One source pegs illegal cost to the US at $10 billion annually (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Aug25.html) and $10.5 billion to California alone (http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/immigr...caillegals.htm). AZ is at almost $2 billion.
That leave 48 other states! Spending money. Not even counting the money they send out of the country.

Money Sent Back To Mexico Set To Surpass Oil Revenue This Year
By Digger Bookmark and Share

In February I reported on the record $16.6 billion sent back to Mexico from immigrants here in the U.S., a 24% increase from 2003. The latest estimates show that this year those "remittances" as they call them, are expected to top Mexico's oil industry as the number one form of revenue for the country. This is all being fascilitated by bank in the United States that refuse to enforce laws on the books regarding reporting criminal and illegal transactions and instead would sell out our country for a dollar.

Lou Dobbs (transcript March 21, 2005)

The Mexican citizens cross our border illegally. Some of them find work, and many of them send their earnings back to Mexico. Those earnings have added up to nearly $17 billion in the past year. Remittances, as they're called, are expected to become Mexico's primary source of income this year, surpassing the amount of money that Mexico makes on oil exports for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Trade deficit with Mexico for the last year surpassed $45 billion.

Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are using bank accounts in this country to send those remittances home, and many U.S. banks are now aggressively helping illegal aliens open those accounts. Those banks refer to the practice in the political correct vernacular as banking the unbanked. (http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000911.html)

So now, what is the benefit to the US of illegals.

Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
Now the metaphor escapes me. Who the hell would do that? Are you implying that illegal imigrants have a death wish or are all pyromaniacs?




We accept responsibility for people who are the same as us?

It is, in fact, our argument that it is in USA's own best interests to tolerate illegal immigrants, because the benefits it receives are greater than the costs if has to pay.



... by no means an unbiased article, and I reject it completely.



Interesting that those radical sites talk of acts of war. One wonders if that justifies the deaths that the Mexican Government seeks to help its nationals avoid. I realise that in opposing right-wing extremists one also opposes the racist killers among them, but I didn't realise that the murders carried out by this group had reached such numbers that the Mexican Government had to take steps to warn people of the risks they faced, even if it cannot stop them.

I consider it to be a deliberate twisting of the truth to say that this publication demonstrates that Mexico is "exporting" its problems.



No-one would disagree: sometimes you have to make a brutal choice, whatever side of the argument you support.



By that logic, does not the European Union stand first in line for handouts for its poor, followed by the USA, then Japan and China ... These organisations/countries are the wealthiest, so the need is less and can be spread furthest. It does make a kind of sense, I have to admit.

Non-sense.