could the immigration and economy problem be connected ?

That's part of it, and the way they are going to try to fix it is through the NAU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74VA3xU0EA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBo4E77ZXo

http://www.eagleforum.org/topics/NAU/

http://www.jbs.org/nau

http://www.spp.gov/

Not only the money they send out of country but the resources they use while they are here. It is estimated the illegal aliens use some where around ten million barrels of gasoline and 7 million barrels of heating oil a year. In many cases they work for less wages but we all could do that if we were being paid under the table and not paying taxes, or our medical bills, or paying our share of educational costs. The American tax payer is picking that up for them

Bruce is somewhat correct. It isn't the actual dollar bill that counts, but how often that dollar has been circulated. There is a problem when foreignors hodl our currency. It does reduce inflation, but makes our economy vulnerable to them as well. Immigrants do help and hurt our economy. OUr economy is base on our ability to steal the brightest of foreign nations. Immigrants outside of those who create and design our product is hurting our economy by lowering our wages. THere are alot of legal professionals brought over here for the sole purpose of lowering our wages. They are often underqualified for the jobs . These are often found in the medical field as well as engineering and IT. Illegal immigrants also has lowered the pay of low skill laborers. This means that we collect less money from a decrease in salaries. Not all illegal immigrants avoid paying taxes, but the vast majority don't pay their fair share. THey often make false claims on their deductibles. The advantage is that there are more people here, which means there are more people buying our goods. I doubt that makes up for the expenses, since they use up alot of our resources.

SOme of the current economic problems include the housing bubble. Part of the real estate problem is cause by illegal immigration. The excessive high cost in Los ANgeles is cause by overpopulation due to illegal immigrants. Some of teh questionable subprime loans went to illegal immigrants as well. They do prevent other economic problesm though, like preventing the collapse of Social security. The illegal immigrants who do pay taxes put money into the Social security, but do not expect to collect it. The problem is that we can't transfer the money from social security to other sectors that need tax dollars, so even if they do contribute in thsi manner, it is still a loss in our economy. My personal belief is that illegal immigrants contribute to the greater seperation between rich and poor. They accept the fact their are two classes,and for some reason I see hatred towards the middle class. Because they disrupt our economy, it negates any positive effect they might betray. Our economy is good, becasue we manage it, but illegal immigrants add an unknown factor that makes our planning moot.

That is part of it along with sending so many good paying jobs out of the country. They keep talking about how low the unemployment rate is, but they only count the people who are currently eligible for unemployment benefits, not the people who ran out of time on their unemployment and are still unemployed.

You confuse money with currency. Currency is only 1% of money. The biggest source of money is contracts and credit. If the money is sent there, they will turn it in at the bank and it will be used to buy US goods or to invest. The money will come home. Some countries have experimented with currency controls, but now most allow their currency to float.

But what is your option? We could allow their families to immigrate so they won't send money to Mexico, or we could deport them so the goods and services wouldn't be produced in the first place (sort of like burning the money).

The illegal immigration problem most definitely relates with our problems in the economy.