Anyone who thinks illegal aliens and "asylum" applicants are coming here to work is living on another planet.

New data from the Census show that 63% of non-citizens are helping themselves to the welfare.  They get it legally, and sometimes illegally, through food programs, general assistance programs, Medicaid, and the earned income tax credit for low-income workers, just for starters.  They get even more when benefits derived from their U.S.-born children are thrown in, though bringing in a kid born elsewhere is also an asset.

Here's the report from the Washington Examiner:

A majority of "non-citizens," including those with legal green card rights, are tapping into welfare programs set up to help poor and ailing Americans, a Census Bureau finding that bolsters President Trump's concern about immigrants costing the nation.

In a new analysis of the latest numbers, from 2014, 63 percent of non-citizens are using a welfare program, and it grows to 70 percent for those here 10 years or more, confirming another concern that once immigrants tap into welfare, they don't get off it.

So no, it's not a temporary little safety net for those who just arrive here until they get their sea legs on the vast ship of America – the percentage of non-citizens on welfare expands as such people stay a while, meaning welfare is preferable to work.  Why work when Uncle Sam is giving it away for free?  That's a great deal for someone otherwise condemned to living in a tin shack out in Tegucigalpa but not a benefit to our country.  In fact, it's a drain, and Democrats, based on their policy positions, seem desperate to import more of it.

It's almost a given that the illegal alien population would be part of this trend.  The migrant caravan of Honduras consists almost exclusively of low-skilled, zero-English people who at best have a tenth-grade education.  As a result, they are likely to earn only low wages here and are least likely to assimilate, given their high concentrations.  The generous welfare state is making it easy for them, and drawing more to come.

Amazingly, even legal immigrants are higher consumers of welfare services, too.  That likely speaks to the power of leftist judges who take any asylum claim no matter how unlikely an applicant is to succeed here, as well as the power of family reunifications that expand the size of non-citizen welfare families as well as their consumption of welfare.  It's very rare that an uneducated legal immigrant here is going to have a lot of educated relatives to bring in through chain migration.

Every detail of the report is problematic.  Most people probably wouldn't mind if illegal aliens and other non-citizens really did come here to work and nothing else.  But even work is corrupted with the fact that illegals and other non-citizens qualify for the earned income tax credit, meaning that if they earn low wages, they get big fat tax refunds back despite not paying any taxes into the system.  That explains why nearly all non-citizen households have one member who works.  The tax credit, after all, is large.

This presumably doesn't even get into other kinds of services illegals use that aren't considered welfare, such as free public school education, public defenders, highway use, and untaxed remittances on illegally earned wages.

And the use of public assistance seems to be going up.  If you look at this interview done by Paul Sperry earlier this year from an immigration-skeptical think-tank, the official says 62% of non-citizens use welfare.  Now the Census data shows that it is 63%.  That signals word getting around south of our border.

Two things stand out.  One, Republicans have done nothing to cut off at least some of the benefits, such as the earned income tax credit, which is so obviously a magnet for non-contributory migrants who come here to take, without putting a penny into the system.  Where were these Republicans when they had some power to end this injustice?

Two, the Democrats are pushing for more of this kind of welfare migration, extending the goody table ever farther for them.  California, for instance, wants to put every low-waged illegal on Medi-Cal, offering up a free ride to all takers from abroad while the rest of us make rent-sized payments for our health insurance, and Democrats want to extend the vast banquet table of benefits ($12 billion's worth) to DREAMers.  That speaks to a party desperate to import more poverty to secure votes.  That was how Hugo Chávez secured his votes – and his permanent power in Venezuela. 

Voters haven't a clue as to how dangerous this all is.