In this election year, illegal immigration has become one of the largest domestic public policy issues in the country. Concerns about its impact on public education and health and welfare programs have drawn significant attention. Indeed, this is a familiar storyline.
In 1995, the Washington Post told the story of a young woman and her daughter who moved from Texas to Minnesota in search of more generous government benefits. The article profiled the Texan and several others in a similar position, reporting increases in monthly welfare checks as a perk, if not a determining factor, for their move to Minnesota.
Such personal stories served as a backdrop for expert comments on the “welfare magnet,” or the migration of some welfare recipients from low benefit states to high benefit states.
At the time, Congress was debating welfare reform proposals designed to give states increased flexibility in designing and running their programs. Many welfare experts and advocates for the poor were concerned states would engage in a race to the bottom, cutting welfare benefits in hopes that they wouldn’t inherit their neighboring state’s welfare recipients. Policymakers in the welfare magnet states even began talking about their state’s responsibility to the poor residents of their state alone-no doubt hoping to move public opinion in favor of reform by highlighting the idea that Minnesota’s taxpayers, for example, should not subsidize welfare recipients moving in from other states.
Interestingly, ten years after passage of federal welfare reform the debate about the welfare magnet rages on, but these days news stories are about crossing the national border, not a state line.
For many politicians, immigration has become an easy answer to the grassroots’ discontent over out-of-control spending. The argument goes that education and health and welfare programs have ballooned with the influx of foreigners to Texas and other states.
In reality, any strain illegal aliens place on today’s health care system is merely symptomatic of the larger problem.
Ultimately, our government-financed health care programs are showing fractures because of its inherent problems; often the result of layers of public policy decisions that have served only to cripple the marketplace. Implementing policies to effectively “lock out” every illegal immigrant from U.S. health and welfare programs might satisfy discontent voters in some quarters, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that is the solution to the serious issues facing us today and in the future.
Government projections demonstrate that as a result of growing entitlement spending – including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – balancing the budget in 2040 will require Congress to either cut federal spending by 60 percent, or double the tax burden. This is due the aging “baby-boomer” population, not foreign immigrants.
We have created this problem for ourselves. Through heavy government subsidies on the production side, entire industries, including education and health care, now rely heavily (if not almost exclusively) on government money to sustain them. Meanwhile, the creation and expansion of government programs providing generous benefits has increased reliance on government health and human services programs.
If we are serious about tackling these problems, policymakers must reform the programs that might not only lure people across a national border, but which more importantly (and expensively) encourage home-grown Americans to increasingly depend on the government and their taxpaying neighbors.
The problem has only been exacerbated as the expectations for free government health care programs have expanded at all levels of government. Even in Texas’ metropolitan counties, those known to operate programs offering generous “free” medical care to its residents, often end up receiving people from the suburbs and beyond driving in to take advantage of the systems.
Illegal immigration is certainly a public policy priority in its own right, but it cannot be confused as the silver bullet solution to rescue government budgets from insolvency. Any politician pointing to immigration as the reason for out-of-control spending is simply dashing behind a convenient smoke screen.
We cannot rest our hope for saving the country from irresponsible spending, and growing government, on curbing illegal immigration.
Mary Katherine Stout is the director of the Center for Health Care Policy Studies at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.