Below is an interesting guest post from my friend the Black Rooster discussing US immigration policy changes that are needed. I agree with him – we spend way too much money trying to deport people we educated! As a matter of fact, when I was roommates with the Black Rooster he was deported for overstaying his student visa. America lost a wealthy, University of Washington educated businessman because of stupid draconian bureaucratic rules. Very frustrating.
Has it ever occurred to you why the US spends billions of dollars every year on deporting illegal immigrants? Then turning around and granting the same illegal immigrants green cards while at the same time denying green cards to highly skilled and American educated foreigners?
In 2011 the US spent 5 billion dollars of American taxpayer’s money on deporting illegal immigrants. The average cost of deporting one illegal immigrant is 23,480 dollars. ICE and US Customs and Borders Protection budgets have increased by 80% since 2005, amounting to $17.1 billion in FY2010. If US were to undertake a mass deportation campaign its cost over five years would be $285 billion. That would mean new taxes of $922 for every man, woman, and child in the US and $5,100 fewer dollars for the
education of every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade.
On the other hand the US is easily giving out green cards to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants while at the same time rejecting green card applications for American educated foreigners who wish to live and work in the US? I mean this must be the stupidest thing ever because all that does is helping those foreign countries becoming more competitive. Let’s think about this for a second. Let’s say for
example a Chinese man is granted a student visa for the US. He spends 10 years educating himself in the US earning a PhD in computer science. He then applies for a green card because he wants to live and work in the US, contributing to its economy. However this man is rejected therefore he returns to China and with his hard earned American education starts the next big IT firm in China, making them richer, more competitive and more advanced.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to maybe give that illegal immigrants green card to the highly educated Chinese man?