There’s another wave of misinformation about illegal aliens (or undocumented people). Actually, it’s never really stopped but there seems to be another attempt to get folks to focus on that as the source of all problems.

Your fury at the undocumented is just to keep you distracted from all of your tax money that’s going to billionaires and big companies.

What benefits are they abusing?

First off, they are not able to access any federal benefits except if they present at an emergency room with an actual emergency situation. Then they’ll be treated but only to “stabilize” them. States may offer other benefits but it seems to be the federal government that’s attracting all the vitriol. If you want to be upset though, it’s your state politicians you need to talk to.

That said, I’ve known a lot of these folks and they’re really nice people who just got a really bad roll of the dice. They’re trying to escape crime in their native countries or be someplace where they can work and feed their families. Personally I’d always prefer to have my tax money help these people before billionaires.

Why don’t they just become legal?

Yeah, well, we make that pretty difficult. To become a legal resident, you first need to be here legally for 3-5 years. See the problem? Kinda a chicken-before-the-egg situation. Now if they’re highly skilled maybe a company will get them a green card so they can reside here legally but that option is not available to the average person who works in agriculture, hotels, car washes, etc. The owners of those business just want cheap labor so they can be competitive. They don’t want to provide green cards or other benefits.

Add to that it costs about $400-$700 per person to go through the naturalization process. If they’re struggling to make ends meet, that can be a pretty steep sum of money to come by.

And then there’s the language requirement. Learning a new language is hugely challenging, especially for an adult. You need to find a good chunk of time every day to devote to studying the new language. That can be extremely difficult for someone who is working two jobs and raising kids. And trying to speak that new language when you know a certain percentage of folks are prejudiced against you and otherwise impatient? Yeah, not so easy.

Yeah but all that fraud at the state level?

Undocumented folks tend to be extremely cautious about signing up for anything. If they actually manage to sign up for some program their state offers, wow, they’re doing better at it than I am. But they typically don’t want their info on any sort of official document that might lead to them being “found out.” They often won’t even let their kids play in the street.

Legal Americans can’t even figure out to sign up for many government programs.

If they do decide to take the risk and manage to overcome the hurdles to signing up for something, I’m probably OK with paying for nutritional assistance to a pregnant woman versus helping a billionaire buy their 3rd yacht.

But they’re taking our jobs!

Another myth. Americans don’t want those jobs. takeourjobs.org took inquiries for years but only a handful of Americans expressed any interest.

On one hand it’s tempting to blame the business owners who give employment to undocumented folks, but then you remember, oh yeah, I too kinda like cheap stuff. When it comes to hiring a nanny for your own kids, or a gardener or any labor you personally pay for, cheaper almost always wins out. So the money trail ends up back at you.

I don’t care, it’s about time we enforced this!

There are a lot of laws we bend every day. We’ve had a symbiosis with undocumented workers for years, and they make up a big part of our economy. To suddenly overnight start enforcing is simply not reasonable and certainly not kind. Imagine if overnight we starting giving tickets for everyone exceeding the speed limit.

Assuming we decided we really did want to enforce, it would be more reasonable to give 6 months warning before cracking down. That’s not enough time for them to go through naturalization, but it’s at least a little advance notice so they can try to plan and arrange a smooth exit strategy. As opposed to being nabbed by ICE on their way to work.

Again, those billionaires

The billionaires own the media and feed this garbage to you to try to keep you distracted from their own abuse of the system. The wealth gap has grown progressively worse and the effort now is to put the blame on undocumented folks. It’s hard to come up with actual figures regarding how much financially the billionaires are costing us, but given the federal government gives almost zero to undocumented folks, it is probably a much bigger number. And it seems to always be going up.