Ted Poe Makes Me Proud!

So, were you pro-amnesty before you were proud of him or just since he's supporting an amnesty now? We are spending $120 billion a year on illegal immigrants. The Heritage Foundation says that granting an amnesty to all those illegal immigrants now in the country will cost taxpayers $1 trillion.
You can call it an amnesty or not but permanently importing poverty is not a stimulus.

To see why the so-called Texas "solution" is not a good idea, we need look no further than the example set by Germany, the fourth best economy in the world.  In response to a labor shortage prompted by economic recovery, Germany signed a series of bilateral recruitment agreements, first with Italy in 1955, then with Spain (1960), Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Portugal (1964), and Yugoslavia (1968).  The core of these agreements included the recruitment of Gastarbeiter (guest workers), almost exclusively in the industrial sector, for jobs that required few qualifications.  Under the so-called rotation principle, mostly male migrants entered Germany for a period of one to two years and were then required to return home to make room for other guest workers.  This policy had a double rationale: preventing settlement and exposing to industrial work the largest possible number of workers from sending countries.

Guest workers, unlike ordinary immigrants, were admitted under special jobs programs, and at least under the original plans, had no prospects of becoming citizens or permanent residents. Germany, like other European countries, at first refused even to allow them to bring families, hoping to discourage them from trying to put down roots. Later, Germany granted work stays of up to five years, and permitted wives and children to come along.  Legal workers were followed by waves of family members and illegal immigrants.  Sound familiar?

For decades, there were no efforts to integrate the newcomers. They were entitled to social benefits, but not citizenship. Their children could attend schools, but little effort was made to give them language skills. Many of the first generation of workers bought houses or established small businesses, although usually confining themselves to immigrant enclaves. Their German-born children were registered as "foreigners." They often spend years or even decades resolving their legal status.  And, while Germany (and many other European governments) failed to seriously pursue integration, many immigrants were equally unwilling to shed their own languages and national identities.  Sound familiar?

Many of the original guest workers are now retired, enjoying the comfortable pensions that are the pride of Europe. But their children and their grandchildren are trapped between two worlds, too Europeanized ever to return to the Middle East or North Africa, but lacking the language skills and education to forge ahead in their new countries.  The parents took jobs that Germans didn’t want — and most of that first generation did all right.  But the young people today don’t even get the bad jobs.  How are they to climb the social ladder when they can't even grab the bottom rung?