These days it seems we are treated to yet another example of our supposed “representatives” favoring noncitizens over their fellow citizens every day.
Hey, elected officials! Remember us? The legal voters who put you in office? The people who fund this country’s government? I must have missed you campaigning for our votes on the platform of making American citizens lesser entities than noncitizens.
It is obvious to anyone who cares to look that being an American citizen assigns one second-class status when it comes to the law. American citizens will face fines, penalties, and jail time for offenses that are effectively ignored if one is in the country illegally.
But what really gets me fired up is how politicians blithely ignore opportunity costs: “When an option is chosen from alternatives, the opportunity cost is the ‘cost’ incurred by not enjoying the benefit associated with the best alternative choice.”
The concept of opportunity cost was originally proposed as an economic measure—the cost of something in terms of foregone opportunity. It is what a decisionmaker gives up when he takes one course of action and not another
Opportunity cost is not just an economic concept, however, it is a reality we live with every moment of our lives. Every action we take, every dollar we spend, everything we do—they all come with opportunity costs. It is as real as gravity and just as difficult to ignore. Just the way it is.
A prime weakness of modern governments is their refusal to address—or even acknowledge—opportunity costs.
So, let’s talk about the very hard reality that a dollar spent here is a dollar not spent there. A choice is made. It cannot be any other way. Yet government acts as though its resources are unlimited and money comes from a magical money tree.
Fact is, “our” government provides illegal immigrants with free cell phones, free food and clothes, free housing, free transportation, free medical care, free education, free welfare benefits—the list is very long. Some cross our border just to get their teeth fixed. I don’t blame them. They aren’t the stupid ones, we are.
Go to almost any K-12 public school in this country and you will find a significant percentage of students are not citizens. In some schools, the number approaches 100 percent. But 30 percent or more is not uncommon in the Desert Southwest and California.
But it is not “the government” who is paying for this; it is American citizens. All while we have millions of Americans who are in financial distress—made worse by the inflation this same government created.
Many of these citizens spilled blood for this country—and if not them, they have sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, grandparents, and friends and relatives who have. Yet when it comes to their social security checks or their healthcare benefits, or actually paying soldiers enough to keep them off food stamps, they are second class.
“A dollar spent there, is a dollar not spent here.” It is alway a choice. And judging from the incredible amount spent on folks who are here illegally, it seems near everyone and everything is placed above the American citizen.
In my home state of Colorado, the city of Boulder places the prolific prairie dog over citizens. The Biden Administration clearly places the citizens of Ukraine over American citizens—to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
So don’t listen when the Left cries they need more money to help out those struggling Americans back home. Let them explain why the roads have potholes and the bridges are in ill-repair, the schools are terrible, police protection is a fading thought, the municipal water system is falling apart, and retirement and health care benefits aren’t enough to keep your grandparents from the poor house, yet they chose to spend money over there rather than over here.
They clearly made their choice and the choice wasn’t you.