Beware the birth canal invader?
An individual I shall not name ranted about my piece on hating immigrants and Muslims. He whined:
“Don’t we have enough people here already that we don’t seem to be able to take care of? Not sure why you think we should be adding even more.”
Right next to his whiny complaint was a photo of him with his brood of rug-rats, him smiling at the camera.
I suggested: “If that’s true stop having children. The collective ‘we’ you speak of shouldn’t have to take care of them. We can’t afford to care for ourselves so should you be allowed to unilaterally add even more?”
The argument he presents is against “more people,” there is no rational distinction between HOW said people arrived here. In anything, the “birth” method is more onerous to the collective “we” he defends.
Consider the typical immigrant is an adult, not a newborn. In 2017 79% of all immigrants were ages 18–64—the prime working age. Among the native-born only 59% fit into this category. Only 5% of immigrants are ages 5–17, verses 18% of the native born.
In other words, typical immigrants immediately start looking for a job. Most are happy to confess they came here to find jobs. Not the bigot’s little rugrats. They don’t seek a job. They go straight into one of the most expensive programs in America — public education, where they typically remain until at least 18. Based on the yearly cost to taxpayer for public education in the whiner’s state his children will cost the “we” a minimum of $137,940 each!
Then they generally move on to “higher education” which is typically far more expensive often demanding “loans” from the government or “free” admission, which means at everyone else’s expense. Consider this from Forbes:
More than 2.5 million student loan borrowers have student loan debt greater than $100,000, with 610,000 of that total holding student loan debt greater than $200,000. The largest concentration of student loan debt is $10,000 — $25,000, which accounts for 12.3 million student loan borrowers.
Birth “invaders” are expensive, far more expensive than immigrants.
Pity the poor immigrant who comes to America looking for a job, who works 8 hours a day — and often more — to pay taxes so the ant-immigrant whiners can have their kiddies receive “free” education or pay for their Social Security. Pity the poor immigrant working so hard to pay for this bigot’s little ones.
The bigot’s rugrats have NO intention of finding a job, not for years at least. Instead they want things. Many of them receive food stamps, they can receive social security — though they haven’t paid in a dime — unlike illegal immigrants who have to pay in yet can’t receive a red cent from it. For instance, 44% of SNAP beneficiaries are children under 18 and 9% are over 60—two demographics under-represented by immigrants but over-represented by “birth invaders.” In addition, “ just over 3 million children under the age of 18 receive Social Security benefits.”
The “invaders” who come over the border pay billions in Social Security payments and yet they are ineligible to receive benefits. The chief actuary for Social Security, Stephen Goss, says: “We estimate that earnings by unauthorized immigrants result in a net positive effect on Social Security financial status generally, and that this effect contributed roughly $12 billion to the cash flow of the program for 2010.” By 2013 it was $13 billion in subsidies from immigrants to the native born.
The numbers for Social Security aren’t good. The system is being hit by a large number of birth canal invaders—known as the Baby Boomers. Vox reported:
In 2018, the federal government expects to receive about $2 billion less in payroll taxes and investment income than it will need to pay workers through the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program. If nothing changes, that savings account will run dry by 2034, right around when the last of the baby boomers reach retirement age. After that, the government will only have enough money to pay retirees and disabled workers 79 cents for every dollar they’re owed.
It gets worse. Studies show “native born” children are more likely to engage in criminal acts than are immigrants — “legal” or “illegal.” We know crime is a game played by the young more than by older individuals. So our anti-immigrant “breeder” is populating the country with individuals who statistically are going to enter the highest crime age group.
“Essentially, crime peaks around age 17, 18,” said Gary Sweeten, an associate professor at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. “There is a rapid increase in the teenage years up to that point and then, almost as rapid of a decline after that point and continued declines throughout the life course.”
What about the violent crime birth canal invaders bring with them? Consider the peak age for commiting murder is 20 to 24, next is ages 25–29, then 17 to 19. Of all known murderers in 2017 4,399 were ages 24 or under. In comparison only 1,793 were older than 40 years of age. The average “over the border invader” is past the peak crime age while these birth canal invaders will only be reaching it in a few years.
If these birth canal invaders aren’t murdering us intentionally they’re killing us in car accidents. In 2016 teens 15–19 imposed $13.6 billion in total costs for injuries in motor accidents; 292,742 of them required emergency room treatment due to their driving. The American Automobile Association says: “Drivers ages 16–17 continue to have the highest rates of crash involvement, injuries to themselves and others and deaths of others in crashes in which they are involved.”
The reality of age is immigrants are mostly in their prime working age and thus more likely to make net contributions to the economy than not. But, the children of the anti-immigrant whiners are a different thing altogether. They are at a peak age where they are a drain on the system. What these whiners says about immigrants is doubly true regardingImm their own children.
But, one of the deceptive practices of bigots is to look at only one side of a spread sheet. It’s easy to concentrate on the “costs” a group imposes on the economy, but there is also what they contribute. Immigrants start contributing almost immediately, not so for infants. But infants make up for it in the long term. Both groups make contributions. Either can turn out to create jobs with new companies or important innovations. And even if the immigrant himself doesn’t do so his children and grand-children will make contributions for generations to come.
In fact, if we look at the economic benefits of living in America today we can honestly say the bulk of it is due to immigrants, or their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. Our whiners complaint about immigrants is a false one, just as my tongue-in-cheek tirade about “birth canal invaders” is a false one. Both are built on the same false premise and suffer from the same fallacies. Babies and immigrants are both good things over the long run.
