Illegal immigrants--Texas vs. California

Conn Carroll:

...

... the simple fact is that illegal immigrants are not to blame for California's troubles. One need only look at Texas, a state that has a much bigger border with Mexico and a similarly large illegal immigrant population.

Despite its many illegal immigrants (or maybe even because of them), Texas has a booming private-sector economy, low unemployment and highly competitive public schools.

But while Texas and California have identical Latino populations (nonwhite Hispanics make up 38.1 percent of both states' populations), Texas has done a much better job of assimilating its newcomers.

A language other than English is spoken in more than 40 percent of all California homes. That number is just 34 percent in Texas. Hispanics own almost 21 percent of all businesses in Texas. That number is just 16 percent in California.

But there is one thing California is great at -- getting immigrants hooked on welfare. California is home to just 10 percent of the entire U.S. population but also has one-third of its total welfare recipients.

And while California's population is just 50 percent larger than Texas', its welfare caseload is 10 times as large. That dependency culture gets passed to California immigrants, as well.

While just 1.9 percent of all Texans are on welfare, 4.1 percent of all Californians are. The numbers are even worse for the foreign-born, non-U.S. citizen population.

In Texas, just 2.1 percent of all foreign-born, non-U.S. citizens are on welfare. California has more than triple that percentage of foreign-born, non-U.S. citizens on welfare, at 6.6 percent.

All this is highly relevant to the debate that conservatives and libertarians are having over the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. Conservatives claim that granting the current cohort of illegal immigrants amnesty will vastly expand the federal government's welfare state.

Libertarians say Americans shouldn't worry because: 1) poor immigrants use welfare less often than the native-born poor; and 2) they are good for overall economic growth.

But as the numbers from California and Texas show, the economic benefits immigrants offer are highly dependent on which welfare state they immigrate into.

If immigrants come to a generous welfare state like California, they do seem to have trouble assimilating and often do become dependent on the state. If they immigrate to a state like Texas, however, they seem to do just fine.

... 

Hispanics that come to Texas for the most part are looking for work and in my experience they are hard workers.  What California demonstrates is how the welfare state and dependency can ruin the work ethic of even hard workers.

What is not clear from the reform legislation is how the law will treat illegal immigrants who come after their cut off date.  Will they continue to be allowed to stay?  If so then what is the benefit to the US in the reform? I can see how Democrats would like to boost their numbers, but that is hardly good for the country as a whole.