[TheRealThing]

My first thought when this issue came up was the number of kids and teens sent over from Europe during the 1800's and 1900's. Many of us whether you know it or not I'd venture to say are here thanks to the efforts of immigrants who sought a better life for their children.

Get them registered and documented. They'll become legal and pay taxes unlike the many who have crossed borders without any accountability. The welfare state needs more reformation than the immigration issue. Tackling disability fraud, and getting able bodied poor back to work and off welfare is key!

You're a good guy Spirit, and it is not my intention to in any way alienate you. But consider this. We began advertising for illegal immigrants when Obama passed his own Dream Act, in 2012. To your points, to my knowledge they didn't have welfare during the 18 and early 1900's, so said immigrants had to hit the ground running. Not merely report in for 5 to 10 years worth of lavish entitlements. According to history, these folks were honest, eager to work to get ahead, and willing to serve in the military. Oh, and one more thing, they immigrated here legally.

EXCERPT---
Executive Summary

Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue:
◾Direct benefits. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation.
◾Means-tested welfare benefits. There are over 80 of these programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services to roughly 100 million low-income Americans. Major programs include Medicaid, food stamps, the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
◾Public education. At a cost of $12,300 per pupil per year, these services are largely free or heavily subsidized for low-income parents.
◾Population-based services. Police, fire, highways, parks, and similar services, as the National Academy of Sciences determined in its study of the fiscal costs of immigration, generally have to expand as new immigrants enter a community; someone has to bear the cost of that expansion.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports...s-taxpayer

Total US debt will be passing the 18 trillion dollar mark later this year. In a bit of irony, we must borrow the 4 billion Obama is asking for to support the current wave of immigrants. To put that into perspective, it takes 32 years for only one billion seconds to tick away. It would take 32 thousand years for one trillion seconds to tick away. (According to some, that could be far more years than the total time of Creation. And, we owe 18 times that amount) But incredibly, the US borrows a staggering 52 thousand dollars a second. We owe an impossibly large amount of money and there is no end in sight to the trillion dollar a year borrowing spree. To make matters worse, I don't know about most folks, but God willing, I intend to live for a while. That being the case, by 2016 the CBO says the Social Security Fund will begin running a deficit. So, maybe you can tell me, since this administration has already syphoned off 750 billion dollars a year from medicare in order to pay for ObamaCare, are we further going to drain away our senior's life blood in the form of social security funds so that we can give it instead to people who aren't even of this country? Additionally, where are all these folks going to work? The current labor force participation rate is a very anemic 62.8 percent.

Student debt topped one trillion in 2014 for the first time ever. Great kids are racking up enough debt to buy a house before they even hit the workforce. And, the ramifications of the new healthcare initiative will double that burden. Illegals get all that handed to them. We already have 50 million on food stamps. In short, the engine which sustains and funds all this world outreach is the US working public, I still call the process taxation. I think we have to ask ourselves a very hard question. Like those who perished when the Titanic went down understood all too well, despite infinite compassion, only so many people can get in a life boat. Do we want to save all that we can, or do we overload the life boat until it sinks and let everybody drown?