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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

A lot of BI proposals pay the BI only to citizens. New immigrants aren't citizens; it takes many years to move from permanent resident status to become a citizen.

This would create an underclass of immigrants & refugees, and create incentives for voters & politicians to make getting citizenship even harder than it is today.

This is definitely not a good situation, but it is better than forcing people to stay in Haiti or Sudan.

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This is a possibility - but so far the US tends to not do this very well. I don't have great data on the subject, but I've seen at least one study suggesting immigrants with children tend to be a net drain on the US.

http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to do what you propose, though I think a BJ is a better policy than BI regardless of immigration. But I'm not aware of any western society that actually manages to do it.

The linked article does not support your assertion that "immigrants with children tend to be a net drain". it simply says that the majority of this population uses at least one welfare program. it highlights low levels of education as the main driver of this, with the benefits usually going to the american-born children.

I suspect programs like Head Start and the school reduced/free lunch program account for a significant portion of the reported welfare use. Do you think that a poor immigrant family with working parents that uses these programs is a "net drain" on society?

The linked article estimates tax liability for immigrant families and shows this is less than welfare consumed. Like I said, not great data, but I don't have anything better. If you do I'd love to see it.

Given that Head Start doesn't even have any measurable benefits, I definitely think those consuming it are a drain (if they pay less in taxes than Head Start costs).

> In conclusion, children who were enrolled for 2 years had higher scores than those who only stayed for a year, which shows that being enrolled in Head Start for a longer duration benefited the children.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start_Program#Effectivenes...

Those effects were not present in the RCT. Even after reducing the p-value cutoff to 10% (rather than the standard 5%), only a few of the expected measures showed a statistically significant effect (some positive, some negative), and virtually nothing persisted as far as 1st grade.

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_su...

(See also this comic if you want to point to a few blue and yellow cells in their charts. http://xkcd.com/882/ )

"Given that Head Start doesn't even have any measurable benefits, I definitely think those consuming it are a drain (if they pay less in taxes than Head Start costs)."

Given that Head Start doesn't have any measurable benefits, we should conclude that Head Start is a net drain. It doesn't follow that those consuming it are. Head Start is probably an insignificant portion of the costs society invests in these people, and taxes are probably an insignificant portion of the benefit these people provide.

There is already an underclass of immigrants, those on H-1 visa (work visa), with all the restrictions of their position (employment restrictions, conditions on the length of stay in the country, and so on). Also students (F and J visas), severe restrictions on work, sometimes a requirement to leave the country (USA) and never show up for two years. Probably more cases like that, these are just the ones I had to deal with.

So does that make the millions of illegals in the country an under-underclass?

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