Illegal immigration is endangering and destroying American safety, finances, education, and culture.

1.How do illegal immigrants have a negative effect on the economy, you ask? You note that many of the jobs they take are jobs people don't want. Of course they don't want them, at the wages employers pay illegals. That being said, this is the second-most asserted statement, right behind "this is a nation of immigrants." Here are some statistics from a current study shown at fairus.com about how they effect JUST THE ECONOMY IN ONE STATE: FAIR estimates that the annual fiscal burden on Iowa taxpayers today from illegal immigration is at least $241 million. That equates to an annual cost of about $172 per native-born headed Iowa household after accounting for taxes collected from illegal workers. •Education. Based on an estimate of 8,645 school-age illegal aliens and 12,100 U.S.-born children of illegal aliens in Iowa and estimated per pupil costs of $8,450 per year for public K-12 schooling, Iowans spend about $175.3 million annually on education for the children of illegal immigrants. An additional estimated $13 million is being spent annually on programs for limited English students who are likely children of illegal aliens. More than four percent of the K-12 public school students in Iowa are children of illegal aliens, and this share has been increasing as the illegal resident population increases and the overall public school enrollment has decreased slightly •Health care. State-funded uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to Iowa's illegal alien population amount to an estimated $48.3 million a year. This estimate does not include higher medical bills and insurance costs that Iowans who have medical insurance pay to cover the costs of those without insurance. •Incarceration. The uncompensated cost of incarcerating deportable illegal aliens in Iowa's state and local prisons amounts to nearly $4.9 million a year. This estimate excludes compensation from the federal government, short-term detention costs, related law enforcement and judicial expenditures, as well as the monetary costs of the crimes that led to incarceration. You can find the entire PDF file for this study at http://www.fairus.org... . These include educational, medical and legal costs. As to "jobs other people don't want," Americans traditionally took those jobs before employers discovered that they could pay illegals pennies on the dollar for doing the same work, and that the illegals had no alternative but to accept what they were paid. I, for instance, made $2.00 an hour in the 70s for a summer job shoveling out accumulated sheep manure from barns. Odd that I, as an American, would take that kind of work. 2.The claim that illegals endanger and destroy American education is far from anecdotal, as noted in the Iowa statistics above. That is a first-hand account of actually witnessing the event, plus any schoolteacher in the state of Arizona can give you documentation of similar circumstances. That being said, without paying taxes, illegals receive free educational services for their children without contributing to the tax bill, which means legal citizens have to cover the cost. Do you like that? I don't. Additionally, now we have illegal immigrants trying to demand in-state tuition rates for college, while legal citizens from other states would still have to pay out-of-state tuition. You believe that's anecdotal, also? 3.Not only do they kill each other, they bring drugs into the United States and are involved in gangs all over the country (MS-13 being prime among them). Additionally, they have an inflated rate of crime in proportion to their presence here; a Phoenix police officer was just murdered by an illegal alien who had been deported several times and just ran back over the border. It has been asserted by Representative Steve King of Iowa, who had statistics to back this up, that many more people have died at the hands of illegal aliens since 911 than the number of Americans actually killed on that date. Additionally, I can point you to a congressional report detailing the terrorist threat to the United States on our southern borders, aided and abetted by illegal aliens and their guides entitled A Line in the Sand (it's a PDF file and takes a while to load, but it's very enlightening): at http://www.cap-s.org... Additionally, since you're talking about endangering and destroying American safety, in addition to murder, rape, and traffic accidents caused by illegal aliens, I can point you to any number of links showing intelligence gathered that have members of the terrorist group Hezbollah being taught Spanish and how to fit in with groups of Hispanics sneaking into the US. Here's a sample: http://www.foxnews.com... http://www.jihadwatch.org... http://www.kvoa.com... Are you happy about that in, as noted, a post-911 world? IEDs and documents in Arabic, along with clothing bearing patches linked to terrorists groups, have been found along the southern border. The lack of border enforcement, coupled with using Mexicans as a cover for entrance to our country to do our nation harm, is the cause of much concern among THINKING Americans. 4.The melting pot idea is fine. As of now, however, it seems that the pot itself is melting, or that American culture is fast turning from a culture created by assimilation into a salad bowl, rather than a "melting pot," where diversity and allegiance to one's home country is more important than allegiance to America. Theodore Roosevelt warned us about "hyphenated Americans" being worse than not being Americans at all, and thought, back in the early 1900s, that people who cared more about where they came from than about America should be sent back home. 5. What's always neglected in this attempt at an argument is mentioning how the Spanish enslaved and/or murdered the native population of Mexico when they conquered it. That seems to be unimportant. In any case, do the Spanish get a free pass, while "Europeans" do not? 6. At your disbelief at my assertion that they have deposited acres of trash on our borders: Sure, I can point you to pictures of places I have personally been. Here are a couple links, which depict but the "tip of the iceberg": http://members.cox.net... http://members.cox.net... And while I realize you're trying to be clever here, the trash is more to do with environmental damage in the US than it is with "American safety, finances, education, and culture." Continuing to parrot that phrase gains you nothing. It's more than "unsightly." It damages formerly undamaged natural environment and harms native species of animals and plants. In short, the illegal invasion imperils our country on MANY fronts. That you choose to continue to disingenuously lump everything together, over and over, does not negate that. I believe not only that you are attempting to be cute at the expense of an actual debate, but that you aren't 14, either. That being said: IMMIGRANTS, who come legally and want to assimilate into our culture rather than to import their culture into the United States, have always been welcomed. That being said, this "jobs Americans won't do" statement, repeated over and over, is demonstrably false. Employers have just learned that they can pay illegals a lot less to do these jobs and get away with it.