Posted on 03/31/2006 12:13:03 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez
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.
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."
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
That was a very callous answer to someone that has suffered directly from serious crime. Someone in an earlier post asked the question "Has an illegal ever committed a crime against you personally" I think that post was in answer to that particular question. I think your answer was rude and insensitive and totally uncalled for.
Illegal aliens should not be here period. IF the US needs workers from another country we need to make sure we can legally get them. Any cost or crime caused by an illegal should not happen, because they should not be here to begin with. Comparing the cost or crime to legal US citizens or to others here legally is simply bogus to this topic and you know it.
Bush wanted to make illegal aliens pay a FINE for being here illegally before they applied for a work visa and allowed to stay.
"Since that's punishment, then you are satisfied with that plan?"
*That's exactly what they did in the 1986 amnesty, except inflation has brought the price up. So no...on my part.
The percent of illegals paying income taxes through withholding is unprovable, and this simpleton professor should know that. (There is no box to check on the income tax form to indicate your occupation as "Illegal Alien") Even if we take his numbers as gospel, that means 48% of them are evading taxes. A rate at least 8 times that of "legal" Americans.
Most of these "hard workers" I've come across are claiming 99 exemptions on their W-4 and have ZERO withholding. In addition, many of these undocumented workers are figuring out the dodge used by many documented workers, and working as "Independent Contractors", file no tax returns and pay no taxes at all.
How would Forbes know anything about the load on social services caused by these people? They've never had to wait in an emergency room with all the gunshot wound gang bangers and the sniffeling anchor babies, (while waiting for liposuction), so how would they know what's going on?
So, they bolster legal immigration with illegal aliens.
I've posted this before, I'll post it again:
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 Government Spending
We kill 1.3 million of our own every year in the name of choice, the baby boomers are retiring at an increasingly dizzying rate, we squandered the monies out into the SS system, and now we're basically screwed.
Illegal aliens are the symptom, not the disease.
My apologies for breaking it into two different posts. A person utilizing an ITIN does pay Social Security tax to the IRS, which in turn remits to the SSA. These funds are set aside for Congressional plundering. This was the reason that the ITIN is structured as 9XX-XX-7XXX. State and municipal payroll taxes still vary in the requirements, but I have never heard of them aggressively pursuing a person with the intent of refunding monies. I am most familiar with Texas (duh!), and they assign a different sales tax ID# now for businesses. Because it used to be the proprietors SSN, and had to be prominently displayed. That did not work out too well, to say the least.
I would be surprised if more than a handful pay any income tax. Some do pay Social Security but they wouldn't if they could keep from it.
A huge percentage are day workers and they don't pay anything as a rule.
So, you believe that the increase in the Social Security Administration's Earnings Suspense File, most of the billions coming from States with known high illegal alien population, most of the jobs pumping the billions of dollars into the fund coming from restaurant workers, hotel workers, etc is just a coincidence?
Every time in the past 30 years that any politician has claimed they would secure the border, it has been a broken promise. One of President Bush's recent broken promises to the border was to promise several thousand new Border Patrol, then turn around and ask for funding for a very small number of new hires. As long as I can see large numbers of illegals walk past my house every day, I have all the proof I need that the border is not secure.
I know how hard CBP works, I worked for them for over 10 years. I also know how hard the other agencies work that deal with border issues. I did not say no one has done anything to secure the border, nothing effective has been done to date. That is why I support a major fence/barrier. In my opinion a major fence/barrier will bring border traffic down to a number that will make border security possible.
The earnings suspense file is growing by $50 billion a year.
I wanted to make sure I was arguing with a sixth grader. Thanks.
I guess you have a point. Although it still astounds me that entire towns plummet into poverty in such a short period of time. It takes years to build a stable community and within say 3-5 years its gone! Since you know way more than I do perhaps you can answer some nagging questions I have.
1. Why do latino's like to share housing? I'm not talking about roommates either. More like the folks behind me, 5 FAMILIES, kids and all.
2. Have latino's ever heard of birthcontrol? Don't give me the catholic thing, I am a catholic and only have 3 kids; thats all I thought I could afford.
3. In my immediate area, there has been a HUGE influx of latino's. While our schools were not perfect, why do the youth engage in gang activity.
4. Is graffiti a cultural thing? What does tagging a neighborhood mean?
5. Do you think it is fair that my sister-in-law, who is from Germany had to pay a few grand to get her legal status? Oh and by the way, she married an American citizen and she is a RN, a profession that is desperately needed here, more so than a landscaper.
Right, through an amnesty process and that is WRONG. There is a legal process in place today which allows foreigners to come and work in the US. It allows for foreigners to become US citizens at some future date. Its a constitutional process.
Amnesty subverts that process. At the same time, amnesty makes a mockery of our criminal justice system. If the US finds itself short of workers in the future, then legal immigration numbers should be increased. Right now I don't see the US Chamber of Commerce advertising for foreigners to enter the US illegally. In most cases, foreigners are making the decision to come to America and thereby live as illegal aliens.
Most of the states with suspected high populations of illegals are in the sunbelt, where the economies are generally growing. You don't think Gringos living in these states pay taxes? Whether those state's economic growth is related to the presence of illegals I don't know, but suspect there could be some causal relationship there.
I worked for the IRS in California during the 70's and 80's and NEVER met a farm worker that paid any taxes. At that time agricultural wages were exempt from Social Security taxes. It pi$$ed me off that I was making about $15,000 a year then and paying the full load of taxes (no employee discount), and the average farm worker in Castroville, Salinas, and Watsonville was making $25,000 a year, paying ZERO taxes and getting welfare to boot. I knew of several that were sharecropping with the local farmers and making up to $100,000 a year--again no taxes. I know from first-hand experience the tax non-compliance among illegals is VERY HIGH. These people are a net DRAIN on the country.
And BTW, if these people have been, or are paying into Social Security, and they get some sweetheart amnesty/citizenship deal from our perverted congress, they will then be legally entitled to SS benefits, and the "bulge" in the Suspense File will turn into a huge hole.
I don't think that there are genetic reasons why "Latinos" share houses...I think it's mostly economical reasons. I will say that it is a cultural thing for multiple generations to live under one roof.
My grandparents lived with us until they passed away, and I can tell you that it was a great thing.
It's also traditional for the children to live at home until they marry.
I think that the birth thing has to do with the median age of Hispanics in the US, versus the median age of non-Hispanics.
Let's look at Arizona:
Olivas said that what's fueling Hispanic birth rates is the group's median age in Arizona: 24.1 vs. 36 for all other ethnic groups combined.That means the Hispanic population in general is of prime reproductive age, with half being younger than 24 and half being older.
The median age for Anglo residents in the state is 38.
I think the gang thing pretty much comes with immigration and low incomes.
We saw Italian gangs, Irish gangs, and gangs of nearly every other culture as those groups settled into the country.
I don't understand graffiti, but here's something interesting:
"Modern graffiti art originated in New York City, and it was known first as "New York Style" graffiti. This art form began in the late 1960's when teens used permanent markers to tag or write their names, followed by the number of the street on which they lived, in subway cars. This trend originated with the appearance of "Taki 183" which was the tag of a Greek American boy named Demitrius. Tagging soon became a way to get one's name known throughout the city. However, it should be noted that tagging appeared in Philadelphia before New York. The monikers, "Cornbread" and "Top Cat" were well known in Philadelphia, and when Top Cat's style appeared in New York, it was dubbed as "Broadway Style" for its long skinny lettering." -- Source
Re: your last question...
I came here legally, waited nearly a decade to come, and by no means do I approve of people entering this country illegally.
I do however, try to identify the underlying reasons why we have this problem, and I have learned a lot along the way.
Illegal aliens are the symptom, not the disease.
Follow the money, and you'll get your answers.
1. Why do VietNamese like to share housing? I'm not talking about roommates either. More like the folks behind me, 5 FAMILIES, kids and all.
2. Have VietNamese ever heard of birthcontrol? Don't give me the catholic thing, I am a catholic and only have 3 kids; thats all I thought I could afford.
3. In my immediate area, there has been a HUGE influx of VietNamese. While our schools were not perfect, why do the youth engage in gang activity.
4. Is graffiti a cultural thing? What does tagging a neighborhood mean?
5. Do you think it is fair that my sister-in-law, who is from Brazil had to pay a few grand to get her legal status? Oh and by the way, she married an American citizen and she is a RN, a profession that is desperately needed here, more so than a landscaper.
On point 5, I guess it depends on whether you are sick; or the facilities manager of a corporate campus where the geese are crapping in the executive entrance and the grass is knee-deep ;)
You just never run out of straw, do you? We have a glut of undereducated and unskilled labor, not a shortage. There are 12 million Americans officially unemployed, and probably double that if you count welfare recipients.
You've misdiagnosed disease. Illegal aliens are a symptom of prosperity. So long as America is better off than Mexico, there will be those who try to sneak in illegally. The only cure for our 'disease' of prosperity is border security and deportation.
Something changed since then.
IRCA, as the immigration act is known, did little to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants or to discourage them from working. But for Social Security's finances, it was a great piece of legislation.
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.
Other researchers say illegal immigrants are the main contributors to the suspense file. "Illegal immigrants account for the vast majority of the suspense file," said Nick Theodore, the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Especially its growth over the 1990's, as more and more undocumented immigrants entered the work force."
Using data from the Census Bureau's current population survey, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, estimated that 3.8 million households headed by illegal immigrants generated $6.4 billion in Social Security taxes in 2002.
I'll discuss things with you whenever you decide to talk like an adult.
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