RSS Feed MenuThe coverage of illegal immigrants is a side issue and red herring in the healthcare debate. The big issue is the connection between insurance and immigration – all immigration.
- More than one-quarter of the uninsured population is foreign-born.
- More than half of all foreign-born people are uninsured.
- Immigrants accounted for more than 80% of the increase in the uninsured population in the Bush years.
If the U.S. had received less immigration over the past two decades – or if that immigration had been more highly skilled and better qualified – than today’s healthcare problem would be smaller, easier, and cheaper to solve.
And since there is every indication that the U.S. will continue to receive immigrants on a very large scale – and that this immigration will continue to be predominantly low-skilled and low-waged – current immigration policies represent a huge and costly additional difficulty in the way of insuring everyone.
President Obama offered glib assurances that illegals won’t be covered. It’s hard to agree with his confidence, since his own party has rejected meaningful enforcement measures. But if he wished truly to speak responsibly about immigration and healthcare, he’d ask his cost-bending advisers this question: how much less would my plans cost if we curtailed the flow of unskilled labor into the United States?
jabbermule // Sep 11, 2009 at 9:48 am
If liberal Democrats REALLY want to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants, then they should start a charitable organization that does just that…let them put their money where their mouth is.
Kevin B // Sep 11, 2009 at 10:38 am
“Let’s be honest about this – if we’re going to have open borders and feed/house/medically treat anyone across the planet who wishes to come here, then let’s admit it and let the American taxpayer shoulder the entire burden.”
That’s not honesty. That’s a straw man. We’re not going to have open borders. We will certainly have leaky borders, as we always had.
It will be generally difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain insurance. And it will be difficult for them to obtain the subsidies that would make it affordable to low-income people. They will get emergency care (unless we set up some kind of “death panel” to prevent that). They get that care today, so there’s no change.
mycelf // Sep 11, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Let’s read Mr. Frum’s opening one more time: “The coverage of illegal immigrants is a side issue and red herring in the healthcare debate. The big issue is the connection between insurance and immigration – all immigration.”
Boil it down: “illegal immigrants: side issue and red herring. The big issue: all immigration.”
My response: I think that rising costs are more of a driving issue in health care reform than the uninsured (whether they be native born or immigrant (legal or not)) … and it seems hypocritical to me that AN IMMIGRANT is attempting to cast “all immigration” as the villain.
Perhaps he’s right, we might not be having this conversation if the Algonquin had scalped those European wetbacks when they first showed up … or if we had been able to keep out the Irish, the Jews, the Poles, the Germans, the Slavs, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Cubans and all the other tired, poor,
huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Brittanicus // Sep 11, 2009 at 4:54 pm
The incident that occurred in Congress by Rep. Joe Wilson R-NC, illustrates the consequences of a blurring line between illegal immigration and health care. Our politicians have been alerted to the angry voices of the American people. For once they have disregarded the business campaign contributors and all the cloaked gifts given for services rendered by special interest lobbyists. Millions of US citizens are enraged with the status quo buying favors from our representatives that has led to our wilting economy. Today speaking on behalf of Washington committees on health care, the lawmaking emphasized that illegal aliens cannot access the new health reform package, that any person applying will be checked through government databases.
E-Verify might be implemented for this very issue, that it has shown in the majority of cases remarkable successes in remove illegal alien workers from the working environment. E-Verify can solve this problem and bring sanity back to immigration enforcement. E-VERIFICATION OF EACH AND EVERY AMERICAN WORKER MUST BE MADE PERMANENT? NOT JUST VOLUNTARY POLICY, BUT AS A FULL FORCE OF OPERATION CARRYING STRICT PENALTIES. This operation will work under federal policies? But what about state laws? California as an example is a Sanctuary state for millions of illegal immigrants and their families? Other border states are also occupied by large proportions of unlawful populations of foreign nationals?
This last year has culminated in huge financial losses in California caused by millions of low income illegal aliens, which has created a third world community within the United States. There must be federal measures to bring under control, massive spending benefits for people who have no right from benefiting from those who come here legally or were born here. How can any public health care option work at a state level, when states like California ignore federal law, regarding financial refuge to indigent people? Our own people remain homeless and in many cases without hope, when legislators have prioritized, health care, education an overloaded jail system and easy welfare money for illegal immigrants?
The once golden state has been using taxpayer money, to support illegal aliens, when the same expenditures should have been adopted for a collapsing infrastructure. Highways, schools, tunnels, bridges and dams in a dangerous state of disrepair? Our legislators in many cases have been seduced by lobbyists and should be banned from any contact with our politicians. This will never happen, but something must be done? Millions have been spent on derailing the health care reform currently and in the past, as has immigration enforcement. Rescinding 287(g) federal training for local police enforcement of immigration laws, the NO MATCH LETTER and the cutting back on ICE raids on obnoxious businesses using foreign workers.
The order to crush E-verify was given to Sen.Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Janet Napolitano, but narrowly survived in the Senate chambers. Both political parties are equally to blame for not enforcing the 1986 Immigration Control & Reform Act that was inundated with fraud and a desire to weaken the laws. Now they want to rescind that law, offering yet another reform package that will never function? Let’s not kid ourselves! Huge veiled forces are at work to import as much cheap labor as possible with no restraints, lowering wages and an unconscionable burden on taxpayers.
DON’T LET THE POWERS IN WASHINGTON WHITEWASH THE FACTS! DEMAND THE ORIGINAL DESIGNED FENCE AND THE FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF E-VERIFY, 287 (g), THE SAVE ACT AND AS WRITTEN, THE 1986 SIMPSON/MAZZOLI BILL AND AMEND THEM IF NEED BE? NO MORE IMMIGRATION REFORM? DO THE JOB THEY WERE VOTED FOR? CALL YOUR POLITICIANS AT 202-224-3121 AND DEMAND THESE LAWS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? MORE ANSWERS FOUND AT NUMBERSUSA & JUDICIAL WATCH.
ltoro1 // Sep 11, 2009 at 8:33 pm
mycelf, if we are so wealthy then rising costs should not be a problem. I disagree that immigration is a red herring. Also, if I characterized all immigration as low skilled, I apologize, that was not my intention. I stand with open arms and a welcome sign to all foreign doctors, engineers, and scientists. My point is that I would prefer not to bring in the unskilled (documented or not). The doctors, engineers, and scientists will be able to afford their own healthcare, the unskilled will be less likely to afford their own healthcare.
SFTor1 // Sep 11, 2009 at 10:28 pm
sinz says:
“The ONLY reason there is ANY public debate now, is because the right-wing populists rose up and stopped that railroad cold.”
The Republican Party and associated grassroots organization have opposed a Democratic initiative. That’s all. The Republicans have in no way contributed to a productive process to solve the issues that bedevil the American health care system, to wit: cost, transportability, and access. These are pressing issues that demand solutions.
What the Republican Party has done is to smear the effort with terms such as “Socialist takeover,” “road to fascism,” “death panels” and the list goes on. Most of the arguments from the right have played on fear of the unknown and fear of the other.
I imagine that Republican moderates must be very nervous about the nation’s verdict on this poor showing in the next elections. There is little to be proud of.
mycelf // Sep 11, 2009 at 10:53 pm
sftor1: you forgot “blame the immigrants”.
hardly a sentiment that will bring “the modernization and renewal of the Republican party and the conservative movement.”
mycelf // Sep 11, 2009 at 10:54 pm
itoro1: as i find myself saying all to often these days, “there is just no reasonable response to logic like that.”
ltoro1 // Sep 11, 2009 at 10:56 pm
sftor1, it is simply untrue to say that the Republicans have in no way contributed to the process. Tom Coburn has a bicameral bill in Congress and there is also the Wyden-Bennett bill. Aside from that there have been a siginificant number of ideas from John McCain, George W. Bush, and Newt Gingrich, there is probably a new one once a week in the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. You may not like their proposals, but it is incorrect to say that they do not exist or that Republicans have not been engaged in the process.
SFTor1 // Sep 12, 2009 at 8:53 pm
OK, ltoro1,
so there you have two Republicans who have put pen to paper. If you haven’t been in a coma for the last weeks and months you know that the Republican contribution has been to game the process and seek to weaken the Administration by bringing about its failure.
ltoro1 // Sep 12, 2009 at 11:59 pm
sftor1, those are the sponsors. There are additional co-sponsors, I’ll let you get out of your coma and look them up to get the total count. There really isn’t anything the House and Senate Republicans can do to hold up the process. If the Democrats comprehensive health care reform is so popular they should just pass it.
sinz54 // Sep 13, 2009 at 9:55 am
sftor1:
Let me repeat it again so you understand it:
The Dems did NOT want the GOP to contribute to the “process.”
First of all, there was no “process.” There was a House bill, H.R. 3200, concocted at frantic speed in a few months. (It was ready for download on August 9.) And after that bill went to conference with a similar Senate version, that would have been the bill on Obama’s desk by August as planned–if the right-wing protesters hadn’t flooded Town Hall meetings and slowed down the Dems’ super-speed timetable. The fact that the Dems were planning to reform the entire U.S. health care system–an extraordinarily complex undertaking–in the space of under FIVE months, tells you right there that the Dems had no interest in real debate on the topic.
Secondly, the Dems did NOT want input from the GOP. High on the GOP’s list was tort reform. The Dems said absolutely not–because as Howard Dean admitted, too many Dems are in the pocket of the trial lawyers. And that was that! The Dems figured that now that they had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they could just ignore the GOP entirely.
You’ve got a lot of nerve for condemning the GOP for not “contributing to the process” when the Dems wanted a bill that reflected only THEIR point of view on health care. The GOP wasn’t going to go through the motions to give Obama political cover so he could claim the bill was “bipartisan.”
“Bipartisan” does NOT mean the GOP is at the table but systematically ignored. It means the GOP’s concerns must get addressed.
sinz54 // Sep 13, 2009 at 9:56 am
sftor1: the Republican contribution has been to game the process and seek to weaken the Administration by bringing about its failure.
The main job of an opposition party is to win the next election and become the incumbent party.
Just as the Dems did everything in their power to weaken the Bush Administration.
sinz54 // Sep 13, 2009 at 9:59 am
sftor1: The Wyden-Bennett bill is an interesting bill with many interesting features.
It was systematically ignored by the House Dems, because it doesn’t have a public option, which means that Wyden-Bennett can never take America to single-payer.
If the liberals would GIVE UP their impossible dream of single-payer someday, we could make a lot more bipartisan progress on health care reform.
“Single-payer someday” is a poison pill. You know that we conservatives will NEVER accept it and we’ll fight it tooth and nail. And because polls show that 42% of self-described Dems in America favor single-payer, and because Obama himself was on the record favoring it before he ran for President and shut his mouth about it, conservatives naturally view all of Obama’s and Pelosi’s plans with deep suspicion.