by John Hunt
Indiana is sick and tired of illegal aliens, and sicker still of the Federal failure to do something about them.
Last year they passed their own version of Arizona’s immigration law – which included mandatory E-Verify for all businesses, with penalties, verification of immigration status when passing out state welfare benefits, and a ban on the acceptance of Mexico’s fraud-friendly “Matricula Consular” card. Part of the law was blocked by a Federal judge, but the bulk remains in effect.
Part of that law also requires the state to calculate the annual cost of illegal aliens to the state – and bill Washington, D.C. for it. This year’s cost? $130.9 million.
Budget Director Adam Horst sent Congress a bill for the amount Friday. Congress is not expected to act on the request, however. It’s not like Indiana is asking to fund a bridge to nowhere or a Chinese wind turbine company.
Horst estimated $110.6 million of the state’s illegal immigrant costs have been for K-12 education. He estimated prison costs at $12.3 million and welfare costs at nearly $8 million.
And officials acknowledge that this estimate may in fact understate the actual cost by as much as 5 times! This, because school officials are not permitted to ask the immigration status of children in school, as Alabama’s HB56 mandates. Nor have officials yet obtained a recent estimate of illegal alien welfare access under the new law, or estimate welfare fraud or identity theft costs by illegal aliens. and most significantly, the figures do not take into account the anchor babies of illegal aliens and their massive cost to the state.Our good friends at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have crunched those numbers, and their estimate for Indiana (2009) was a staggering $608.5 million – for a single state!
In all, FAIR estimates that illegal aliens cost the United States a mind-boggling $113 BILLION each and every year – far more than the annual estimated cost of the entire ObamaCare program. Gateway states like Arizona are hit especially hard, sunk by illegals to the tune of $2.5 billion a year.
In the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on S.B. 1070, Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted that immigration was to be governed by Federal laws, based upon the Constitution’s granting of the power of “naturalization” to the Congress.
However Kennedy’s ruling has a clear flip side, another section of the Constitution that – if the Court compelled its enforcement – would make laws like Arizona’s and Indiana’s completely unnecessary…Article IV, Section 4:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,and shall protect each of them against invasion….”
We urge every other state to do what Indiana has done, and send their bills for illegal aliens to Washington, D.C. – but not to stop there. They need to SUE the Federal government for these costs, and to force the Feds to obey the charge our Founders commanded – SECURE THE BORDERS. Kennedy’s ruling sets a clear precedent to support such lawsuits.
Tell YOUR state representatives and Governor to demand Washington bureaucrats do their jobs to protect the states from illegal aliens, drug and human smugglers, gangs and “OTM” terrorists – secure the borders now, or pay the price.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/?lvl=L
Original Article http://standwitharizona.com/blog/2012/07/01/go-hoosiers-indiana-sends-congress-the-bill-for-the-cost-of-illegal-aliens/.