There are only three services government is legally bound to provide to unauthorized immigrants: Public education K-12 for children, emergency medical care and veteran's benefits for those who have served.
In 1982, the US Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v Doe that public education must be provided for all children regardless of citizenship. An NEA guide explains this decision in this way:
The court in Plyler noted that education is a child's only path to becoming a "self-reliant and self-sufficient participant in society." A public school education, the court reasoned, "inculcat[es] fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system" and "provides the basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives." According to the court, denying children access to a public school education could doom them to live within "a permanent caste of undocumented resident aliens."
Before we violate this Supreme Court ruling with the intent of saving taxpayers the cost of educating these children, consider this: The difference between whether or not an immigrant is a net gain (beyond even the cost of educating them) or net loss for our economy depends upon whether or not that person obtains a high school education. In other words, denying education to unauthorized immigrant children would not only be immoral, it would also be economically short-sighted.
What about other assistance immigrants might receive? It's a no-brainer that all those who serve in the military, including non-citizens, must be provided their earned veteran's benefits. The only other service that legally must be provided to everyone regardless of citizenship or ability to pay is emergency medical care. We don't want EMTs to ask our citizenship before they rush our injured or severely ill bodies to the hospital. And we want the doctors in the emergency room to focus first on our health, not our pocketbook.
A good argument can also be made that our other non-mandatory services also help immigrants become "self-reliant and self-sufficient," just as does education. There's no evidence that they create a permanent class of dependant people.
The US fertility rate, the number of children per woman, is at 2.1, below the population replacement level of 2.5. (Those births INCLUDE the vilified "anchor babies.") Without immigration, we will progressively have a smaller and older population and a smaller workforce in the future.
Our rate of net immigration is not extremely high, either, 2.92 migrants per 1,000 residents in 2008. In the 1990s, legal and illegal immigration ballooned because of the recession in Mexico and a baby-boom generation of workers could not find employment. Immigration from Mexico is trailing off now, especially with the recession.
We had illegal immigration, not because the immigrants are bad people, but because we needlessly restricted legal immigration.
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