A lot of Right-Wing chatter will center on Heritage’s report that illegal immigrants are costing the nation $89 billion a year.

Here’s what they’re ignorning. This has little do with illegals and everything to do with the de facto welfare state. Unless you are earning at least $50,000 in this country (and half of us aren’t), you are getting more in government services than you are paying for. It’s called the progressive tax.

But only a fool, only an idiot, only a reactionary moron would say that the best thing to do would be to get rid of the low-wage workers. That’s the tricky thing about economics. The numbers don’t tell the story. Without all the low-wage earners, the economy ceases to function. The low-wage guys picking oranges, building houses and sweeping floors enable the millionaire farmers, home-builders and stock brokers that really pay the bills in this country.

Remember, it wasn’t the lowest third of their economy that the Golgafrinchans disposed of.

Update: Something else I thought of. Illegal immigration is a generational thing. The current generation of illegals are low-skill workers. But their children, better-educated, english-speaking and Americanized, are going to move up the socioeconomic ladder quickly.

All waves of immigrants have started out poor. It’s the children they bring here — children we need to keep our Medicare and Social Security ponzi schemes afloat — that really benefit the nation.