Rep. Michele Bachmann warned that the immigrants about to be amnestied have high illiteracy rates and may vote. The left howled, but the reality is she understated it. The hard data tell the story.
Commenting on President Obama's amnesty of 5 million illegals, the Minnesota Republican told reporters at the Capitol, "The social cost will be profound on the U.S. taxpayer — millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming to the United States who can't speak the English language."
She added that many will vote illegally, too.
An outraged, politically correct reporter from the Washington Post then asked Bachmann just what she meant by "illiterate," according to a report in Politico.
Bachmann cited the firsthand information she had gathered from U.S. citizens on the front lines of the immigration surge and those inside Latin American countries she's visited, in what was a heck of a lot more homework than the reporters would ever do.
She was on hard factual ground: According to the CIA World Factbook, illiteracy in Guatemala, a top supplier of illegals, stands at 24.1%. In El Salvador it's 15.5%, in Honduras it's 14.9% and in Mexico 6.5%.
As a corollary indicator, note that these countries' governments spend very little on their nationals' education as a percent of their GDP. In Guatemala it's 3%, El Salvador 3.4%, and Mexico 5.1%.
Don't imagine those are the only ills that plague these amnesty beneficiary nations.
Latin America is also tops globally in teen pregnancy, with some 30% of teenagers age 15 to 19 pregnant, the majority "underprivileged" and without husbands, "which fosters the reproduction of poverty," according to a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) released just last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
