because I have a Mexican name?” At various times we all contend
over whether porous borders are California’s hope, its certain bane,
or again something in between.

And why should such uncertainty not arise, when even

supposedly objective data cannot supplant private anecdote and
personal bias? Liberal economists, for example, swear that legal
immigrants to America bring in $25 billion in net revenue per
annum. Yet more skeptical statisticians employing different models
reach the radically different conclusion that aliens cost the United
States over $40 billion a year, and that here in California each ille-
gal immigrant will take from the state $50,000 more in services
than he will contribute in taxes during his lifetime.

Some studies suggest that the average California household

must contribute at least $1,200 each year to subsidize the deficit
between what immigrants cost in services and pay in taxes—almost
the price of a year’s tuition at the California State University.
More frequently, salaried taxpayers hector their legislators about
how they are paying in a myriad of insidious ways for the illegality
practiced by contractors, farmers and factory owners. No wonder
that we are simply confused and awash in a sea of contradiction:
statisticians claim that we as a people find prices marked down
by less than 1 percent as a result of illegal alien labor; but when
it is proposed that we close or tighten our borders, thousands
of employers nevertheless forecast catastrophe and skyrocketing
prices. We are told that blanket amnesty and legal status will ensure
assimilation and prosperity; but statistics reveal that after twenty
years, Mexican immigrants who have obtained lawful papers still
have double the welfare rate of American citizens.

Meanwhile, illegal immigration from Mexico just continues

on unabated. I think it always will because it unites the power and
influence of employers with the rhetoric and threats of the race
industry—a potent alliance that exercises its clout well beyond
the actual numbers of the state’s businessmen, social welfare
bureaucrats, Chicano studies professors and La Raza activists.

MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson

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