This opinion column by Dr. Craig Bosley appeared in the Idaho State Journal. Do you agree or disagree?

 How come?

The United States has illegal aliens from all over the world with the majority being from Mexico (70 percent) and Central America (15 percent). Do we have a plan to deal with these 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in our country? Should we provide amnesty or deportation? Are illegal aliens just good people seeking a better life? Or are they more like a bank robber? Aren’t they stealing our money just as if they were robbing a bank? Adding to the problem is a new airline in Mexico known among flyers as “Migrant Air.” It offers inexpensive flights from southern and central Mexico north to Mexican towns along the United States border, allowing its customers to arrive at the border rested for the dangerous illegal crossing. Would you be surprised to know the return flights are mostly empty?

Are illegal aliens really stealing our money? Proponents of amnesty insist illegal aliens are an asset to our economy because they take the jobs American workers will not. But what is actually occurring? Industries pay illegal aliens less than they would have to pay American workers, pocket the profit from cheap labor, and displace American workers. It is not that American workers will not take the jobs. It is that the American workers will not work for the poverty level wages illegal aliens are paid. Industries are using illegal aliens to deliberately force down wages. How many American workers do 20 million illegal aliens displace? Estimates are in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 workers. Harvard Professor George Borjas reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion in 2005. These displaced workers in turn cost the American taxpayer over $15 billion a year in welfare and other assistance. Education for illegal aliens K-12 cost states $7.4 billion annually. During a one year analysis in Colorado, 40 percent of the births paid for by Medicaid were for illegal aliens. Each year over 250,000 children born to illegal alien mothers are automatically citizens of the United States.

 
Is there any criminal element in the illegal alien population? Reports suggest illegal aliens are murdering 10,000 Americans each year! In Los Angeles in 2004, 95 percent of all outstanding homicide arrest warrants were for illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens comprise over 60 percent of the members of two of California's biggest gangs, the 18th Street Gang and the Columbia Lil’ Cycos. Eighty percent of the cocaine and 50 percent of the heroin in the U.S. is smuggled across the border by Mexican nationals. According to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston and San Francisco place a “higher priority on protecting illegal aliens from deportation than on protecting United States citizens from assault, rape, arson and other crimes.”

What do we do? They are in our country illegally. They are killing our citizens, spending our money, and damaging our economy. We need to find them, arrest them and deport them. And we need to make it very unattractive to enter this country illegally. Lessen the ongoing train of illegal aliens by removing jobs and sanctuary cities. Find those companies hiring illegal aliens and fine them so substantially that hiring illegal aliens is no longer profitable. Remove unnecessary legal barriers to deportation. Do not allow children born to illegal aliens to be American citizens. Eliminate all incentives for entering our country illegally. Illegal aliens need to be treated like any other criminal because they are like any other criminal!

Critics claim our nation's large number of illegal aliens cannot be deported. They are wrong. In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol to deport the illegal aliens in our country. In just two months INS agents rounded up over 50,000 illegal aliens in California and Arizona alone. More importantly, during this same time period over 400,000 fled these states back to Mexico in fear of deportation. In Texas over 80,000 were deported with more than 500,000 leaving voluntarily. Within a year nearly one-third of the total number of illegal aliens in the U.S. “self-deported.”

For every illegal alien arrested and deported an additional 10 left our country voluntarily!
Veteran agents from the 1950s have three recommendations:

1. Do not release illegal aliens from Mexico at the border. Instead, take them deep into
Mexico so return is more costly.
2. Crack down harshly on employers so there are no jobs available for the illegal aliens.
3. Have a “guest worker” program similar to President Eisenhower’s permitting of a certain number of Mexicans to legally enter our country each year for work.

The economic and criminal costs of illegal aliens in our country are unacceptable. In this day of fanatics and terrorists we can no longer ignore our borders. Illegal aliens must be found, deported and our borders secured. It is the only rational, reasonable choice.


Dr. Craig Bosley is an emergency physician at Portneuf Medical Center and has lived in Pocatello since 1981. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado Medical School and is a former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.