Two Charts to Blow Your Mind: Where Illegal Aliens Live and How Many are Collecting Welfare

Try and contain your surprise, but it turns out that 20 metro areas are home to 60 percent of all illegal aliens in the U.S.

Examine the map, below, and you’ll find that five of the top 20 illegal alien havens are in California.

Shut down California’s financial incentives to harbor illegals and you solve a great percentage of the problem in the entire country.

Most of the United States’ 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants live in just 20 major metropolitan areas, with the largest populations in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data…
 

…Five of the 20 metros with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations are in California: Los Angeles, Riverside-San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose… Unauthorized immigrants account for about one-in-four foreign-born U.S. residents.

But, wait: there’s more!

Harvard economist George Borjas offers us an historical perspective into our current immigration nightmare. In short, almost half of all non-citizens are on the public dole, something never before seen in American history.

Since 1903, the United States has allowed for the deportation of immigrants who became a public charge after they entered the country, and this is how the law now reads:

Any alien who, within five years after the date of entry, has become a public charge from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen since entry is deportable.

Given these very straightforward–and very old–restrictions, it seems puzzling that we would find many immigrants on welfare…
 

[But here's] the big elephant in the room. Immigrants who receive non-cash benefits–including the most expensive benefit of all, Medicaid–are not considered to be public charges. In the words of DHS: “Non-cash benefits (other than institutionalization for long-term care) are generally not taken into account for purposes of a public charge determination.”

If we began to actually enforce the law with a common-sense interpretation of the century-old statutes, the policy shift will affect an awful lot of people.

In other words, American citizens who paid into the system don’t receive benefits like long-term medical care because — in part — we’re all subsidizing aliens.

Seems fair. If you’re a liberal.

Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.