Money from Mexico?
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons is in Mexico, meeting with top government officials to discuss tourism and a new program which, he says, might provide financial assistance to compensate Nevada for the medical bills of Mexican nationals here.
Under a pilot program now in place in New York, called “Health Windows,” the Mexican government provides compensation to Mexican nationals (including those in this country illegally) to pay for needed medical care, Mexican officials have told the governor.
Asked Monday whether participation in such a program wouldn’t mean the state was tacitly accepting the propriety of such illegal aliens being here, the governor replied that any subsidy for the cost of health care that’s previously gone uncompensated would be “a win for the people of Nevada.”
Indeed, if illegals walking into our emergency rooms started saying, “Wait, I can pay, here’s some cash I got from my home country,” that would indeed be wonderful.
As would a pony under the Christmas tree for every boy and girl.
Unfortunately, in the real world, some skepticism appears to be in order.
The equation that currently encourages trespassers to violate our immigration laws is pretty easy to understand:
1)They can earn more here than at home — enough more that they can afford to siphon out billions of dollars that American-born workers would otherwise spend or invest back into the American economy, in the form of money-order “remittances.”
2) Meantime, the trespassers get more and better “free stuff” here than they could at home — better quality schooling (though the presence of this highly itinerant mob of non-English-speakers in our classrooms certainly doesn’t enhance the schooling that exhausted local taxpayers still try to fund for our own children); the benefits of our expensive and far less corrupt systems of justice and law enforcement; and most importantly what the illegals perceive as “free” health care, often obtained at the most expensive possible source, our overcrowded hospital emergency rooms.
3) While finally, the “down-side” disincentive of today’s U.S. immigration law enforcement is downright laughable. U.S. border guards who shoot and wound fleeing drug smugglers are currently sent to federal prison for longer than many murderers. Call Homeland Security or “ICE” to report illegal aliens hanging out on your street corner or applying for jobs with forged document and you’ll be told, “We only have time to deal with felons.” A Las Vegas attorney of our acquaintance commented this month that a restaurant meal was better than the last one he’d sampled at the same local eatery. The immigration attorney at the other end of the table replied, “That’s because all the guys in the kitchen who got deported are back now.”
Reporters attempting to find out how much “free” health care for illegals is costing Nevada hospitals, the counties that subsidize them, or the other patients to whom this burden is shifted, have found such data virtually impossible to collect, because no one compiles it in the first place.
Who, exactly, would the government of Mexico reimburse? Who would poll patients to ask how many are illegal? Why would they be expected to tell the truth, if they’re going to get treated anyway?
If the Mexican government has money for quality “free” health care for these workers, why not provide it for them right there at home, reducing their incentive to cross the desert? Then Ciudad de Mexico could simply send Gov. Gibbons the bus fare to ship them home — along with the names and current addresses of all the illegal aliens who have recently applied for one of those “Matricula Consular” ID cards.
What’s that? But we thought they wanted to help.
