The United States Government should immediately repatriate all illegal immigrants.

Before I enter into my argument, I'd like to attempt to clarify the definitions of some of the terms my opponent has used. I assume that the US refers to the federal government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security along with the court system. I also take the drain on the economy to refer to the unpaid use of services such as emergency medical care, which hospitals provide regardless of the patient's immigration status or ability to repay, and to the effects illegal immigration has on the availability of jobs. In regards to the monetary costs caused by illegal immigration, the total cost of unpaid health care in the states of California, Texas and Arizona was reported to be about $2.7 billion in the year 2004 (1). Similar, later studies in Colorado and Minnesota reported their unpaid health care costs to only number in the tens of millions (2), showing that the costs drop off as distance to the Mexican border increases. Assume for a moment that, as a worst case scenario, the total national unpaid health care costs to be about 5 times the figure quoted from those three states ($8.1 billion). Also, for argument's sake, let's say that the population of illegal immigrants in the United States has doubled since then, increasing the total cost to $16.2 billion. This number pales in comparison to the amount of money it would take to repatriate these immigrants instead. The Department of Homeland Security estimated the total illegal immigrant population to be about 10.7 million people in 2009 (3), and the taxpayer cost for one arrest of an illegal immigrant has been estimated to be $2000 (4). To simply arrest every illegal immigrant in the United States, not accounting for the rising costs of such a procedure as the search extends from only those caught crossing the border to all such individuals, would cost $21.4 billion. Instead of simply removing illegal immigrants from the country, to truly save money we should be looking for ways to decrease the cost of the health care they require. An article in USA Today (2) attributes the strain on emergency services to the fear of being arrested if an illegal were to see an ordinary doctor. They instead live with injuries and illnesses until they become critical, vastly increasing the difficulty (and cost) of treating them. A campaign to educate illegal immigrants on preventative health care along with an adjustment of immigration enforcement so as to not target individuals through the health care system would go a long way towards fixing this problem. Concerning the jobs that illegal immigrants occupy, it is entirely possible that many of the positions they fill wouldn't be considered by the American workforce. Douglass Massey, a Sociology professor Princeton University and coauthor of Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration contends that a immigrants tend to accept bottom-tier jobs that most Americans wouldn't apply for, since they are unable to apply for those requiring a great deal of education (5). This implies that Americans and illegals don't directly compete for jobs, and to a degree necessitates illegal immigration to keep society functional. Lastly, the contention that the illegal immigrants should be deported because they are illegal does little to support itself. It would be a hard fight to convict a good number of these people of any moral wrong; many of them only enter the United States illegally in order to provide for their families. Instead of rounding them up and sending them packing, we should devote our efforts (and funds) to finding a way to integrate these individuals into our society, as well as a legal solution that better serves us both. (1)http://www.fairus.org... (2)http://www.usatoday.com... (3)http://www.dhs.gov... (4) http://www.cato.org... (5) http://en.wikipedia.org...