Looking for light

 This piece was written by AFSC colleagues Lewis Webb, Amy Gottlieb, and myself about looking for light in dark times on the occasion of the observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In 1968, during his “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared: 

 “The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around. ...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.’” 

Today, it is dark enough to see the stars. The Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants, working people, and democracy itself have brought us to this dark moment. But in that darkness, there are stars that shine with love, flicker with hope, and guide us toward freedom. 

In communities standing up for immigrants nationwide, that light is unmistakable. Thousands of people are on the front lines every day—documenting ICE abuses and violence; accompanying immigrants to school, medical appointments, court hearings, and immigration check-ins, and speaking up to demand humane immigration policies. Even in cities that have been directly targeted by militarized government forces, people have shown that they are willing to confront armed, masked officers to protect their neighbors and communities. They are proving what we know to be sure: our communities are stronger with immigrants.  

As Dr. King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”  

In the struggle for economic justice, communities are building power through both advocacy and direct action. Trump’s budget bill made drastic cuts to health care and food assistance while giving more tax breaks to the wealthy. But a majority of people in the U.S. support a different path that ensures all people can thrive. According to recent polls, most people support labor unions and increasing the minimum wage. There’s also strong support for  affordable child care and housing, debt-free education, and Medicare for All. But people aren’t just advocating for change—they’re creating it. They’re forming mutual aid networks to share resources and meet each other’s immediate needs when the government won’t.   

As Dr. King demanded in 1967:  

“Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.”  

In working for peace and justice, communities are resisting authoritarianism and violence in all its forms.  

People of faith are holding vigils to bear witness to oppression and affirm the power of love when put into action. Young people are protesting attacks on their rights and civil liberties on campuses and in the streets across the country. With our voices and votes, we are demanding our elected officials defend the rule of law and democratic principles. Together, we are building nonviolent movements that prove real security comes from caring for one another, not through violence or force.   

This is the “garment of destiny” Dr. King described. We are all tied together, and what affects one affects us all. The way forward requires us to keep building these connections, to understand our struggles are shared, and to protect and care for each other in all we do. 

In 1965, Dr. King said: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”   

We are building that society now—through every act of accompaniment, every demand for justice, every refusal to give in to authoritarianism. The stars are visible. Our path is clear.  

Regrowing West Virginia

 It’s no secret that West Virginia is facing some pretty serious demographic problems, even aside from our spiking COVID-19 spread.

For starters, we have one of the oldest populations, a trend to which I am contributing. We have long been at or very near the bottom in terms of workforce participation.

Not only do we have more deaths than births, but we’re rapidly losing population. Between 2010 and 2020, state population has dropped by about 3.2%, or almost 59,000 people. For comparison, the population of Charleston is about 48,000.

The population loss is more than the combined populations of Pocahontas, Webster, Gilmer, Pleasants, Pendleton, Calhoun, Tucker and Wirt counties. We’ve also been at or near the top in terms of overdose death rates.

According to the West Virginia Center for Excellence in Disabilities, the state has the highest rate of people with disabilities, at 1 in 5, although I’ve seen much higher estimates. We’ve also long been at or near the bottom in terms of median income and the top in terms of poverty rates.

Taken together, these are some pretty serious challenges.

If we’re going to survive, let alone thrive economically and culturally, one obvious solution is to be a welcoming place for new arrivals from around the world.

Welcoming immigrants isn’t exactly a new thing for West Virginia. One of the first acts of the newly formed government of West Virginia was the appointment in 1864 of Joseph Diss Debar, himself an immigrant from France, as commissioner of immigration, with the goal of encouraging people to settle here. Something of an artist, he is perhaps best known for designing the state seal.

In 1870, he published the West Virginia Hand Book and Immigrant’s Guide. Diss Debar’s efforts would eventually be far surpassed by agents from coal and timber companies who scoured Europe, often painting a rosy picture of life in the Mountain State that didn’t meet the reality.

Along with immigrants from overseas, the state’s population and workforce was increased by the internal migration of many Black Americans from the deep South.

According to local historian and longtime journalist James Casto, “Over the decades, countless Italians, Poles, Serbs, and Turks were put to work building railroads, cutting timber, and running sawmills. Other industries, too, benefited from immigrant labor. Even before the Civil War, German and Swiss immigrants traveling up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers found jobs in the iron works located in the Wheeling/Weirton area. English and Belgian craftsmen were recruited to work in the state’s glass factories. Germans came to brew beer. Talented Italian stonemasons crafted fine homes, buildings, and walls, many of which can still be seen.”

Ken Fones-Wolf and Ronald L. Lewis wrote, in probably the most complete single source on this issue, “Transnational West Virginia: Ethnic Communities and Economic Change, 1840-1940,” “In sum, it was the skills and the labor of these migrants that made modern West Virginia.”

It didn’t always go well for the newcomers. Some agents were deceitful and greedy. Some new arrivals were kept in virtual peonage or wound up working and living in appalling conditions. Of course, it was the coal mines that would be the biggest consumer of immigrant labor — and sometimes lives.

A 1911 report to Congress breaks down mine employment by ethnicity in detail for the Fairmont and Elk Garden, New River and Kanawha, and Pocahontas coalfields. Aside from native-born Americans of European and African origin, among the “races” of immigrants identified as working in the mines in the early years of the new century are, in no particular order and using the original terms and spelling:

Russian Hebrew; Hebrew other than Russian; Italians; Poles; Slovakians; Russians; Magyars (Hungarians); Slavish; Lithuanian; English; German; Litvich; Greek; Welsh; Irish; Scotch; Swedish; Belgian; Danish; Syrian; Bohemian; Bulgarian; Austrian; Slovenian; Ruthenian; Montenegrin; Herzegovinian; Dutch; Macedonian; other Slav races; and other southern or eastern European races.

(It’s interesting to note how slippery the socially constructed notion of “race” is and has always been.)

Under tough and sometimes brutal conditions, this mixed multitude managed to bridge differences and forge bonds of solidarity in ways that enriched our culture and contributed to the nation at large.

Given the recent 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, it’s good to remember that many of those who marched for the rights of workers to organize were immigrants from overseas.

And in modern times, immigrants punch above their weight class when it comes to contributing to West Virginia’s economy. According to the American Immigration Council, while they make up only 2% of the population and labor force, their households accounted for $628.7 million in after-tax spending power in 2018. The 1,200 or so immigrant-owned businesses in West Virginia generated $36.2 million in business income. Plus, adult immigrants are about twice as likely to have college degrees as native residents.

West Virginia’s immigrant population also paid over a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in taxes, to the tune of $185 million federal and $72.8 million state and local. While there weren’t many more than 100 people eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status in 2018, they paid an estimated $270,000 in state and local taxes.

These are the kinds of economic and cultural contributions that could slow — and eventually reverse — our steady decline. Various immigrant groups have added much to West Virginia’s history, and they could add much more in the future, but only if we put out the welcome mat.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Why WV needs immigrants

For pretty much every year since 2008, I've worked with the WV Center on Budget and Policy on a report called The State of Working West Virginia. Each year, there's a different focus. This time around the spotlight was on the state of West Virginia's immigrant population, which is tiny in comparison to most states but contributes greatly to our economy and culture.

We released the report last week as part of an event launching Many Roads Home, a new social media effort that highlights the stories and contributions of the state's immigrants.

We have a working agreement on the division of labor for these projects: the folks from the policy center, such as this year's co-author Sean O'Leary, do the hard parts with numbers and graphs. I do the easy parts.

It was pretty easy to point out why WV needs immigrants. Here's an excerpt with the punch line:

In 1950, the US population was over 1,50 million. West Virginia’s population that year reached its all-time high of slightly over 2 million.

Fast forward to 2019. The US population has more than doubled from the 1950 level to over 329 million. West Virginia’s population has declined by around 200,000 over the same period. A 2002 analysis by the West Virginia Health Statistics Center found that, if nobody had either moved into, nor out of, West Virginia for the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the normal rate of population increase would have resulted in a state with 2,605,345 residents. That number would have been much higher today. 

The state and its communities are facing some serious demographic problems:

*West Virginia is among the oldest states in terms of median age.

*It has the lowest workforce participation rate, which hovers around 50 percent of its eligible population. The national average is around 63 percent.

*As of Dec. 2017, 73,879 West Virginians of all ages received Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) for a disability.

*By 2018, 26.3 percent of West Virginians, or 475,744 individuals, received Social Security or Social Security Disability Insurance.

*Between 2010 and 2018, there were 19,000 more deaths than births.

*According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, West Virginia has the highest age adjusted death rate from opioid overdoses.

*Between July 1, 2017 and July 1, 2018, the state lost 11,216 people, a rate of over 30 people per day.

*Public school enrollment declined by 4,122 students in the last year.

These trends indicate a serious downward spiral. If not reversed, they could spell a more or less slow death to West Virginia’s communities. To thrive—or even to survive—West Virginia needs to be, and be seen as, a welcoming place for new arrivals from around the world. West Virginians have done this before under tough conditions in the days of industrialization, bridging differences and forging bonds of solidarity in ways that enriched our culture and contributed to the world at large. We need to build on that tradition.

A tweet-sized rant

The latest bad news to break from the US border (that would be the one about the racist and misogynistic  Facebook group set up by past and current border patron agents in case another story just as bad breaks in the meantime) reminds me of a quote attributed to poet Maya Angelou:

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

I believe. Although it's not the first time.

On the border

Recently, more than 400 clergy and people of faith took part in a nonviolent direct action at the border in San Diego as part of the “Love Knows No Borders” Moral Call for Migrant Justice campaign.

Closer to home, here in West Virginia, Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Charleston opened their doors to a multi-faith vigil to express solidarity with migrants, refugees, and particularly with those now trying to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum in the United States at the US-Mexico border.

At the event, my colleague at American Friends Service Committee, Rick Wilson, led everyone in a thought experiment: Imagine your house, and everything in it. Imagine your neighborhood, your community, and everything that is familiar to you.

That part is easy to imagine, right? What is impossible for us to imagine is what degree of desperation would compel anyone to embark on a dangerous journey, for thousands of miles, knowing that the outcome is entirely uncertain, that you may not be welcomed, and worse you will be regarded as a criminal, or an invader, and treated accordingly with tear gas, separation from your children or incarceration.

Jackie Lozano, a young mother living here in Charleston, shared how, as an infant in Mexico City, she had life-threatening health problems. Her mother, desperate to pay for the medicine Jackie needed to live, made the treacherous journey from Mexico to the United States.

Her story reminds us that we cannot know the multitude of reasons people are seeking asylum or a life here in our country, but that all monotheistic faith traditions give us clear instruction about how we should regard the stranger.

Rabbi Urecki of B’Nai Jacob told the crowd gathered at St. John’s that, “You shall love the stranger in your midst” is repeated 36 times, more than any other commandment, in the Torah.

The rabbi went on to say, “To be a Jew means we do not see asylum seekers; we see the face of our ancestors. We don’t see migrants, we see us. We do not see ‘them,’ we see God’s children.”

The Christian faith also demonstrates how to regard people at our borders seeking a better life for themselves and their children. In Matthew 25:35 it says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

In Islamic tradition, according to Ibtesam Barazi with the Islamic Association of West Virginia, “We are taught to care for poor immigrants who are forced out of their homes and their properties.”

In stark opposition to any of these teachings, we instead see racist, nativist violence at the border today, all being committed by our government, in our name.

Whether these atrocious acts of violence continue in our name, or whether the “better angels of our nature” prevail, is up to each of us and the degree to which we are willing to speak out.

(This op-ed by Lida Shepherd of the American Friends Service Committee WV Economic Justice Project ran in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Bad call

This pretty much says it all.

Mother of Exiles

I guess we'd have to ban this poem if some people got their way:

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Somebody's got to do it

The latest Front Porch podcast on immigration generated a lot of hateful comments at the WV Public Broadcasting Facebook page. I like to think of feeding trolls as an act of Christian charity.

Trumped

Sometimes I think Donald Trump might be a political double agent or agent provocateur.

Other times I think how awesome a Trump administration might be for pure entertainment value (in a make believe world, of course NOT in the real one). In that virtual world scenario, I kind of envision a "team of rivals" in the cabinet, with such luminaries as Gene Simmons, Gary Busey, and Meat Loaf...

Busey would make an awesome imaginary secretary of state...

In the real world, however, Trump's views on immigration, aside from the having no basis in reality thing, could be a recipe for political disaster for a certain political faction.

If you actually want a fact-based look at the issue, this might be a good place to start. Or, if you're in a hurry, you could check this op-ed by Jared Bernstein out.

No crony capitalism here, boss!

Talk about a steaming load.

Lots of people are aware of Arizona's tough and controversial anti-immigration bill. NPR yesterday morning had an interesting feature about what REALLY went on behind the scenes.

It turns out a private, for profit corporation, Corrections Corporation of America, sees locking up immigrants as a potential growing new "market" for their business. CCA types and sympathetic politicians hooked up at a meeting of the conservative legislative group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and drew up a model bill. CCA and allied groups also provided campaign contributions to most of the sponsors.

The idea was that the immigrants to be locked up by the new law would be detained at a private prison run by CCA.

It's just business. And perfectly legal.

It does kind of make one wonder, however, what the next stunt to increase market share might be...

SPEAKING OF STEAMING LOADS, here's a piece on Wall Street's effort to shift the blame for the economic meltdown to poor people.

BALLOT INITIATIVES. Here's a look at a few that are on the menu around the country. I'm so glad WV doesn't do this stuff.

LOOKING AHEAD. Here's one gloomy prognostication.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller was a champion of health care reform and he's not running away from it now.

EARLY HUMANS may have hit the road earlier than had previously been thought.

NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW DEPARTMENT. Assassin bugs have a neat trick for making a meal of spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TAKING THE LONG WAY HOME

Odysseus, courtesy of wikipedia.

"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove--
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will--sing for our time too."

It's been a long time since El Cabrero went on an extended ancient Greek jag, but I can't resist any longer. Lately I have been revisiting Homer's epic poem The Odyssey and have been struck again by its power.

For nearly 3000 years, the saga of "long tried, noble Odysseus" and his ordeals has been a favorite for people of all ages. It has given us several words, including odyssey itself, mentor (a character who befriended Odysseus' son Telemachus while his father was away), siren, cyclops, calypso, and probably more.

It has inspired many other literary works and films, including Virgil's Aeneid, James Joyce's Ulysses, the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Charles Frazier's powerful Civil War novel Cold Mountain, and more. Odysseus has shown up in places like Dante's Divine Comedy and the poetry of Tennyson. The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) even wrote an epic sequel. I'm sure I'm leaving out plenty of other examples of its enduring influence.

There are lots of reasons for its popularity. For one thing, it really is a great story as Odysseus suffers ordeal after ordeal on his way home from Troy. Although most of us haven't spent 10 years besieging a sacred city and finally sacking it, we can probably all identify with the desire to go home, i.e. to reach a place of peace, security, and safety. We probably don't run across too many cyclopes or cannibalistic giants or make pilgrimages to the Underworld, but everyone has problems and challenges that have to be overcome with courage and strategy.

Finally, the real subject matter of the Odyssey is an urgent issue today in America: how is it possible for veterans who have endured incredible hardships and survived the ravages of war make or miss their homecoming? As the Odyssey shows and the experience of generations of combat veterans shows, the challenges and dangers don't stop when the war ends.

Way more to come.

WAL-MART--EVERYDAY LOW ACTIONS. A certain retail giant is warning its employees that the world will come to an end if giant corporations don't continue to completely dominate everything, especially elections and labor law. Where's the thunderbolt of Zeus when you need it?

HOW LOW WILL IT GO? Here's the Economic Policy Institutes's latest take on the state of the recession.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT. Some US hospitals have taken to deporting sick or injured immigrants.

LET US CULTIVATE OUR GARDEN. Words of wisdom from Gazette columnist Perry Mann.

TALKING SENSE ON HEALTH CARE. Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SYMBOLICALLY SPEAKING

Caption: Fuzzy roosters discuss the social construction of reality.

Every once in a while, El Cabrero teaches an off-campus evening sociology class for my alma mater. I have several reasons for doing this, not least of which is the privilege of getting a university library card so I can find obscure books with which to regale you, Gentle Reader.

As is usually discussed in most any such class, there are several different ways of approaching the study of society. It's common practice although somewhat problematic to break down theoretical approaches into three main orientations: functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist.

Functionalist approaches can run from the ridiculous to the sublime but generally focus on how various activities or institutions affect the overall social structure. One of the best functionalist theorists was the late great Robert Merton, who was featured here a while back.

Conflict theory is pretty much what it sounds like. It tends to focus on inequalities of power, wealth and privilege between groups and how these are fought over or rationalized or some combination thereof.

The branch that I find to be increasingly interesting in my old age is the symbolic interactionist approach, which studies the way people create and interpret meanings through communication. Symbols can include anything from language to clothing to sacred images. For some reason, this approach developed primarily in the United States.

More on this tomorrow.

POVERTY and the political will to do something about it is the subject of this Paul Krugman column.

PLAY ON. the NY Times Magazine has a huge article about it which takes it pretty seriously.

CHRONICLES OF PHILANTHROPY. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on recent "charitable" efforts to plug Ayn Rand's ideology.

AFTER NAFTA. Thousands of Mexicans are organizing against the aftershocks of the North American Free Trade Agreement. As Jim Hightower pointed out recently, people who get angry over immigration to this country might want to consider that one reason for it is that many Mexicans have lost jobs or seen living standards fall since its passage in 1994. According to Hightower, 19 million more Mexicans live in poverty today than when NAFTA was passed.

FULL COURT PRESS. The WV Supreme Court story just keeps getting better and better. Justice Larry Starcher, who has been publicly critical of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, announced Friday that he would recuse himself from a case involving Massey. If you recall, Justice Spike Maynard recused himself after pictures surfaced of Blankenship and him vacationing in Monaco after the court agreed to hear the case. Starcher has urged Justice Brent Benjamin to recuse himself as well. A political unknown, Benjamin was elected to the court in 2004 with the help of millions of Blankenship's money. No wonder WV's court debacle was the inspiration for John Grisham's latest novel.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A RHETORICAL FLOURISH,WINNERS AND LOSERS IN IRAQ, AND ANOTHER MESS

Caption: Bantam rooster and noted free-market economist Dr. Denton "Denny" Dimwit is a master of rhetoric.

Political rhetoric is never exactly innocent, but El Cabrero suspects that the rhetoric of our time, particularly that of people in power, is way over the top.

What better antidote can there be than a dose of George Orwell's classic 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language"?

Here are some nuggets:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible...

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer...

Political language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

WINNERS AND LOSERS. Tha March/April issue of Foreign Policy has an interesting feature by several authors on the subject of "Who Wins in Iraq?" There are ten winners.

Sneak preview: the U.S. didn't make the list.

The top three winners were

1. Iran ("After nearly 25 years of wrestling with Saddam Hussein, Iran's Shiite rulers have the war to thank for their newfound power.");

2. Moqtada al-Sadr ("How a radical Shiite cleric became the most powerful man in Iraq"); and

3. Al Qaeda ("The terrorist network was on life support after September 11--until a new front opened in Baghdad and revived its mission.")

Other "winners" who made the list were, in order, Samual Huntington of "Clash of Civilizations" fame; China; Arab dictators; the price of oil; the United Nations (diplomacy may not be so stupid after all); Old Europe (see previus item); and Israel.

My guess is that the legitimate interests of the American people are buried somewhere in the "also ran" category.

ANOTHER MISTAKE WAS MADE. The latest collateral damage inflicted by the Bush administration hit the Medicaid program, which provides health care to around 55 million children, people with disabilities, low income families, and elderly Americans.

The so-called Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 (you know, the one that didn't reduce the deficit) included draconian cuts to social programs and harsh new rules in order to pay for more tax cuts for the rich. This is from the New York Times:

A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship, state officials say...

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

The article quotes state officials who say that the rule changes haven't turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid but has resulted in significant drops in rolls due to the difficulty of complying with the new rules.

Of West Virginia's congressional delegation, only Shelley Moore Capito supported the Deficit-Reduction-Act-Which-Didn't-Reduce-the-Deficit.


SPEAKING OF IMMIGRANTS EATING ALL THE HEALTH CARE (NOT)...Doh! The same issue of Foreign Policy cited above has a little item titled "You Can No Longer Argue..." It completes the sentence like this: "...that illegal immigrants are an excessive burden on U.S. healthcare...According to a RAND Corp. study on healthcare spending in the United States, foreign-born residents, particularly the undocumented, use far fewer medical services relative to their population share than U.S.-born citizens."

Legal immigrants make up 9.9 percent of the population and account for 7 percent of health care spending; undocumented workers are estimated to be 3.2 percent and account for 1.5 percent of healthcare spending.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED