Obama’s Amnesty Will Turn U.S. Into Welfare Magnet
ObamaCare: A memo acquired by Fox News says that President Obama is due any day now to announce amnesty for 4.5 million illegal aliens [latest reports show 5 million]. But don’t worry: They’ll get health insurance. And U.S. taxpayers will pay for it.
One of the most costly elements of ObamaCare has been its massive expansion of Medicaid, the state-run health insurance program intended to cover poor families.
As reported by Breitbart’s Big Government, a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies has found something shocking: Namely, that from 2011 through 2013, as ObamaCare was first being rolled out, 42% of all new Medicaid enrollees were immigrants.
Because illegal immigrants are poorer and less likely to have insurance than legal immigrants, it’s a good bet that Obama’s coming legalization of 4.5 million illegals will create an unparalleled surge in Medicaid spending as they sign up for benefits. That’s especially true in a state like California, where an estimated 25% of all illegal immigrants in the U.S. live.
Democrats aren’t going to fix this. You see, in ObamaCare, this isn’t a “bug.” It’s a feature.
All along, the progressives behind ObamaCare have assumed that it would remake the U.S. into a welfare magnet — turning those who came here illegally into a permanent welfare-dependent underclass for the Democrats to exploit in perpetuity. They just didn’t tell you.
We have to admit that, so far, it’s working like a charm.
The president could have passed any kind of amnesty bill he wanted to when he had a veto-proof majority in 2009 and 2010. But he waited until now to use an executive order for amnesty.
Why? Not only do polls show that poor immigrants are more likely to vote Democratic, offsetting the GOP’s enormous recent electoral gains, but they’re far more likely to be on welfare. For Democrats, that’s a twofer.
Today, some 66.4 million Americans, or one in five, participate in Medicaid. Total spending in 2010 was $369.3 billion, or about $5,562 per recipient, according to a recent report by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.
So, doing a little math, if 4.5 million illegals are added to Medicaid rolls under ObamaCare, they would tack on upwards of $25 billion a year to costs. And that’s just one welfare program out of many offered by both states and the federal government.
Get the picture? President Obama’s plan to legalize as many as 5 million illegals in the U.S. isn’t really about immigration — it’s about politics, and one of the largest expansions of the welfare state in our nation’s history.