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Join Date: Oct 2006
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Broken Borders - Lou Dobbs Tonight transcript
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
Quote:
ANNOUNCER: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT presents a "CNN America Votes 2006 Special: Broken Borders".
Live from San Antonio, Texas, Lou Dobbs.
(APPLAUSE)
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
DOBBS: Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
DOBBS: You're terrific. Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
DOBBS: A true San Antonio welcome, thank you very much. We're delighted that you're here and will have an opportunity engage in what is now a very serious national dialogue and discussion on critical issues facing this nation.
We want to welcome everyone to this very special town hall meeting. We're in San Antonio, Texas. The hospitality here could not be beat. We're here tonight to talk about one of the most important issues facing this nation as everyone in this room can attest certainly, our border security and illegal immigration crisis.
The country has a long and honorable tradition of welcoming legal immigrants to this nation, but in recent years there's been a huge influx of illegal aliens. By some estimates as many as 20 million live in the United States right now. Those illegal aliens are, among other things, depressing wages for U.S. citizens and draining local and state and federal budgets of much-needed funds for the education and the healthcare and social services of and for Americans.
The response of the Bush White House and administrations before it, and its partners in the U.S. Senate is what they call comprehensive immigration reform, but let's be clear. Their plan is to simply give illegal aliens amnesty to effectively further open our borders and not resolve the issue of law and order, legality and illegal immigration.
Tonight, we're coming to you from a historic Empire Theater here in San Antonio. San Antonio is the city at the center of our illegal immigration crisis. San Antonio is only three hours' drive from our southern border with Mexico and the city's booming economy is a huge magnet, of course, for illegal immigration. There are lies, distortions, untruths, out there about this country's border security and our illegal immigration crisis.
Tonight, we are going to do our very best to eliminate these issues, to reach some solutions, to speak honestly and forthrightly. We're going to participate in a national dialogue and we're going to do our level best to bring you as best we can determine it, truth in this hour about this crisis. In this broadcast I'll be talking with all sorts of folks.
We'll be hearing from you. We'll be hearing from lawmakers, local officials, law enforcement officials, certainly on the front lines of our border security and the illegal immigration crisis. The leaders of advocacy groups play an important role in this national discussion. They're here as well.
We'll also be hearing from you in the audience tonight right here in the Empire Theater about the impact of illegal immigration and on the quality -- its impact on the quality of life for all of us, but certainly on the impact of border life in this country and how it has changed as well, but first we're going to focus on the high cost of illegal immigration in this nation.
Illegal aliens cost the country literally billions of dollars each and every year, but incredible, no one, no one in government, no one in any industry, no one in any walk of life in the United States of America can say with certainty what the number of illegal aliens are in this country. Casey Wian has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Education, healthcare, law enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)
WIAN: ... crowded cities, environmental damage, low wages.
DAN STEIN, FED. FOR AMERICAN IMMIG. REFORM: There's simply no way you can look at the average education of the illegal aliens in this country and say that they're anything, but a cost.
Society winds up paying more to provide basic services than they ever pay into the system. Now employers love that. Employers love the fact that they can pocket the difference in the wage differential while we, middle-class taxpayers, get stuck with the tab.
WIAN: The tab is growing. California spends half a billion dollars a year on illegal alien healthcare, only 11 percent is reimbursed by the federal government. Forty-four of California hospitals have closed since 2000. Education for the children of illegal alien costs the state $6 billion a year, California's public school system ranked 29th nationally in 2002. It's now 47th.
(SOUNDS)
WIAN: In Texas, where the border is now ground zero in an all- out war among Mexican drug cartels, the governor is asking for an additional $100 million in state money for board security.
GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: Border security is too important to be left to one level of government, that's why Texas has joined the fight.
WIAN: Even New York spends $5 billion a year on education, healthcare and incarceration of illegal aliens. There are also human costs. A growing number of groups are protesting the deaths of American citizens and law enforcement officers at the hands of criminal illegal aliens. The federal government is either unwilling or unable to deport.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police are being murdered at alarming rates and no one seems to care.
WIAN: Seventy-five people have been killed in the past decade on this one stretch of California highway near the border by illegal alien smugglers fleeing law enforcement.
DIANE JACOB, SAN DIEGO COUNTY SUPERVISOR: There's been no will in Washington to stop the illegal traffic across the border. As a result, you see these travesties.
WIAN: American workers, especially those at the lower end of the pay scale are also victims.
One Harvard study found illegal immigration lowered the wages of American high school dropouts by eight percent. Another released last month, now the link between the influx of low-scaled immigrants and low wages, high unemployment and high incarceration rates of African Americans.
Yet some economists continue to cling to the theory that the economic benefits of illegal immigration including cheap labor and illegal alien purchasing power outweigh those costs.
(on camera): But there's strong evidence illegal immigration is turning the United States into an hour glass society. Big business and the wealthy who benefit from cheap labor are the top. Illegal aliens and the American workers they've displaced are the bottom and the middle class continues to disappear.
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10-29-2006, 03:19 PM
