Mexico blasts bills to tax money illegal immigrants wire home

San Diego Union Tribune ^ | 3/5/2006 | Greg Brosnan

[truemiester]

Great idea!

How about a cash payment system for education and health care.

If they can send money home they can pay for services.

Buth if they cannot send money home, the reason for them being here will disappear and they will go home.

Thats my point. Remove the incentive!

[Don Joe]

Mexico blasts bills to tax money illegal immigrants wire home

That's all the proof I need that it's a good idea.

Mexico is getting a little too big for our britches.

[Schwaeky]

We need to invade them and make it a vassal state for our resource needs/tourism, and build a huge wall across the 2000 mile border with checkpoints to keep them in their place... Last I checked, Invasion is caussus belli.

[Schwaeky]

I nearly beat the crap out of a dumb alien with "The Club" when they hit my cutlass in the rear. Didn't do much damage to speak of, just compressed the bumper in... Took two other bystanders plus my wife to protect me from that jerk. If I hadn't of gunned it right before he hit me, he would have taken out my car (just because of his speed (my speeding up minimized the impact)...

[Schwaeky]

I could go over to Trace Die Cast and IllEagle Industries here in BG and empty them of their illegal aliens (with a bounty on them) and make more on that in one day than most of ya'll could in a week...... Simple way to do it.. Get a bus or a trailer, label it in spanish "free health care" have a door at one end looking like a receptionist desk, once in there, in cuffs till over the border... get a head count on loadup, and then go collect the bounty...

I'll settle for a mansion near pebble beach and a penthouse in the Empire State building...

[demkicker]

Don't know. Ask Babblefish :)

[Luis Gonzalez]

Let's imagine for a moment that the government actually succeeded in taxing the billions of dollars being sent home by illegal aliens yearly.

Have they actually done anything other than profit from the illegal presence of undocumented people within our borders?

The government is not only failing to enforce the laws on employers benefiting from illegal labor, but now they themselves are attempting to increase their profiteering from the continued and increasing presence of illegal aliens within our borders. Adding insult to injury, they'll tax us as well in the process.

Once they accomplish the feat of turning illegal aliens into yet another source of income -- just in Social Security alone illegal immigrants pay approximately 7 billion dollars per year into the system -- they will never take action that would decrease their income.

Starting in the late 1980's, the Social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with incorrect - sometimes simply fictitious - Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the "earnings suspense file" in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.

The file has been mushrooming ever since: $189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's, two and a half times the amount of the 1980's.

In the current decade, the file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year, generating $6 billion to $7 billion in Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes.

In 2002 alone, the last year with figures released by the Social Security Administration, nine million W-2's with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, accounting for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages.

Social Security officials do not know what fraction of the suspense file corresponds to the earnings of illegal immigrants. But they suspect that the portion is significant.

"Our assumption is that about three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen C. Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, using the agency's term for illegal immigration. -- Source

People need to wake up, quit allowing the government to play them like Tennessee fiddles when it comes to the subject of illegal aliens, and demand that they enforce the existing laws before supporting any more new laws. And we need to understand the underlying factors driving the government's inactions on the illegal immigrant issue, then demand that those factors be addressed.

Here's some interesting data from a government-funded publication that sheds light on the subject:

Many attempts have been made to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration, which not only generates demand for public education, health care, and other services, but also expands the tax base and slows the aging of the population. Some economists rely on cross-sectional estimates, using current data on immigrant households to compare benefits received from the government at all levels and taxes paid this year. But to investigate the long-term fiscal impact, analysis must take into account the expected payments over the life of an immigrant, and even the lifetimes of the immigrant’s children and grandchildren.

According to a study panel under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, the longterm impact of a newly arrived immigrant turns out to depend greatly on the immigrant’s age at arrival. An average 20-year-old has many years in which to work and pay taxes before reaching the age when individuals typically receive more from the government than they pay in taxes. A 50-year old, by contrast, is expected to work for only a few more years before becoming a net consumer of government services. The long-term impact also varies significantly with the immigrant’s education: Those with more education are likely to pay higher taxes during their working years, and the benefits they receive from government are not proportionately higher.

In a recent update of estimates prepared for the panel, Ronald Lee and Timothy Miller found that each additional immigrant with characteristics (such as age, education, and family size) typical of recent immigrants has a “net present value” of $46,000. That is, a new immigrant’s impact over the next 75 years is expected to be equivalent to a one-time investment of $46,000. But Lee and Miller estimate that the country would need to admit an additional 5 million immigrants per year, quintupling the current level of immigration, in order to achieve long-term balance in the Social Security trust fund. A recent report from the United Nations Population Division reached a similar conclusion for European countries, announcing that even much larger migration flows than are currently permitted would not counterbalance the effects of population aging.

To maintain the 2000 ratio between the working-age population (people between the ages of 20 and 64) and the older population (people ages 65 and older), the United States would need roughly 95 million more working-age persons in 2025, in addition to those already expected at current levels of immigration. In other words, if the entire working-age population of Mexico were to move to the United States in 2025, there still would not be enough people to restore the old-age dependency ratio of 2000. -- Report on American Government Spending

So, increasing the ability of the government to use illegal aliens as a source of income will only encourage the government to allow an increase in illegal aliens entering the country.

The problem is that most people will no more read the information I've just provided, than think beyond their knee jerk reaction to flimflammery such as the one being suggested here under the guise of "doing something about the illegal alien issue."

[Eagle Eye]

Therefore we all need to keep our papers in hand for this and other routine transactions in the future.

Thanks, but no thanks.

[Doohickey]

Vamonos poundo sando, I think.

[WalterSkinner]

Casa Del Cambio Taxation Bump!

[pigdog]

That's great - the Mexican Embassy says 9.9 million illegals when an authoritative study by Bear Stearns shows a figure of 21 million ... and that was from data over a year old. That means it's probably close to 25 million now in view of the rate of illegals bailing out of Mexico and other countries.

All of this is merely another reason for the FairTax so that the illegals can boost our tax revenues unlike just absorbing tax money that raises our tax burden as they now do.

[Redcloak]

I like this idea. One of the biggest complaints about illegals is that they do not pay their fair share of the tax burden. They make use of public services but do not pay enough in taxes to offset the costs they generate. Laws like this would help to recapture the lost revenue.

(And for those who are wondering, no, I haven't lost my libertarian mojo. I'd love to see all of the tax funded give-aways like public health care and public education banned. I'm just dealing with the current political landscape here.)

[pigdog]

No, Luis, the simplest thing by far is to have them pay taxes on the same basis as everyone else by means of the FairTax - when they purchase taxable things at retail.

In that way they'll be contributing to tax revenues where at present they're routinely ducking them. If they're going to remain here illegally (a US government problem) then AT LEAST they can contribute tax-wise to things they now get for no tax contribution at all and the rest of the taxpayers must absorb.

Don't you think that's fair???

[pigdog]

See #133 & #131. There's no need to do any of the things you mention in your #65 if the FairTax becomes law.

It will treat all citizens and non-citizens equally from a tax standpoint - and at no additional cost to taxpayers and no forcing of any business to be an immigration official.

Think about it!!

[pigdog]

With the FairTax proving their legal status wouldn't be necesary at all nor would it be an unfunded mandate (Luis's point about making a business and immigration official with no recompense for that).

It would tax all equally and raise substantially more tax revenue than at present while paying the merchant involved for collecting and forwarding the tax along with his two line report each month.

Please read the FairTax bill, HR25 or visit the FairTax website of get a copy of The FairTax Book.

[3AngelaD]

You would not be taxing the illegals, you would be taxing their remittances.

[3AngelaD]

Por favor. 'Cajones' significa cajas grandes, 'big boxes' en espanol. Si vas a hablar sucio, desgraciado, debe saber como...

[pigdog]

Under the FairTax, it would be those in the illegal economy (which consists far more than just illegal aliens) who would be paying more in taxes. Most people presently paying taxes would be better off financially.

Check my posts at about #133 - #135.

[pigdog]

Good points, Luis. But tax revenues CAN be raised from illegal immigrants (as well as others) by means of the FairTax.

Under the FairTax it would mean if the illegal immigrant wished to stay here he'd be paying taxes at the saame rate as anyone else with no proof i=of legality, illegality, etc. Even tourists from other countries (of which there are many millions each year) would also kick in to help us pay for the (presently) tax free things they get and we bpay for.

For some illegals, this would make the prospect of being here much less attractive and might help reduce illegal immigration somewhat - but that's still a government legislative/enforcement problem and not a tax problem, per se.

[pigdog]

You might check out the Bear Stearns study mentioned in #12. It has loads of definitive information including an estimate that the lost taxes amount to $35 billion each year.

Since the data in the study is over a year old it's quite probable that the number of illegals has grown from 21 million to something like 25 million.

The FairTax would have the effect of collecting tax from all consumers (including these) at the same tax rate the rest of us pay. It might also help to make that sort of immigration less attractive than it has been since it would no longer be the free-ride off of the present US taxpayers as at present.

Also note that that there are others in the illegal economy aside from illegal aliens - drug dealers, those in the sex industry, cash betters, those getting cash tips, etc. In addition there are many millions of foreign tourists who would pay the FairTax on their taxable consumption (as we would do on ours) where at present they get the same sort of free ride from taxpayers as the rest of the illegal economy gets.