"Why Amnesty is Worse With Obamacare"

[WhiskeyGirl]

How immigration reform threatens health reform

If immigration reform legalizes the 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., who pays for their ObamaCare?

posted on March 24, 2010, at 5:57 PM

David Frum

It’s rumored that President Obama will follow up his health-care success with a push for immigration reform.

It’s a bad idea—not least because of the negative impact the latter will have on the former.

Predicting the cost of health-care reform is hugely complex, but the core equation is reasonably straightforward. Every American will be required to buy insurance. Those who cannot afford insurance will be subsidized up to 400 percent above the poverty line, or $88,200 in annual income for a family of four. Subsidies will of course be concentrated most intensely among the poorest.

Logical enough—even if difficult to execute.

But when this health plan meets immigration policy, ominous consequences ensue.

Since 1970, the United States has accepted about 40 million immigrants, more than 10 million since the year 2000. The majority of the post-2000 immigration has been illegal.

Today’s immigrants have a strong work ethic: In fact they are more likely to work than the native-born. But they do not earn very much when they do work. And the low-wage occupations in which they cluster typically do not offer health insurance.

As is, the foreign-born will absorb a disproportionate share of the subsidies extended by the newly enacted health plan. If we proceed with an immigration reform that legalizes the 10 million–12 million illegal workers currently in the country, the number of recipients of health-care subsidies will soar, adding hugely to health reform’s future costs. Subsidies will be concentrated among the poorest – and immigrants are 50 percent more likely to be poor than natives.

The immigration reform we need would do two things:
 
•    attract more highly qualified immigrants who will contribute more in taxes than they consume in benefits;
•    encourage low-skilled illegal immigrants to return home – “self-deportation” as it is called by immigration experts.

Self-deportation does not involve round-ups or detentions. If you tighten work requirements – deter employers from hiring illegals – illegals will return home. Since the onset of the recession, an estimated 1 million illegals have already left the U.S., even in the absence of effective enforcement.

And what of those who stay anyway?
 
Their children born in the U.S. will be citizens, raised here, qualifying for coverage. As for their parents: Do nothing. Amnesty incentivizes new rounds of illegal immigration. Non-amnesty encourages illegals to return home with their savings as they age out of the labor force.
 
This is not a proposal to halt immigration. It’s a call for rationalizing immigration. In some domains, in fact, health-care reform may lead to a heightened need of immigrants. Who knows? If the Obama reforms squeeze the incomes of health-care professionals tightly enough, doctoring may become one of those jobs that Americans “just won’t do.”

more here - http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/201140/How_immigration_reform_threatens_health_reform

[WhiskeyGirl]

Yesterday's immigrants came for opportunity, there was no entitlement lifestyle.

Today, some seem to come illegally for the entitlements.

[Edward]

Your young Hispanic is and has been trained in Socialist theory.
They do not want to change Mexico ..They have come here to change US.

That is why Obama supports them.

Illegals are criminal by nature of there performance.. They have not run from a social system that threatens them in any way. They will also bring the style of life they are used to here.

Welcome to the new order of the former United States.
You are gonna be broke in the end.