Mark Krikorian comments as follows at NRO's The Corner:
My center released a new profile of the immigrant population today, focusing on low education levels and consequent high rates of poverty, lack of insurance, and use of government services. We got a pretty good bounce (both the good Times and the bad Times, Post, USA Today, etc.) and most of the stories were pretty straight, reporting the numbers and the usual obfuscatory quotes from the open-borders crowd. But one statistic that seems to me should have garnered more attention is that among Mexican immigrant households — by far the largest immigrant group — half are on welfare. This isn't because they're plotting to rip us off, but because they're 19th century workers in a 21st century economy, and simply don't have the tools to support themselves. The result is government-subsidized immigration, with taxpayers footing the bill for all this "cheap" labor.