Posted on 02/19/2015 1:36:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A coalition of 26 states fought and won a battle to freeze President Barack Obama’s deferred action plan to give temporary work visas to illegal immigrants with children born in the United States.
Judge Andrew Hanen’s injunction order, issued Monday, makes certain eligible illegal immigrants won’t get permission from the federal government to seek lawful employment, and will have to continue working without legal papers.
The states who filed the lawsuit claimed such an action would cause “undue burden” to their finances.
“Regardless of the reasons behind the actions or inaction of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, the result is that many states ultimately bear the brunt of illegal immigration,” wrote Judge Hanen in his preliminary injunction issued Monday.
But if the main reason for opposing legalization of nearly 5 million illegal immigrants comes down to costs, could states actually win out if these immigrants are allowed to pay the same taxes as legal American residents and citizens?
At least one study points to this as a solution.
immigrationinfographicA 2013 study conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that allowing illegal immigrants the legal opportunity to work would actually increase state and local tax revenues by over $2 billion, added to the already $10.6 billion in revenues they contributed in 2010.
For many states facing the danger of tax fatigue, maxed-out budgets and mounting unfunded liabilities caused by rising pension costs, allowing the legalization of certain illegal immigrants could give some much-need help to state finances.
Texas, for example, claimed in the lawsuit against the federal government that Obama’s plan would “impose substantial costs on its budget” by allowing thousands of immigrants the opportunity to apply for driver’s licenses. It claims it would lose “several million dollars” on the drivers licenses to be processed.
Considering Texas’ 1 million illegal immigrants make up close to 10 percent of the state’s labor force, it is more than likely any shortfall would be picked up by additional tax revenue collected by giving these workers legal status.
The study estimates Texas would pick up more than $91 million once illegal immigrant workers are given legal papers.
“We know that undocumented immigrants already pay six or seven percent of their income in state and local taxes, simply because they buy things and they rent or own homes, and sales and property taxes are paid automatically,” said Matthew Gardner, ITEP’s executive director, in a statement attached to the original report. “With legalization, both wages and tax compliance will go up, resulting in substantial new revenues for states, especially from the income tax.”
As for the injunction, it seems only the Supreme Court will be able to have the final say on whether Obama’s plan will ever be put into action.
“In reaching this conclusion, Judge Hanen believed that a wholesale, categorical exemption from immigration law is not an exercise of prosecutorial discretion but instead a suspension of the law, which the Supreme Court has made clear is inconsistent with the president’s duty to ‘faithfully execute’ the laws,” said Elizabeth Foley, law professor at Florida International University.
She told Watchdog.org the injunction can now only be reversed by an upper appellate court, either the Fifth District Court, or more likely, the Supreme Court.
“The preliminary injunction essentially is a mechanism to ‘maintain status quo’ until the court can rule on the underlying legal claims being made,” she told Watchdog.org.
The deferred action plan would have continued to beef up security at America’s borders but also allow temporary work authorizations for illegal immigrant families with children who were born in the nation’s borders, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
This follows a similar executive action issued in 2012, allowing illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and are currently enrolled in school or volunteering in the military to stay in the country and avoid deportation.
Immigrants’ rights group across the country are similarly dismayed by the court order.
“Now millions of people must continue waiting to apply for temporary status to live and work in the U.S. with their families without fear of deportation,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center, an immigration law firm. “Families and communities are desperate for relief from the fear of deportation they face every day under our country’s broken immigration system.”
Many leading Republican politicians and anti-immigrant groups, however, celebrated the freeze on allowing immigrants to gain lawful status.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called the ruling a “huge victory” and House Speaker John Boehner called on Senate Democrats who disagree with the president to push for defunding the Department of Homeland Security, which would carry out the order.
“Judge Hanen’s ruling preventing the Obama administration from proceeding with a plan to grant amnesty and work authorization to millions of illegal aliens is an important victory for the integrity of U.S. immigration law, American workers and taxpayers, and for our constitutional system of government,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in a statement.
“President Obama’s attempt to allow broad classes of illegal aliens the right to live and work legally in the United States, under the guise of discretionary authority, is nothing more than a blatant end-run around the Constitution.”
So send them packing and cut back the municipal services they soak up.
This little nugget really doesn’t really say anything until we throw in what the illegals cost the state, now does it?
No.
I have a huge newer high school about a block from my neighborhood that seems to be about 85% Hispanic and we are about as far from the border with Mexico here as you can be in Texas.
According to USgovernmentspending.com, the sum total of all state and local government spending in the US is about 3.1 trillion annually.
10.6 billion is about 0.34% of 3.1 trillion.
Let’s live without their tax contribution and send them the f&ck home.
Paraphrasing another Freeper:
We should have picked our own damn lettuce!
“Gutierrez, who vowed that pro-amnesty advocates would not be “deterred” by Judge Andrew Hanen’s injunction, told MSNBC’s Jose Diaz Balart that the “militancy that will be activated throughout the immigrant community in terms of voter registration, voter particiaption and voter anger at the Republican Party… I think you are going to see it in an unprecedented manner.”
Just like the states don’t want “gay marriage” but, as that wacko Ginsberg says, we’re “ready for it” and that we “need” it??
If they are so productive, why is mexico so anxious to send them to invade OUR Country? If workers are needed, tap the 93 Million that have given up looking!
Search this outfit “Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy” and find “Economic Policy Institute”.
Nice graphics, but it’s the usual lefty `Rah rah rah immigrants!’ bullchit.
Hey, we’ve kissed the Blarney stone too! “Illegal aliens get cash under the table and pay no income taxes. They send most of their pay home and can’t wait to bring their friends and family here and get them on welfare. There is a freeper named tumblindice who can stand a Toyota Corolla on its bumper with one arm. His bulldog can speak seven languages. Together they run a think tank and defeated the Carthaginians at ...”
“Economic Policy Institute
Organization
Overview
The Economic Policy Institute (EcPI) calls itself a “nonprofit, nonpartisan” think tank. But behind its façade of political balance lays an agenda-driven organization. EcPI has roots in radical leftist politics, and it receives a large portion of its funding from organized labor. EcPI‘s donors have on at least one occasion been allowed to review its research prior to publication.
The Economic Policy Institute was founded in 1986 by Jeff Faux, who was previously the co-director of the National Center for Economic Alternatives (NCEA). As its name suggests, the NCEA specialized in offering “alternatives”—alternatives characterized as “radical” in The New York Times—to mainstream U.S. domestic policy.
NCEA‘s co-director was Gar Alperovitz, now a University of Maryland professor and author of America Beyond Capitalism. Prior to working at the NCEA, Alperovitz co-authored the essay collection Strategy and Program: Two Essays Toward a New American Socialism, where he advocated using socialist ideas to make the United States a “fairer” nation.
Together, Faux and Alperovitz advocated reindustrialization, a scheme that required a national committee to review and guide the re-development of selected major industries in the United States. One professor at Columbia University, writing in The New York Times, called their ideas “a poorly disguised version of national planning.”
At NCEA, Faux and Alperovitz promoted public ownership of energy, defense, and transportation corporations, and economic planning handled through local councils. Over time, they envisioned the replacement of large U.S. corporations with new institutions directly accountable to the public.”
It’s all fun and games until one of these MS-13 types dates your daughter.
PS
search: ‘Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy political leanings’
Lies.
nearly 50% of imigrants, both legal and illegal, are on welfare- some to the tune of $45,000 a year- of that 40% nearly 75% of the illegal aliens are on welfare- sopem to the tune of $45,000 a year-
Nearly 3/4 of our convicts in many states are ILLEGAL ALIENS who cost upwards of $140 a day to house which is $51,000 per inmate per year- (this does NOT include the millions they waste on frivolous lawsuits, demands, etc)
There are over 80,000 VIOLENT CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS I n this country every year causing massive losses for families and communities- killing our citizens, maiming them scarring them for life-
Our courts are tied up with illegal alien cases all over the country, to the tune of millions-
On and on it goes-
The Open Borders Lobby keeps trying to use this arguement.
I wonder how much they paid in taxes compared to what they consumed in government services and how much damage they cause in crime, etc.?
I suspect the balance is STRONGLY against them.
There are an estimated 12 million illegals in the US. That means each would have paid $883 in taxes. Somehow I don’t think that covers it...
If illegal immigrants are so profitable for the States, then the US Congress must pass a law that removes all borders and that is signed by a sitting President.
Anything less is unconstitutional. Period.
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