According to the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School* it is estimated (using 2004 numbers) that the Hispanic population in North Carolina contributes $756 million per year in direct and indirect taxes while costing the state $817 million for education, health care, and criminal-justice system costs. That is a net loss (or cost to other “profitable” taxpayers) of $61 million per year.
The same study estimates that 600,000 Hispanics live in North Carolina including 270,000 illegal immigrants. It is estimated that 33,600 Hispanics live in Forsyth County. And, if the proportion of those are illegal is as in the state overall, then 15,120 illegal Hispanics live here in Forysth County. Likewise (assuming that all Hispanics cost the same, when probably most of the “extra” cost is associated with the illegals, not the legal Hispanics), if the average net “cost” to other taxpayers is the same, then those illegals are costing Forysth County taxpayers $1,537,200 per year.
Given this background it amazes me that our Forsyth County Sheriff Bill Schatzman has opposed the county government’s efforts to be part of a federal program that would allow his deputies to enforce federal immigration laws!
Instead Schatzman says, “They are part of what makes the country what it is.”* Well, yes, I suppose they do make it what it is — which is in trouble! What they do is drain our economy! As proven by the study above illegal Hispanics make no net positive contribution!
So why doesn’t Schatzman want to enforce the law? After all he was a senior FBI agent for many years prior to his election to the be our Sheriff, wasn’t that supposed to be what he was doing while on the federal taxpayers’ payroll? And isn’t that we elected him to do here in Forysth County?
While he may claim there isn’t enough money to run the program, the fact that it costs our county more to have them here than they contribute makes that line of reasoning invalid.
So the only reason I can find for his dragging his feet on doing all he could be doing to enforce the laws of this land is reflected in his comment stating: “I’m looking out of my window at a major high-rise, and I would say that more than half the workers are Latino — Mexican and undocumented. If ICE pulled up and rounded them all up today, what would the construction company do?”*
Obviously Sheriff Bill Schatzman is more interested in the extra margin of profit the construction company will make building an $18 million downtown luxury apartment building using illegal workers, than he is in enforcing the law and making it possible for the taxpaying legal Americans (who, by the way, built all of the buildings of our city in the years prior to the recent influx of illegals) to get those same jobs today.
Sheriff Schatzman, what would the construction company do? They would hire LEGAL Americans and still get the job done!
So why not fix the drain on our economy by enforcing the law?!? Do your job, enforce all the laws, not just the ones you happen to agree with, that’s what my tax dollars are paying you to do.
*NOTE: Information from the study and quotes of Bill Schatzman were taken from the article “City, county feel powerless,” Winston Salem Journal, August 3, 2008, page A12.