans. However, other than Mexico’s oil industry, remittances have represented a significant part of that nation’s economy.

Add to that the estimated $338 billion that illegal aliens cost Americans in terms of welfare, food assistance, education for their children, incarceration for crimes, and the estimated losses in wages to native-born Americans whose jobs they take. There is a long list of ways illegals are a drag on the economy and the taxpayers who maintain it.

Reportedly, the vast majority of Mexican immigrants who have lived here for a few years will stay put because job prospects in Mexico are far worse than here. Then, too, both candidates for president are in favor of extending yet another amnesty. That alone will keep them struggling to remain, despite the overwhelming opposition from native-born Americans.

Americans are learning that there is a price to be paid for not maintaining our borders and those that have crossed them illegally are learning that the “free lunch” they’ve enjoyed so far may be coming to an end.