› Illegal Immigration and Remittances Will Wreck Iowa as they have California

Post Authored By Doug Mitchell, Founder of Operation Red State and Chief TechOps Officer – Funk For Congress Campaign

I spent the first 33 years of my life in Southern California and I’ve seen first hand what lax immigration policy can do.  What started as “We need immigrants regardless of legal status to fuel our growth” has become an epidemic of emergency rooms closing at an alarming rate.

What was brushed off as, “We need the people who do the jobs Americans won’t do” has become an approximately $24 billion annual money transfer (called Remittances) from the U.S. to Mexico.  (2007 stat from NYTimes blog)

What began as “Bilingual classrooms to accommodate Spanish speakers” has become a non-integrated second society that allows immigrant youth to live a life where U.S. language and culture are optional.

Auto insurance rates suffer under the strain of claims in the “Uninsured Motorist” category while citizens pay ever more usurious rates.

Death by a thousand cuts comes to mind when I think of my former home state. Will we allow Iowa to suffer the same fate? Every time we gloss over the illegal immigration issue here in the heartland we plant seeds that bear a most poisonous fruit.

I don’t want this destiny for my new love…Iowa.

I want immigrants to come here legally and uphold Iowa’s great welcoming tradition.  I’d like my children to have a rich and diverse experience too…just not at the expense of my fellow citizens and their economic prosperity.  We need plentiful legal immigrants to follow the path of our grandparents and  great grandparents by  assimilating into American culture vs. supplanting it.

Strong border policy is an issue that we folks in fly over country don’t confront too often.   That needs to change.  I don’t want to wake up one day and find that Iowa is now a border state with a wrecked economy, awful roads, and no one to blame…but ourselves.