In light of recent news reports that child poverty in Colorado is skyrocketing, Sen. Dave Schultheis says the state seriously needs to recognize the effects of illegal immigration on those numbers.According to a report issued by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, the state's child poverty rate has climbed 72 percent since 2000. It is caused largely by the burgeoning number of poor in Denver's suburbs and a widening gap between Latino and non-Latino income.
"I hold every Governor of the past two decades responsible for this situation, which is adversely affecting education, health care delivery and poverty in our state and placing a huge financial burden on Colorado taxpayers,” said Schultheis, who is known as an anti-illegal immigration hawk in the Senate.
The poor pay little, if anything, in taxes and receive a high level of government benefits and services.
Robert Rector, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, released a 2006 study that demonstrates how immigrants--legal and illegal--with low skill levels have a high probability of poverty and play a large role in child poverty. According to Rector's study, there is a strong correlation between children of first-generation immigrants lacking high school diplomas and child poverty. As of 2006, one out of six poor children in the U.S. fit this description. Rector partially blames the increased poverty rate on a "permissive attitude toward illegal immigration that has led to lax border enforcement and non-enforcement of the laws that prohibit the employment of illegal immigrants."
"The importing of poorly-educated illegal immigrants to work in certain trades adds to poverty the same way 10 million native-born high school drop-outs would," said Schultheis. “I’m very disappointed the Colorado Children's Campaign continues neglect the negative effects of illegal immigration in their report. It certainly affects their credibility.”
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