Unaffordable Family Formation

Regular readers of Steve Sailer know his "affordable family formation" theory very well. Which amounts to Whites having kids when they can afford them. When land is cheap, suburbs all around, and the cost of living is relatively low. But there is a flip-side to that. Which is "unaffordable family formation." I.E. Mexican (mostly illegal) immigrant family formation on the taxpayer dime. New research from The Center for Immigration Research (their Research Director Steven Camarota was a guest on KFI 640 AM's "John and Ken" on Tue April 12, 2011) suggests strongly that immigrants cannot afford their families, and must rely on welfare to support them. This is in stark contrast to the behavior of Whites in America.


First, the raw numbers. The data was compiled from the US Census Bureau "Current Population Survey" done every March, and crunched through databases and spreadsheets (the raw data is made available for download). The US Census Bureau certainly does not release the findings, but does make the data available, which the Center for Immigration Studies used to complete their findings.

The findings include the following highlights:

• In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent for native households with children.



• Immigrant households’ use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Their use of cash and housing programs tends to be similar to native households.



• A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009.



• Immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, even before the current recession. In 2001, 50 percent of all immigrant households with children used at least one welfare program, compared to 32 percent for natives.



• Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).



• The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).



• We estimate that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.



• Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.



• High welfare use by immigrant-headed households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.



• An unwillingness to work is not the reason immigrant welfare use is high. The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.



• If we exclude the primary refugee-sending countries, the share of immigrant households with children using at least one welfare program is still 57 percent.



• Welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents. In 2009, 60 percent of households with children headed by an immigrant who arrived in 2000 or later used at least one welfare program; for households headed by immigrants who arrived before 2000 it was 55 percent.



• For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.



• Although most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years, this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the United States for longer than five years; the ban only applies to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants with their own money; by becoming citizens immigrants become eligible for all welfare programs; and perhaps most importantly, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those born to illegal immigrants) are automatically awarded American citizenship and are therefore eligible for all welfare programs at birth.



• The eight major welfare programs examined in this report are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children food program), free/reduced school lunch, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

The authors further caution:

Unreported Welfare Use. Although almost all other researchers in this field have relied on self-reporting in the CPS or some other government survey, one limitation of this approach is that it understates welfare use. It is well established that respondents to the CPS tend to understate their use of social services. One reason for this seems to be the survey by proxy methodology used to collect the data, which is discussed in the methods section of this report. While the methodology is practical and generally produces reliable information, it has its problems. One problem seems to be that the person responding to the CPS may not be aware of all of the programs or the size of the payments that are received by every individual in the household.

The problem of under-reporting of welfare is well known by the Census Bureau and has been studied for some time.10 For example, a comparison of administrative data on Medicaid to the results in the CPS shows that the survey reports at least 10 million fewer persons on the program than there actually are.11 Use of cash and food programs is also under-reported in the CPS. This problem, however, should not prevent comparisons between immigrants and natives because there is no clear evidence that immigrant or natives are more likely to under-report welfare use.12 So the undercount should be similar for both groups, making comparisons possible. What this does mean is that the welfare use reported in this analysis is too low, and the actual use rates for immigrants and natives alike are higher. [Emphasis Added]

What stands out is the table, seen to the right, showing welfare use by number of children in the household. Immigrants (the study does not distinguish by legal and illegal, though likely nearly all immigrants are illegal because of the sheer volume of the exodus out of Mexico as it collapses) actually use less food aid than natives when with only 1 child per household (23.6% for immigrants vs 32.3% for natives). For Medicaid, the situation is slightly reversed for household with only one children, 36% vs. 29.6%. [This likely counts Blacks and poorer US born Latinos, as "native" usage and the main drivers of welfare but since we don't have race breakouts we cannot say for sure.] However with 2 children in the household, immigrants use food aid at 41.5%, compared to 25.8% for natives, and for 4+ children it jumps to 69% vs. 47% for natives.

From Table 1, Immigrant & Native Households with Children: Welfare Use 2001-2009, we can see that for all Immigrants, 1+ child, any welfare usage is 71% for Hispanic, vs. only 38.7% for Natives (a category that includes native born Hispanics and Blacks). We can see that since immigrants with only one child do fairly close to natives in welfare usage, the real problem is …

Unaffordable Family Formation.

Which amounts to, basically using welfare to pay for very large (around 4+ certainly) Mexican immigrant families (nearly all of them illegal based). This should not surprise anyone. The welfare industry depends on this large amount of desperately poor, huge-family-size illegal immigrant wave. Subsidized by the White middle class tax revenues.

Which have now just run out. Since all that "White privilege" has not turned into money, and a White middle class effectively cleansed out of much of California, has its own concerns. Like buying both groceries and gas.

Welfare, particularly TANF (formerly AFDC), WIC, food stamps, school lunches, and Medicaid are required to support the ultra-large families that are fueling the "Latino takeover." Mexican immigrants, nearly all illegal, cannot support them on their own. While the White middle class has only the kids it can support, the Mexican illegal class has the kids the Welfare system can support. And then some.

What happens when the welfare is cut off, suddenly because of fiscal crisis? Which at some point will happen because Helicopter Ben Bernanke and company cannot keep inflating the dollar away forever. Nor are the Krugman pushed middle class tax increases to pay for more or even current welfare sustainable. Given stagflation and living standard erosion.

Can even DC force White taxpayers to ante-up for all those ninos who are replacing them? Nope. The House will surely block any new revenue scheme, and while the EPA is busy making life even more expensive and restricted, all the Democratic dancing around can't keep the issue of cost due to Federal intervention off the table, particularly with 2012 nearly here. America is running out of money for Unaffordable Family formation, and the results are going to be catastrophic.

At some point, perhaps not this year, or even the next, but at some point, the Welfare money will be cut off. To pay for things the White Middle Class wants: affordable gasoline, affordable food, jobs at defense contractors. Particularly if there is a populist willing to make it. [Which might or might not be Trump, if he runs ala Perot as a Third Party Candidate say hello to two-term President Obama. There is some suspicion he is a deliberate Obama dirty trick to do just that. Others have speculated his "might run third party" comment as a warning to the Republican National Committee not to anoint Mitt Romney.]

At some point the Welfare will just cease. Probably suddenly rather than slowly, because vested interests will keep running the Welfare machine to keep their K-12, Welfare related jobs until the last possible moment. And then it will just stop.

Meanwhile those ninos still have to eat. All four, five, six, seven of them. So do their parents. Do you think the parents will all just go home to Mexico, meekly? They already know the foreign country they entered illegally does not enforce its laws against people with their skin color and national origin. They know perfectly well the racial caste system that puts Whites dead last. They know they always have a safe haven from which they cannot be realistically extradited, if things get too dicey.

So, yes, I expect mass riots on the scale of the LA Rodney King riots, only larger and nationwide. While Black residents of LA burnt down much of their local businesses, and even some homes, most did not participate in the widespread looting. That was done mostly by Mexican illegal aliens who had little to fear from a compliant, passive, and ineffective law enforcement apparatus. TVs, diapers, even totally useless junk was looted. Even toilet paper was looted. By hordes of mostly illegal aliens. Rule of law ceased, and it became "loot the Gringo." Loot an alien, foreign country that most had nothing but contempt and hatred for, at best. Looting reached all the way up to the fringes of West LA, and around the Sunset area, briefly.

With far more Mexicans in the US, expect it to hit places like Atlanta, or New York City, or Chicago, or Denver, or Raleigh, or Richmond, or Washington DC. Along with Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, and Knoxville. Something will spark a riot, where the police will withdraw, and then YouTube, CNN, Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest will spread the rioting and looting to other cities. Where police will withdraw, or be ineffective in trying to restrain a massive mob without killing lots of people or putting themselves at risk. Politicians will dither, wasting days or even weeks before calling in the National Guard, which will have to shoot considerable people (including inevitably those innocent of any wrongdoing -- troops are not police nor can they be). Much of the nation's largest cities will be a looted wreck, and the effect on the White population will be very different than times past.

In previous riots, the violence was mostly Blacks against Whites, for which residual White guilt and shame played a part in excusing. Whites response was to ignore commenting on this publicly, and privately moving as far away from Black areas as possible. See, Detroit, death of. The LA Rodney King Riots were different, but not repeated. There, for the first time, widespread looting by Mexican-origin illegals was the main action. The looting was for lootings sake. Often it was all out of proportion to the risk run doing the looting.

The massive amount of illegal alien families will loot because they have to, in order to survive, with welfare cut off suddenly, and will loot because they want to, since they have learned nothing but contempt for an America that does not enforce its borders, nor conserve its traditions or ethnic makeup of its people. [They will not of course simply go home.] Looting will spread, into no doubt previously "safe" White areas. Not just downtowns, but "safe suburban" places like Irvine, or Greenwich.

When people have no more flight available, they always fight. I've seen a bemoaning of the passivity of White America, and the view that White people always just give up and surrender to non-Whites. This would have been a surprise to all those conquered or killed by Whites, or the Black men and women lynched during the Klan's original run from the late 1860's through the late 1870's, and its revival during the teens, twenties, and thirties. In New York City, the NAACP had banners proclaiming "A Black Man Was Lynched Today" during the 1920s and 1930s, and it was true, too. There were, disgustingly, even postcards of the lynchings made and kept as souvenirs. Ugly but true, and done well into the 1930s.

Middle Class and Wealthy people are not inclined to violence, generally. Violence is for the lower classes. You are far safer in Malibu, even at Charlie Sheen's house, than you are in the barrio or ghetto, and this is true for any man or woman of any race. Or the poor districts of say, Moscow or St. Petersburg. Middle class and wealthy people suddenly terrified that everything they have (including their lives) will be taken from them, however, can be inclined to the most horrific and systematic violence. The kind of violence that simply annihilates entire peoples.

The other part of the supposed passivity of Whites is the iron lock that elites have on our nation. The President, Congress, Court System, Media, and Law Enforcement all rest on the savage preservation of near-hereditary offices, open to non-Whites of "good background" but closed to average Whites (like Sarah Palin). Legitimacy of the elites and these institutions rests on both control and a monopoly of violence. But widespread looting, ever growing "White no-Go areas" (like Dodger Stadium, which now and forever belongs to Latino Gangs) and manifest loss of control invite local protectors. In Western Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed in the West, this was called Feudalism. America is running full tilt into what amounts to not a "Second Civil War" but full blown feudalism. There will still be a President, and a Congress, and Judiciary. And they will be total jokes, viewed as not only corrupt but powerless hacks unable to do much of anything. For 150 years after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Roman Senate met. The Holy Roman Empire, and Emperor, also come to mind as "dead institutions walking." None of that has to come to pass, but it is likely to come to pass if permanently large portions of America become in effect White no-go areas, the White middle class is not protected from illegal mob looting and violence, and the determination of the elites to summarily punish the White (former) majority is inescapable. Literally as in there is no where for White flight to move next. Power will shift rapidly, to local, and unassailable versions of Pepin the Strong, or such. Local Sheriffs un-handcuffed by PC, or diversity, local mid-size mayors, even governors of some smaller, more Western states. While places like California degenerate into an uglier version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but without Lord Humongus.

This will not end well. Peter Brimelow is correct, I think, in predicting unhappy times ahead. The dominant concerns of the 21st Century will be the White population doing whatever it can to stave off oppression and annihilation, much like Jews in the Twentieth, in the face of Unaffordable Family Formation and the sudden shock when the Unaffordable becomes ... unaffordable. For those who wonder why a Scots-Irish likes and identifies with Israelis and Jews, well I can relate.