“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

This, the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, offers immigrants an open invitation for a chance at a better life in the United States – a country founded by immigrants. And we should never close our shores to them.

According to the Census Bureau, about 11.5 percent of people living in the United States are foreign-born, and accounted for in that percentage are eight to nine million illegal immigrants. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, there were an estimated 40,000 illegal immigrants just in Ohio in the year 2000.

Now though there is nothing wrong with immigration, there are many things wrong with illegal immigration, and just as many problems with how the government is dealing with it.

If you’ve ever visitied the Statue of Liberty, you must have gotten the feeling of pride, relief and safety many of our great-grandparents and others felt when they finally reached this destination. My own great grandparents escaped Ireland during the 1840’s- the Potato Famines brought them to Ellis Island on a wooden ship. Their voyage lasted 5 weeks in the middle of the summer. They lost three of their children; spent endless hours enduring the rough and high Atlantic seas; they packed their entire lives into four trunks. They survived the voyage and migrated up to Boston, where they got jobs and worked long hard days for pennies. They became citizens of the United States less than three years later. They became active in their communities, politics and held a level of pride at being Americans.
In the 1860’s they moved up to New Hampshire, where the air was cleaner, more land was available for them to start their own businesses. They had three more children after their arrival in the States.

My mother used to tell me stories she heard from her grandmother, about that voyage over here; about the hard times they lived through those first couple years here. Living on the streets at first, they soon found work in local textile mills and cleaning houses in Boston’s high class Dorchester neighborhood (at the time…)They attended church and worked many hours each day…saving every penny. My great grandmother would eat bread every day for weeks on end, because they didn’t have enough money to buy meat for the entire family. She would sacrifice her own meals to ensure her family got a decent one.

So typical are the stories from those times. From those who immigrated to this country looking for a better life. My mother told me how her grandmother knew things would be very difficult at first. They were scared, nervous and broke…but they also had determination and pride: They would work very hard, never accept a handout and never steal anything from their new land. Although at the time, many Americans resented these Irish immigrants for the same reasons some harbor bad feelings now. The difference is, the Irish became citizens.
What a thought.

A stark contrast to what we are seeing today.

According to a Jan. 10 Associated Press article, “Mexico says illegal immigrants should not be treated like criminals,” Mexicans living in the United States sent home more than $16 billion in remittances in 2004. Clearly, even illegal immigrants that have come to the United States to work are more concerned with bolstering the quality of life in Mexico rather than permanently residing within our borders. Mexican President Vicente Fox has called the United States’ recent attempts to better secure its borders “shameful.” The real shameful thing is that Fox seems more concerned with chastising the U.S. than improving his country’s economy, which cannot effectively support its citizens.

Comparing Mexico to Ireland is like talking about apples and oranges. Ireland was under British rule at the time, and many of the people left for America after the Great Famine, simply to get away from the ironclad rule of Britain. Mexico offers nothing to it’s citizens; it encourages them to come to the USA for jobs and money, but not to become citizens. The Mexican President should be totally ashamed of himself.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, illegal immigrants put a tremendous strain on the federal budget. It is estimated that each year the government pays about $2.5 billion in Medicaid costs, $2.2 billion for medical treatment of uninsured illegal aliens, $1.9 billion in food assistance, $1.4 billion in federal aid to schools, $1.6 billion extra to the federal prison and court systems – not to mention other costs.

And just for the skeptics out there, most reputable organizations agree about the trend even if their estimates are marginally different. According to an Aug. 2004 article in the Washington Post, “Illegal Immigrants’ Cost to Government Studied,” illegal immigrants cost the federal government more than $10 billion a year (about one billion less than the CIS estimates).

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Ohio requested $3.5 million in 1999 from the federal government in compensation for the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants. But Ohio only received $1.3 million, forcing Ohio taxpayers to cover the extra $2.2 million.

The proud Irish ancestors of mine would never have dreamed of this. They fed themselves, had their own babies in their own homes, took care of their elders in their own homes…they grew their own food and sowed their harvests each year. A hard life for sure. There were “services” available for the immigrants, but many refused to take them up. They had a certain sense of pride that is rare today.

Today we see illegal immigrants coming into this country, looking to use our resources and services as a means to better their own lives. Without giving back. American businesses looking for cheap labor do exploit this situation to their advantage. Lots of words going around about how these illegals take up the jobs Americans don’t want…that is bulloney. These modern day immigrants have no intention to make American a better country.