Parenting & Family Quote by Nathan Deal

Deal’s line is less a budget note than a political lever: turn immigration into an itemized invoice, then underline the most emotionally charged line item - babies. The move is strategic. “The Center for Immigration Studies found...” borrows the sheen of neutral expertise, outsourcing the argument to a think tank so the speaker can sound like he’s relaying facts rather than choosing a frame. Numbers do the moral work here. “$10.4 billion” doesn’t just quantify; it implies a measurable harm with a clear victim: “the United States taxpayer,” a stand-in for the deserving public.

The second sentence reveals the real target. By narrowing “a large part” of the cost to “babies born each year,” Deal isn’t merely discussing public services; he’s cueing a long-running anxiety about demographic change and the perceived unfairness of “anchor babies,” a phrase that’s absent but hovering. Babies are rhetorically potent because they collapse time: immigration is no longer about adult border crossers but about the next generation, future citizens, classrooms, hospitals, and political power.

Context matters: Deal, a Georgia politician, was speaking in an era when Republican state leaders pushed hardline immigration bills and “taxpayer burden” arguments to justify enforcement-heavy policy. The subtext is a policy invitation - restrict benefits, tighten birthright citizenship debates, expand state policing - while keeping the tone technocratic. It’s a classic political alchemy: translate a cultural conflict into a budget problem, then use children to make it feel urgent and irreversible.