Maryland Democrats Supported Sanctuary State as Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. Taxpayers a Stunning $134.9 Billion a Year
Is Your Legislator Supporting Sanctuary Status for Your Town, City, or State?
(Editorial Opinion) As illegal aliens commit more crimes across America, Maryland legislators will likely regroup and try again to give Maryland sanctuary state status when the next session of the Maryland General Assembly convenes in January of 2018.
Below is a compilation of the 2017 effort by Democrats in Maryland to protect criminal illegal aliens from deportation and the names of the lawmakers who sponsored the legislation.
Vote next year from a position of knowledge.
From Judicial Watch
Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers a mind-boggling $134.9 billion annually, according to a detailed analysis of federal, state and local programs that include education, medical, law enforcement and welfare. Conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Washington D.C. nonprofit dedicated to studying immigration issues, the in-depth probe reveals that state and local taxpayers get stuck with an overwhelming chunk—$116 billion—of the burden. State and local expenditures for services provided to illegal aliens total $88.9 billion and federal expenditures $45.8 billion, the analysis found. For those who claim illegal immigrants contribute by paying taxes, government figures show that only $19 billion was recouped by Uncle Sam.
“A continually growing population of illegal aliens, along with the federal government’s ineffective efforts to secure our borders, present significant national security and public safety threats to the United States,” the FAIR report states. “They also have a severely negative impact on the nation’s taxpayers at the local, state, and national levels. Illegal immigration costs Americans billions of dollars each year. Illegal aliens are net consumers of taxpayer-funded services and the limited taxes paid by some segments of the illegal alien population are, in no way, significant enough to offset the growing financial burdens imposed on U.S. taxpayers by massive numbers of uninvited guests.” This defies a myth, long promoted by influential open border groups, that illegal aliens pay their fair share of taxes.
More than 12.5 million illegal immigrants and their estimated 4.2 million citizen children benefit from the U.S. government’s generosity. The biggest expenditure ($17.14 billion) on the federal level is for medical services, which include uncompensated hospital costs, Medicaid births, Medicaid fraud and Medicaid benefits for U.S.-born children (anchor babies) of illegal immigrants. The second-largest federal expenditure is law enforcement and justice ($13.15 billion), which includes incarceration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and an alien assistance program. The feds spend $8 billion on general government programs and $5.85 billion on welfare, which consists of free school meals, food stamps, a supplemental nutrition program known as Women Infants and Children (WIC) and temporary assistance for needy families. FAIR points out the profound impact that illegal immigration has on programs intended to provide services exclusively to low-income Americans.
For state and local governments education is by far the largest expense, an eye-popping $44.4 billion that goes mostly to K-12 public schools nationwide, though over a billion of it is spent on college tuition assistance. General public services, described as expenses associated with garbage collection, fire departments and other locally-funded services total $18.5 billion for illegal aliens, the analysis found. Medical expenses came in third ($12.1 billion) for state and local governments and law enforcement ($10.8 billion) in fourth. FAIR researchers determined that a large percentage of illegal aliens work in the underground economy and frequently avoid paying income tax, leaving law-abiding, taxpaying Americans to foot the exorbitant tab for public services. The report also breaks down expenditures by state, with the top four spenders to provide illegal alien benefits California ($23 billion), Texas ($10.9 billion), New York ($7.5 billion) and Florida ($6.3 billion).
Over the years, Judicial Watch has reported on a variety of studies and assessments involving the huge cost of supporting illegal immigrants, but this appears to be the most thorough and alarming in recent memory. The breakdown by category, state and federal services offers an incredibly detailed account of a major crisis perpetuated by a famously porous southern border. As FAIR writes in its report, it’s not just about money, though the cost of supporting illegal immigrants should outrage every legal U.S. resident and American citizen. “A continually growing population of illegal aliens, along with the federal government’s ineffective efforts to secure our borders, present significant national security and public safety threats to the United States,” FAIR writes. Judicial Watch has also extensively covered the dire national security crisis along the Mexican border, including an investigative series documenting how Islamic terrorists have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate—and attack—the United States.
Proposal makes Maryland a ‘sanctuary’ state
From WYPR
FEB. 1, 2017 — Democrats in Annapolis are preparing a slew of legislation and other initiatives that they say are direct responses to President Donald Trump and anticipated changes in federal policy. Among them is a bill that would make Maryland a sanctuary state for immigrants without legal status.
Sen. Victor Ramirez, the bill’s sponsor, calls it the “Maryland Trust Act.” The Prince George’s County Democrat said the goal is to ensure that immigrants continue to trust their local police.
“If we allow local law enforcement or local law enforcement is forced to act as immigration agents, what that does is it undermines the community’s trust in policing,” he said. “It affects all of us.”
Ramirez plans to introduce the measure in the coming days. It would prevent police, corrections and school security officials from investigating potential immigration violations and from arresting or detaining anyone based solely on a request from federal immigration officials.
Baltimore and a couple of other Maryland jurisdictions already have similar policies, but this would expand them to the rest of the state.
The bill is a direct response to Trump’s immigration policies, Ramirez said.
Last week, Trump signed an executive order making jurisdictions that adopt these so-called “sanctuary” policies ineligible for federal grants, except in certain circumstances.
But Ramirez said that doesn’t worry him.
“That can be challenged,” he said. “It’s a violation of the 10th Amendment because you’re now putting a financial penalty if local governments aren’t enforcing federal laws.”
San Francisco has already filed a lawsuit challenging the order.
The bill is just one of a series of measures Democrats in Annapolis frame as direct responses to Trump and his policies. Legislative leaders unveiled others at a press conference Tuesday.
“We’re going to play defense,” said Senate President Mike Miller. “We’re the ‘Old Line State’ because we protected George Washington’s army. Well, we’re going to be the ‘New Line State’ this year because we’re going to protect ourselves from Washington, D.C.”
The bill with the potential for the biggest immediate impact would let state Attorney General Brian Frosh challenge federal policies in court without having to get approval from Gov. Larry Hogan or the General Assembly on a case-by-case basis. It would also give Frosh $3 million a year to pay for five new staff members to help bring those lawsuits. MORE
The House of Delegates Democrats Who Sponsored the Bill to Make Maryland a Sanctuary State
Delegates Morales, Sanchez, Pena-Melnyk, Gutierrez, Anderson, Angel, Atterbeary, Barkley, B. Barnes, D. Barnes, Barve, Beidle, Brooks, Carr, Clippinger, Conaway, Cullison, Davis, Dumais, Ebersole, Fennell, Fraser-Hidalgo, Frush, Gaines, Gilchrist, Glenn, Hayes, Haynes, Healey, Hettleman, Hill, Hixson, Holmes, C. Howard, Jackson, Jameson, Jones, Kaiser, Kelly, Knotts, Korman, Kramer, Lafferty, Lam, R. Lewis, Lierman, Luedtke, McCray, McIntosh, A.Miller, Moon, Morhaim, Mosby, Oaks, Patterson, Pendergrass, Platt, Proctor, Queen, Reznik, Robinson, Rosenberg, Sample-Hughes, Sophocleus, Stein, Sydnor, Tarlau, Turner, Valderrama, Valentino-Smith, Vallario, Waldstreicher, A. Washington, M. Washington, Wilkins, K. Young, P. Young, and Ali
The Maryland State Senators that wanted to make Maryland a Sanctuary State
Senators Ramirez, Astle, Benson, Conway, Currie, Feldman, Ferguson, Guzzone, Kagan, Kelley, King, Lee, Madaleno, Manno, McFadden, Middleton, Muse, Nathan-Pulliam, Pinsky, Robinson, Rosapepe, Smith, Young, and Zucker
Maryland lawmakers withdraw ‘sanctuary state’ bill that challenged Trump’s immigration policy
A proposal to turn Maryland into a “sanctuary state” by limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities died in the State House on Monday after lawmakers withdrew the bill — which had garnered a veto threat from the governor and a rebuke from Trump administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
In one of the first big state-level challenges to the administration’s tougher line on illegal immigration, the original bill would have prevented police from inquiring about a person’s immigration status during a stop or detention and blocked jail officials from holding people past their release dates so immigration agents could detain them.
Debate over the bill, called the Maryland Law Enforcement and Governmental Trust Act, came amid outrage after two Montgomery County high school students, at least one of whom is an illegal immigrant, were accused of raping a 14-year-old girl inside a school restroom, shining a spotlight on the sanctuary movement and drawing a direct rebuke from the White House. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, had said he would veto the bill if it was passed in the General Assembly.
Maryland is one of a handful of states to consider “sanctuary” status, which scores of cities and counties across the country have adopted. California, New York, Illinois, and Nevada are reportedly considering their own versions of the Maryland bill protecting illegal immigrants from the reach of federal law.
The House of Delegates voted last month to adopt the proposal, but the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee gave it an unfavorable report, and the bill was withdrawn as the Maryland General Assembly’s 90-day legislative session wound down.
Lawmakers opted instead for a face-saving compromise, enshrining in Maryland law a provision already recognized in federal law that restricts officers’ ability to ask about immigration status before an arrest. That proposal was set for debate in the final hours of the General Assembly Monday night, but it appeared unlikely to gain traction. MORE
Sanctuary Bills in Maryland Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants
From the New York Times
(May 8, 2017) – ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — When lawmakers in Howard County, Md., a stretch of suburbia between Washington and Baltimore, declared their intention to make the county a sanctuary for people living in the country illegally, J. D. Ma thought back to how hard he had worked studying English as a boy in Shanghai.
Stanley Salazar, a native of El Salvador, worried that the violent crime already plaguing Maryland’s suburbs attributed to immigrant gangs would eventually touch his own daughters.
Hongling Zhou, who had been a student in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square uprising, feared an influx of undocumented immigrants, and their children, would cripple the public schools.
At first blush, making Howard County a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants had seemed a natural move: The county has twice as many Democrats as Republicans and a highly educated population, full of scientists and engineers. One in five residents was born abroad.
But the bill met stout opposition from an unlikely source: some of those very same foreign-born residents. MORE
Judicial Watch has also extensively covered the dire national security crisis along the Mexican border, including an investigative series documenting how Islamic terrorists have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate—and attack—the United States.
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