We Get Comments
Re: Sealing the border
O'Reilly Factor - November 1, 200111/4/01
To: Tamar Jacoby - Manhattan Institute
Dear Ms. Jacoby,
Usually when I listen to someone debate a topic I expect them to be somewhat rigorous in their use of statistics to bolster their arguments. Clearly you don't fall into that category.
Specifically, on the O'Reilly factor the other night you claimed that "10% of the workforce" is comprised of illegal aliens. According to the Department of Labor's website the workforce is right around 132 million. The high estimate for illegals in the United States is around 11 million (an astonishing number itself). Even if every one of them is a working age adult, we still come nowhere close to your number.
On the contrary. Living in California I can safely tell you that the whole family is here, usually living in subsidized housing (it's down the street from me; nice places - if they were on the open market they would rent for $1400 - $1600 a month) and that the families are always a mixed bag - one or two of the children are born here and the other two or three are from Mexico. The "citizen" children are called Anchor Babies (see http://frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists/wall04-30-01.htm) and guarantee access to welfare in the form of WIC coupons, medical care, etc. Not that being in the country legally is a prerequisite for any of that. Our Governor decided 2 years ago that the will of the people was irrelevant, and tossed a legal initiative in the garbage can that would have prevented such abuse. But hey, we're just Americans, why should we count for anything?
So the illegal alien "workforce" is more like 6 million at most. About half your number in statistics. But it's still a staggering number, and we in California are paying the price for myopic individuals like yourself getting on TV and conjuring up factoids.
So, I want to ask you: Between the crime perpetrated by them and their children (660 gangs in Los Angeles; see www.lapd.com); the net expense to the country ($4 Billion in California alone in "education"); the ethnic balkanization (when did we vote to become Mexico, with ethnic Mexicans being the majority population?); the loss of sovereignty (we had the President of Mexico surfing through our state on a victory lap; the governor and the mayor of LA go to Mexico City, not Washington, for orders); the grotesque overcrowding (parts of South Central Los Angeles are now the most densely populated areas in the US); the destruction of the language (Burbank, home of Lockheed Aircraft, now sports Spanish billboards); the utter lawlessness of immigration violations, "document" fraud (ask Mohammed Atta where he got his driver's license), voting by illegals, corruption in our government by people from a culture BUILT on corruption, etc etc etc -
WHAT IS IT THAT YOU THINK IS "GOOD" ABOUT IT?
Eric E.
Soquel, CA