Despite the headline, this AP article trashes the bill that would require the federal government to track down every one of the 12 million undocumented immigrants illegal non-citizens. Sure, it couches the argument in terms of the logisitics around deporting them, rather than granting them amnesty, but the government in either case has to find them before they can give them freebies or ship them home.

I don’t have to make assumptions about the author’s slant, she quotes a liberal think tank to support her journalism cause.

Officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which would be responsible for deportations, said they have no projections on what it would take to rid the United States of an estimated 12 million people.

But the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, has put the cost at $215 billion over five years.

She goes on to cite this “study” to further her advocacy against deportation:

Finding and catching people would be the most expensive part, about $158 billion, Goyle said. The study calculated it would cost an additional $34 billion to detain them, $3 billion for extra beds, $11 billion for legal processing and $9 billion to put them on buses or airplanes.

Let’s break that down.

1. $158 billion to find and catch. - If the cost of finding them is fatal, how do we expect to find them and force them to pay back taxes or file the proper paperwork to start their “path toward citizenship”?

2. $34 billion to detain them. - $34 BILLION??? I just searched Motel 6’s website and came up with a rate of $46.79 per night. With maximum occupancy in each room being 4, we could house all 12 million undocumented immigrants illegal non-citizens for a month for just $4.2 billion. I just saved the government almost $30 billion. (We could always have Sheriff Joe Arpiao build more tent cities too.)

3. $3 billion for extra beds - What are we shopping at Ethan Allen here? First off, if we go with the Motel 6 idea, we won’t need beds, because last time I checked, the motels already had them. But if we need to chunk some extras in the rooms, we could provide one of these to every undocumented immigrants illegal non-citizen for just over $707 million. I just saved our government another $2 billion+.

4. $11 billion for legal processing - That’s about $916 per undocumented immigrants illegal non-citizen. How ’bout we get the 7 million Americans who still refuse to find jobs in our growing economy to handle the paperwork.

5. $9 billion to put them on buses or airplanes - Their free feet got ‘em here, their free feet can take ‘em back! Before you go accusing me of not having a heart, I will propose in the alternative to fund automobiles to take them back. But $9 billion? Please! For just over $1.4 billion, we can purchase 480,000 pickups for $3,000 each which can typically hold about 25 people in the bed and let them drive themselves home.

Bottom line, these numbers are a crock. And if it is too costly to track all these folks down for purposes of deporting… how in the hell are we going to track them all down to award them their amnesty?

Carlos Portillo, who owns La Fuente Restaurant, one of the most popular restaurants in Tucson, Ariz., said the sudden loss of workers from mass deportations would be economically devastating for this country.

“Right now everything that’s happening in the United States, the restaurant and hospitality industry, all the housing and building construction, all the farming, this is being done mainly by illegal immigrants,” he said. “This country needs these illegal workers more than the illegal workers need this country.”

Hmmm… 12 million illegals, 7 million unemployed Americans. Looks like we could kill two birds with one stone. Then we’d be left with a net total of 5 million illegals to track down for back taxes, fines, and penalties. So on top of the billions of dollars I’ve just saved our country with my proposals above, I’ve just simultaneously slashed even those reduced figures by almost 60% while offering a solution that reduces the U.S. unemployment rate to ZERO.

Why must the politicians make this government stuff so complicated?

1. Even cheaper - make it very undesirable for employers to have illegals working for them and the illegals will deport themselves.

   Go ahead and set up a ‘Guest Worker’ program but set it up so you can only apply in your home country and so that it takes the time to make sure you’re who you say you are - assume a baseline of at least a month.

   Comment by KCSteve — 5:36 pm
   

2. Amen brother!

   I was going to repeat what KCSteve said, but well, he already said it. The saddest thing in this whole debate to me is the clear message our reps are sending that they have absolutely no intention of actually solving this problem.

   I guess citizens will have to do it, and I guess further it’ll get messy. Thanks federal government for sucking like a Hoover!

   Comment by Jake Jacobsen — 7:44 pm
   

3. What did we do with all these jobs before we had all these illegals? No guest worker program, no amnesty, seal the borders, and no more spanglish jibber/jabber in the market place.

   Comment by Judith — 10:07 pm
   

4. One more thought which is actually the basis of my angst. These illegals appear to think that they have a right to break our laws as this country is an extension of Mexico. Nutz to that.

   Comment by Judith — 10:11 pm
   

5. i sent this letter to all the leading repub senators and other leading columnists and editorial pages april 2nd……..

   if i was king for a day…….

   dear senator,

   i commend you for taking the immigration issue head on. however, i must say, i think politicians complicate the issue by trying to cover too many constituent agendas. sometimes simplicity is actually the real solution. occam’s razor. in fact, the “rant” below that i left on a web site on march 17th is, i believe, the only remedy to a perplexing problem. in fact, if you analyze every provision of the house and senate bills they have no chance of enforcement without tearing this country apart. actually, they have no chance, whatever the penalties. from lyndon johson in 1965 to reagan’s 1986 amnesty to senator reid’s 1993 joke to Barbara Jordan’s 1990-1995 immigration report these are our lessons of failure. please remember that at the time this was written it was directed at other comment posters, not you sir. it follows below:

   —– go after the companies that employ the illegals? send the illegals back? penalize the ones that stay?

   we are all dreaming. i have lived in california for 30 years. thousands, and i mean thousands, of small businesses hire and use millions of illegals everyday. trust me, short of a new black booted gestapo they are staying employed. any law passed to enforce some sort of penalty will probably never make it out of the court system. think prop 187 etc. so stop pulling your own chain thinking some legislation out of washington is going to change anything on the ground. send them back? assuming we could get the authority to do it (this too will sit in the courts until we are the new, new mexico) the police, national guard or military etc will not do it short of becoming some new SS. even the criminals that we should be deporting will just walk back in, led by their favorite coyote for $3,000, unless we have a fence from san diego to brownsville. 10-15 million well organized people-and they are very organized, are staying. so get over it. part of the solution is to stop adding to the size of the group. we have to build a fence before we contemplate any other measures. don’t listen to anyone who says fences do not work. they have other agendas they are not willing to discuss. ie vincente fox, among others, is against the fence
   .
   15 million illegals are easy to assimilate over twenty years–and guess what, despite the headlines, they want to be assimilated. but it can only work if no more are added to the mix. the folks that think the 15 million illegals are going anywhere are simply delusional. we let them in and now they are here for good. there are no laws, past , current or in the future that are going to change that. no doubt, there will be folks who get on soapboxes and pretend to write new legislation to solve the problem. the sooner we all act like adults and realists the sooner this divisive issue can be put behind us. do any of you actually think that the illegals are going to be rounded up and sent back to mexico etc? do you think funding is going to be cut to cities who harbor them? you have to be kidding. the bong smoke is clouding your vision.
   the absolute best that we can accomplish within current law is to build a fence so the problem doesn’t get any bigger. a fence is cheaper and more efficient than salaried border patrols in the long run. this fence will work.

   http://www.weneedafence.com/images/Fence_Idea.jpg

   after that, then we can deport the bad guys during a 10-year green card period on the way to their citizenship. that’s right, their citizenship. 15 million people are not going to continue to live here as second class illegals forever without bringing the whole country down. why? because as certain as the sun comes up in the morning, 15 million will be 30 million in 25 years without a fence. we need to get our arms around these kinds of numbers. when barbara jordon put her immigration committee together in 1990 there were two million illegals. we need to seal the border and make them citizens just like the irish, italians, germans, jews etc who came before them. the fact that they got here illegally is irrelevant. they are here, get over it. they are not going to sign up for any two step convoluted green card, maybe you will- maybe you won’t, get at the end of the line samba dance. we are not going to collect any back taxes based on real/imaginary cash transactions from folks who have barely two nickels to rub together. it will cost more to collect it. the hatred and resentment it will engender will be long lasting –not to mention the crime and violence. we might be able to get a very small citizenship fee. that will pay for the fence.

   i’ll make a prediction. if a secure fence is not erected at this time we will have this cicrle jerk again in twenty years and the number then will be 30 million along with their 25 million children who will be citizens. then the problem will be this

   http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4786/105/1600/Aztlan.jpg

   not because of some dark conspiracy but because of differing birthrates. we need to start seeing the world as it is, not as we hope it would be.

   riddle me this……… you folks who hide behind the thin veneer of “but its illegal”…..

   who broke the bigger law? the folks who risked life and limb to get here or the politicians/bureaucrats who failed to enforce the state and federal laws to protect and seal the borders? conference after conference, committee after committee since the 70’s recommended closing the border with a fence. it was left open. we need to get past this “illegal” designation. they are here and they are staying. no amount of convoluted gestapo, stalinist, nativist jib jab from the left or the right is going to change that. remember, 15 million are really over 40 million when you throw in their supporters and the larger hispanic community in general. start getting serious. the idea that the newly unemployed “illegals” you would create, with these new ridiculous remedies, are going to go home in numbers is absurd. the part we are not getting is this– it’s their country now. millions of them already have their own small businesses, families, homes etc.

   crack down on the people that hire them? again we are just not getting it. we are cutting our nose off to spite our face.

   just remember this at all times–if you were them–young, poor and starving for a life– you would have crossed the border if it was left open. we caused this problem. we left the border wide open with a huge 2000-mile long honey-pot on the other side. i’m honest enough to admit it, i would have pushed you out of the way as i scrambled across!

   here’s the real pathetic reality—virtually every congressman/woman and the president are against sealing the border. they are more worried about our image with the world, mexico and imaginary votes they may or may not get. they fudge the debate with economic/impact studies that look good but mean nothing. it is all props. read the fine print in the bills being considered.
   so, you still think we are going to start solving the illegal immigrant problem inside the US while we can’t rally the consensus to close the border where the illegals enter? put down the bong, you’ve had one hit too many.

   and finally to the race baiters……
   the “fence” sole purpose for existence is to secure the border from illegal immigration from primarily latin america. the fact that latin america is hispanic is strictly a coincidence. if canada was a third world country i would propose the same fence. for two hundred years we controlled immigration with quotas per immigrant group. i believe jimmy carter was the moron who changed this. the chief reason for quotas was for assimilation purposes–language, culture etc…. mexico encourages illegal immigration as an outlet so as to avoid the hard choices that it should be making to rectify a pathetic economic model it inherited from the spanish. there is a reason that english speaking colonies/nations have done better than spanish or french. every time you seduce a young hispanic to flee his country you further enslave the tens of millions they leave behind.

   we have to frame this discussion within the bounds of what we can do, not what you would like to do. modern america is a very complicated legal system etc…. using existing ‘green card’ laws that have already been vetted combined with our existing right to build the fence, will put an immediate end to most of the problem. the fact that it may aid and abet the war on terror is a bonus. after that we can go through the psychic trauma and emotional healing of all the why’s, wherefore’s and finger pointing that always comes when we recognize WE PERSONALLY CREATED THIS PROBLEM — the “illegals” are only the symptom!!!!!!!

   enjoy your salad tonight and while you are eating think about these last several weeks–30,000 more illegals have come to say hello…..

   Comment by patrick neid — 3:11 pm
   

6. As far as I am concerned, the illegals have NO RIGHTS at all whatsoever!
   The constitution is for our legal residents, not people that are here illegally.
   We haven’t a clue who they are, or where they are.
   Oh, excuse me, they are everywhere. That still leaves the question of who they are. This almost makes me in favor of the national identification card. Personally, I think it is foolish to not require a at least a drivers license along with your voter’s registration when it comes time to vote. Many illegals vote, which skews our elections.
   This has got to stop!
   It is like the country is slowly bleeding out.
   How long before the hemorrhage is terminal?

   Comment by Melissa in Texas — 9:26 pm
   

7. well perhaps we can agree on this:

   just remember as we have been discussing the upholstery on the deck chairs for these last several weeks 30,000 more of our little friends have come to say hello.

   in the very near future this (picture)
   http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_hispanicpop.html

   will lead to this (picture)
   http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4786/105/1600/Aztlan.jpg

   because we don’t have this (picture)
   http://www.weneedafence.com/images/Fence_Idea.jpg

   first things first…….

   Comment by patrick neid — 1:05 pm
   

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