I’ve started skimming through the study and have found a particularly problematic flaw I’ll be addressing in a post of my own, hopefully up sometime tonight or tomorrow.

As far as the study, here’s a partial rebuttal: http://immigrationimpact.com/2009/12/04/fair-blames-immigrants-and-children-for-maryland%E2%80%99s-budget-deficit/.

The problem with many of these studies is that they are ideologically-driven. FAIR isn’t going to put out anything that is in any way fair to illegal immigrants. If it produces a study, it’s going to show illegal immigrants hurt the US. Finding good, unbiased data on this subject is difficult. Here’s something from 1994: http://migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more.php?id=298_0_2_0.

A CBO report from 2007 looked at the impact of illegal immigrants on state and local expenditures and finds that they do cost state local governments money and that their taxes don’t offset their costs, but that they only impose a small burden: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8711/12-6-Immigration.pdf. This study doesn’t include taxes paid to the federal government.

My view is not that illegal immigration doesn’t cause problems. It’s that the problems caused by them can be met in better ways than by the ways Pat and others suggest. And, of course, deporting them all is completely unrealistic. Once those like Pat acknowledge that the immigration system needs reformed to allow more low-skilled workers in, that we need a workable guest worker program, and that large-scale deportation is unrealistic, then the ground would be set for really addressing the problems caused by illegal immigration. But as long as the only answer is “deport ‘em all!” then there is no common ground on which to base a revised immigration policy.

Personally I don’t think Pat would run and if he did I doubt he’d win the primary – Larry Hogan has quite a head start on the campaign.

All that aside, it would be interesting to see what the study entails – and that’s part of a future post.

However, even if I’m misremembering, in Maryland most voters don’t share Pat’s views or, if they do, they don’t think illegal immigrants are the #1 problem facing our state. Furthermore, there are a lot of people like me out there, and guys like Pat make us very uncomfortable with the Republican Party. Having lived in DC and being friends with a lot of thirtysomethings in that area, it’s clear to me that the GOP has a chance to reach these voters. However, they are turned off by the GOP’s current image, which is one of hating gays, foreigners, and anyone with a college degree. They would never vote for a guy like Pat because they perceive his kind as ignorant bigots. Whether this is true or not is not the case, since in politics perception is reality. And, of course, he would receive very little of the growing Latino vote.

If the GOP is to win a statewide race in Maryland (or, in fact, win around the nation), it has to appeal to the college educated, blacks, and Latinos, as well as conservative stalwarts. Nominating someone like Pat McDonough as our gubernatorial candidate would doom the state GOP to another year of electoral defeat.

And, of course, I also think the “study” he talks about is incredibly flawed, but that’s an issue for another day.