We cannot afford amnesty for illegal immigrants

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WH: Obama hasn't made final decision on immigration order

Ed Henry reports from Naypyidaw, Burma

Illegal immigrants… illegal aliens … undocumented workers… persons living in the United States without legal permission…Whatever you choose to call them, there are roughly 11 to12 million of them living in our country, and President Obama says he plans to do something about that very soon.

“Soon” as in“before the end of the year,” the president said in his press conference last Wednesday, the day after his Democratic Party lost control of the Senate.

Or maybe even sooner than that. “Every day that I wait we’re misallocating resources,” Obama said on Sunday.

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But if his fix, as rumored, is to grant amnesty to an estimated 5 million illegals, he’ll be making a huge mistake, because we simply can’t afford it.

Amnesty will cost you, the American taxpayer, a fortune. And that’s why so many, including me, are strongly opposed to the idea.

Grab a calculator, and I’ll explain.

We currently have a national debt of $18 trillion, on which we have to pay interest. We also spend, as a country,$600 billion more than we earn through tax revenue, which is the only way our country generates income.

According to a detailed analysis by the Heritage Foundation, each illegal immigrant costs our country $24,000 a year. But, on average, eachpays $10,000 in taxes,soit’s reasonable to say that each illegal really adds $14,000 a year to our country’s debt burden.

Now multiply that $14,000 by the 5 million illegal immigrants we might grant amnesty, and we’re out a mere $70 billion. That’s billion, with a B.

Moving along, let’s recall that the average full-time worker in this country earns about $50,000 a year and pays 25 percent—$12,500— in income taxes.

So how many new jobs do we need to create to offset the $70 billion we’ll have to pay if the president grants amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants?

Divide 70 billion by 12,500 and you get… 5.6 million new full-time jobs.

Now ask yourself… Is this possible?

The answer, sadly, is no. It’s just not possible.

In the last 12 months of our “wonderful” economic recovery, we’ve created 2.6 million new jobs. That’s nice,but it’s less than half the jobs we’d need to offset this potential new debt burden. What’s worse, more than half those 2.6 million new jobs were part-time. We’re not even hitting the $50,000 average.

Now ask yourself…

With all our nation’s needs and wants, is granting amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants and increasing our financial burden the best way to spend our money? Is it fiscally responsible?

No matter how good you may feel about lifting our lamp beside the golden door, there’s only one answer:

No.