Indeed it is. And it's also par for the course.
This is a ch__ch. What's missing?
Posted on 03/30/2006 10:44:15 PM PST by ncountylee
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Illegal immigration seems to have spawned a dreary debate about the merits of Mexicans, when it should be drawing attention instead to a very different matter: how to build on the luster and wonder of the American dream.
Immigration is not the pox neo-Know Nothings make it out to be. Begin with the astounding influx of illegal immigrants, the vast majority of whom hail from Mexico. While the population includes an eye-popping number of crooks, drug-dealers and would-be welfare sponges, it also provides a helpful prop for sustaining American economic growth and cultural dynamism.
Princeton University sociologist Douglas S. Massey reports that 62 percent of illegal immigrants pay income taxes (via withholding) and 66 percent contribute to Social Security. Forbes magazine notes that Mexican illegals aren't clogging up the social-services system: only 5 percent receive food stamps or unemployment assistance; 10 percent send kids to public schools.
On the work front, Hispanic unemployment has tumbled to 5.5 percent, only slightly above the national average of 4.7 percent and considerably lower than the black unemployment rate of 9.3 percent. Economist Larry Kudlow praises Hispanic entrepreneurship: "According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening businesses at a rate three times faster than the national average. In addition, there were almost 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses generating $222 billion in revenue in 2002."
Skeptics counter that immigrants have clogged our hospitals, which is true -- but primarily in places that offer lavish benefits to illegal immigrants.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
legal immigrants of course would have the social security. But I know for a fact a social security card cannot be obtained without proof of citizenship.
However a tax ID number can be obtained, but I find it really hard to believe that 66% of illegal immigrants have applied for one, but if they did, even more shocking that our government knows where these 66 percent are and knows their employers are hiring them opposing the employer agreement for illegal hiring that was set up during the last amnesty in the 80s.
Quite so. IMO this article is just chock full of the type of oversimplified pat assertions that just reek of manipulated statistics. For example:
"Skeptics counter that immigrants have clogged our hospitals, which is true -- but primarily in places that offer lavish benefits to illegal immigrants."
Sorry, Tony. Not buying it. I don't know what "lavish benefits" are supposed to be, but they clog any medical emergency center I have ever seen that has a linoleum floor, naugahyde chairs, and 4 copies of "People" magazine no newer than 4 months old. You know, the places I have to PAY to go see a doctor in with my medical insurance.
"As for crime, the picture doesn't quite conform to conventional wisdom. Heather McDonald discovered that illegal immigrants in 2004 accounted for 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles and two-thirds of unserved felony warrants. (Gangs, aided and abetted by laws that prevent local officials from handing illegal-immigrant criminals over to federal authorities, account for much of the mayhem.)"
Wow, I feel much better having read this. Is this supposed to make us feel like something is under control or entirely out of control? I mean, can you hear the sophistry here?? "It's totally out of control, but there's a good reason why it's totally out of control, so there's no real problem that it's out of control since we know the reason. Oh, by the way, nothing in the proposed legislation has anything to do with GETTING it under control, and so, after a brief pause while your 11 second attention span drifts onto the next topic, this really doesn't matter. Next slide, please." Sheesh. THIS IS HOW THIS IS GOING TO BE SOLD.
On the other hand, the most comprehensive survey to date of national crime data concludes, "In the small number of studies providing empirical evidence, immigrants are generally less involved in crime than similarly situated groups, despite the wealth of prominent criminological theories that provide good reasons why this should not be the case."
So, if we don't know who they are and can't catch them since we have no ID on them, and no employment records and no address info, then all the intensely rotten crap they do is statistically insignificant? Come on. This is the way this lipsticked-pig is gonna be sold. It's months away and I can smell it already. Yuk. Dumb it down into sound bites that an eight year old can understand, repeat it five thousand times, and the American people will buy it, sure as the sun rises. It's a load of pure crap, and I for one resent being talked to like a third grader.
If the USA could annex Canada, that would be FANTASTIC!! have you any idea the amount of natural resorces Canada has?
If that was the plan, I'd say TAKE IT!!
But it's not. Canadians aren't THAT stupid.
Just waiting for the punch line "Immigrants built this country."
Actually, Americans built this country. Immigration averaged only 235,000 persons per year prior to the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act. That's only 47 million immigrants over the course of our nation's history.
Compared to our current population of nearly 300 million, that's not much. And then, if we add all the people who have lived before in the United States, we are approaching a billion total Americans who live now or who have lived in this country—all of them, or at least most of them, busy "building" it.
47 million immigrants compared to a billion citizens, is only 4.5% of immigrants available out of the total history of this county to help build it. Maybe thats not why its in his punch line...
In general, there is little tolerance for hero worship here. Sure there are some Bushbots and similar folks but I think most here are results oriented people. That's why people get pissed when Tony Snow writes a weak article that uses the globalists at Forbes magazine or some lib professor to explain why this is all so very good. He has shown his cards and he supports the mobs of illegals with the Mexican flags, the middle fingers extended, and the banners telling us that we are racist Nazi bastards.
"So, if we don't know who they are and can't catch them since we have no ID on them, and no employment records and no address info"
Then we really dont know how much crime they committed either, seems like basic math...
Tony Snow is the host of The Tony Snow Show on Fox News Radio.
More on Rupert Murdoch/News Corp/News America Holdings PAC here.
By the sheerest of coincidences, in the last election cycle, Chris Cannon's campaign paid Janus Merritt Strategies, the firm Grover Norquist started with David Safavian, Cannon's chief of staff in 2001, $5,960 for "Campaign Consulting & Fundraising Exp." Also during the 2004 cycle, Cannon's campaign paid $5,614 for fundraising expenses to Williams Mullen, the influence-peddling company that was in the process of buying Norquist's influence-peddling company.
Matt had a crushing response to Norquist ready to submit (crushing responses to immigration extremists, forced as they are to rely on dishonesty in order to be convincing, are very easy to write), when he got word that word had come from higher up not to print any more articles by him that mentioned Chris Cannon.
I don't know what it is about me and corporations, but, as it turns out, News Corp, the foreign corporation that owns Fox News, has a political action committee, too. Just like Viacom! News Corp's vehicle for pooling its employees' political views is called News America Holdings.
In the 2004 cycle, News America Holdings gave $5,000 to Cannon for Congress. Undoubtedly, the money this particular foreign multinational gave to this particular American legislator was given out of love for democracy, and a desire to see higher quality political advertising. I know you are as confident as I am that there was no relation whatsoever between the investment the corporation had in Chris Cannon and the multimedia megacorporation using its power to squelch our rebuttal, but allow Norquist to publish lies (which Cannon, of course, distributed throughout his district, maybe using the money News America Holdings had given him, and possibly throwing the election--we were on a roll just then).
Such a policy would benefit us all:
• It would help those who want nothing more than to work legally move out of the shadows.
• It would help our security forces stop wasting resources now spent on hunting down Mexican waitresses and start devoting them to tracking the terrorists who really threaten us.
• It would help the economy by providing America with the labor and talent it needs.
Given the tremendous pressures on President Bush and the considerable opposition from within his own ranks, the politically expedient thing for him to do would be to drop it. But he hasn't, and I for one am encouraged by his refusal to give in.
Question: Do you have dual citizenship? Curious. My son's gf's mom is from Iceland. She holds on to her Icelandic citizebship because of the healthcare system there.
citizenship
I'm not sure I see reporting simply loyal to Murdoch any more than I see loyalty to the Saudi sheik who also has voting shares.
"Princeton University sociologist Douglas S. Massey reports that 62 percent of illegal immigrants pay income taxes (via withholding) and 66 percent contribute to Social Security."
Since we don't know know how may illegal immigrants there are....can you guess the second half of my question?
Hint: Unless there is a known number in total (as in the case of a math teacher asking a test/exercise question) How can anyone say 62 percent of an unknown quantity between 12 and 30 million....IS something....DOES something...DOESN'T DO something.
What if I said 62 percent of the coins in that big jar on my desk are nickels. You could believe me or you could disbelieve me. But if I didn't know and had not counted the total no of coins in the jar, I'd be LYING. And if you knew I had not counted the coins, you could justficably say I was LYING. Period. We do not know the number of illegals, and the numbers cover a giant range. It's impossible to say whether 62% of "them" do anything.
This is just flat out rubbish. Nonsense. BS and spin.
Very good posts!
Frankly, I would rather have Americans popping out an extra child,
That would be nice---imagine had we not had so many abortions things would be different.
I have read this article maybe three times, and every time I read it I find more things that simply do not make sense. I've pointed some of them out in prior posts. Normally I am not a big fan of parsing phraseology down to the dipthong, but in this case...
"On the work front, Hispanic unemployment has tumbled to 5.5 percent, only slightly above the national average of 4.7 percent and considerably lower than the black unemployment rate of 9.3 percent. Economist Larry Kudlow praises Hispanic entrepreneurship: "According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening businesses at a rate three times faster than the national average. In addition, there were almost 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses generating $222 billion in revenue in 2002."
Argggh! Classic "change the subject". Nobody is talking about "Hispanic Entrepreneurship". The topic matter is ILLEGAL [Hispanic] [behavior of all kinds] starting with the act of illegally crossing the border, an act that is not undone by stating what a fine contribution they make to our economy or what type of socks they wear.
Nobody seems to have a problem with Hispanics starting businesses. If they were bona fide citizens or immigrants in the proces of obtaining citizenship they would have every right to start businesses and would/should be encouraged to do so. They do not need encouragement, nobody argues that. They have somewhat of an unfair advantage if they do not have the various business licenses anyone else would require. They may or may not pay taxes on their business income; I cannot say. BUT WE DON'T KNOW THESE numbers so NOBODY CAN SAY. We can't say if they are three times the nat'l average or fifty times the nat'l average.
"On the other hand, the most comprehensive survey to date of national crime data concludes....
If this statement of some unknown survey which is "the most comprehensive survey to date" (but which is so gosh-darned comprehensive that absolutely no attribution is even necessary) were printed in what FReepers call the MSM as the preface to some conclusion, FReepers would come down on it like a ton of bricks, and I mean right now.
"In the small number of studies providing empirical evidence, immigrants are generally less involved in crime than similarly situated groups, despite the wealth of prominent criminological theories that provide good reasons why this should not be the case."
More completely unattributed, unnamed studies by persons unknown. What are "similarly situated groups"?? Which prominent criminological theories? Dr. Seuss? Do I sense sophistry, techno-babble?
"Authors Ramiro Martinez Jr. and Matthew T. Lee note, for instance, that the Latino homicide rate in Miami is three times that of El Paso, Texas, which has one of the nation's largest immigrant populations. That's not just an anomaly. Another major study, "U.S. Impacts of Mexican Immigration," by professors Michael J. Greenwood and Marta Tienda reports that "crime rates along the border are lower than those of comparable non-border cities."
OK, now we get the attribution, but I say again, there's no conclusion that IMO can be drawn from this without advocacy, without an agenda (aka "spin"). But I am not a sociologist working to obtain government funding, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn last night. To me, illegals who hang right on the border are arguably going to be on better behavior than those who move into the interior of the US to "settle down". Outlandish statement? I think not. Consider: The border-hangers are in unfamiliar territory. They are testing the waters. They know (I admit, I am projecting) they are a van drive away from being deported. They are probably uneasy and do not have the means to move further inland. Many of them are maybe not sure if they can make it in this new country. No. I want to hear about illegals who make the decision to move to Chanute, KS or Youngstown, OH or Lexington, KY or Eugene, OR and how THEY behave. Because, quite frankly, in those more remote (relative to their homeland) locations they are likely to congregate with their fellow countrymen/women and THERE, BY THEIR OWN VOLITION, decide whether they are going to be upstanding citizens or misfits. In other words, GIVEN THE FREEDOM they say they so deperately crave and deserve, they THEN AND THERE decide whether they are going to be gang-bangers or....whatever type of upstanding citizen they may choose to be. Does that make sense? I think that's an important distinction.
Total crime and property crime in California are half what they were in 1980; violent crime has fallen more than a third. The state's Hispanic population during that time has increased 120 percent.
I don't know if I believe these stats, but hey, maybe the cops are getting better? Impossible to know or conclude, IMO.
The United States somehow has managed to absorb 10 million to 20 million illegal immigrants....
Thanks for making my point, Tony. We DON'T KNOW how many there are, so statements that XX% of them can perform a reverse one-and-a-half-gainer are GARBAGE!! Gee, maybe there are THREE TIMES AS MANY as we/you/I/they think, so maybe they don't start businesses "three times as fast" as "others" do, it's just that we are deceived by hedonically counting from an incorrect base!
"Before someone razes Lady Liberty and decides to erect a wall to "protect" America from the world, shouldn't we at least spend a little time trying to get our facts straight?"
Facts would greatly improve the discussion. Unfortunately, none are present in Tony's article. OK, it's late!
I'm not.
So kick them all out, build a huge electrified fence, and let the good ones back in with work visas. It ain't rocket surgery.
It's late, but your post is brilliant, nonetheless.
You done parsed it real good! :-)
mega ... dittos
Indeed it is. And it's also par for the course.
This is a ch__ch. What's missing?
Would someone please tell Tony that it's not "illegal immigrants", it's illegal ALIENS.
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