Posted on 02/01/2002 10:47:45 PM PST by Bayou City
Feb. 1, 2002, 9:48PM
Workers hope IRS has their number
Undocumented immigrants sign up for tax rolls
By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
CONROE -- The overflow crowd stretched out the church door and into the parking lot, where the line formed for hundreds of illegal immigrants hoping to become legal U.S. taxpayers.
After a wait outside of an hour or more, participants at the seminar this week filled out a government form, presented their Mexican or Central American identification and then met with an IRS agent.
Nearly 500 signed up for the document known as an individual taxpayer identification number after being assured their information would not be shared with immigration agents.
Some in line said they hope paying taxes legally would be the first step of legalizing their U.S. stay. Others say taxes are already taken automatically from their paycheck, and they hope to get some back through a refund check.
"I want to be recognized," said one Spanish-speaking woman who identified herself only as a clerk. "I've been paying taxes for three years."
With 7 million to 8 million people now working illegally in this country, the Internal Revenue Service has quietly begun trying to register them as taxpayers.
Since 1996, the government has offered a taxpayer ID number to anyone who cannot obtain a Social Security number -- typically because they are working in the country illegally.
Local IRS agents now offer grants and seminars designed to get illegal immigrants officially registered on the tax rolls.
"The more of these we do, the more people come in," said IRS representative Leandro Leon, who has organized the seminars promoted by Spanish-language television and held at churches that attract Latin American immigrants. "I guess people are losing their fear of the INS."
Houston is not the only city with a surge in applications. The IRS reports that 5.3 million people have obtained a taxpayer ID number since 1996, though officials cannot say how many are illegal immigrants (foreigners living overseas who file U.S. taxes use the same type of ID number).
Not all the immigrant outreach is so amicable. Some illegal immigrants say the IRS has aggressively attempted to collect back taxes.
IRS representatives defend their efforts to enroll undocumented workers without reporting them to immigration authorities. They say their mandate is to collect the taxes from those who work rather than to determine who has the right to work.
"One requirement of the tax law is that people have to report their taxes, even if the money comes illegally," said Don Roberts, an IRS spokesman in Washington. "A person could report millions of dollars from drug dealing and we can't share that information with the DEA."
Congress set up the law so taxpayers who accurately report their income to the IRS can be assured the information will never be shared with other government agencies. Even law-abiding citizens would be reluctant to report their income if that information could be passed around among bureaucrats in Washington, Roberts reasons.
But critics say the taxpayer ID number system clearly indicates the government is no longer interested in enforcing immigration laws.
"It doesn't make sense," said Roy Beck, head of Numbers USA, a group that opposes high immigration levels. "The federal government is saying: "You are breaking the law and shouldn't be working, but now that you are working, we will give you this number that makes it easier for you to work.' "
A person cannot legally work in the United States without a Social Security card. But that doesn't stop millions from working anyway.
Some illegal immigrants are paid in cash never reported to the government. But perhaps millions of others obtain false Social Security cards or borrow others' Social Security numbers. Employers sometimes pay taxes on these workers' earnings.
The proliferation of false Social Security numbers frustrates the government tax people.
"We kept finding cases like the 90-year-old woman listed as working as a stevedore at the Port of Houston," said Leon.
No one knows how much immigrants pay in taxes every year, though plenty of experts have tried to guess.
A few years ago, retired Rice University professor Donald Huddle found in a study for a conservative group that immigrants cost the government $69 billion a year because they use more in services than they pay in taxes.
Liberal groups attacked Huddle's oft-quoted study as inaccurate and based on false assumptions. Urban Institute demographer Jeff Passel found a different answer.
"If you look at this in terms of a lifetime, an immigrant contributes more than he or she uses," Passel said. "But in the short run, there are costs."
That's a sentiment shared by Alejandro, an undocumented carpenter from rural Fort Bend County with a wife and two kids who pays $185 in IRS back taxes every month. The Mexican native, who won't give his last name, says he was approached on the job a few years ago by government agents wondering why he had a false Social Security number.
The IRS now calculates Alejandro owes about $4,000, according to documents. He is dutifully paying the money, he says.
Alejandro said he gets angry every time he sees American politicians arguing on Spanish-language TV that immigrants don't pay taxes.
"We come here to work. We don't come here to be fed," he said.
Unless and until we rid this country of an outmoded and nonworkable public school system held hostage by stupid people for doing nothing more than belonging to a union, that is indeed what we have to look forward to.
As for my previous post, it should have said a Paki Muslim. However, while names and places are not permitted on the board, there are more Muslims than meet the eye in positions of authority here and have been a major reason for the confusion and ruckus over profiling Near Eastern looking men. Some have the ears of very highly placed officials like congresscritters and senators, especially from their home districts.
No, Buck. I don't believe much in newsprint. I worked in California and had it up to my eyeballs with illegals. But in case you hadn't figured it out yet, subversives ARE our government. My question to YOU is what would you do about it?
Please explain why you would hurt my feelings thusly? Why do you call me racist OR fascist? I am waiting for enlightenment.
Well it surely won't if we don't do anything about it, and yes indeed, I agree with you. Movements begin with one person who convinces another...and so on. I am beginning to wonder if anyone really cares anymore.
Our problems in America are not necessarily identified by high ranking politicians but by average Americans.
It will be a good day in my life when all Americans decide that their bosses are not the bad guys. It will be a good day in my life when you realize that the current controversy of popular opinion is because you believe in government. That our current issues are because of you.
This is congressional participation in a crime. This is conspiracy to violate the immigration laws of the United States.
The congress does not have the stomach to tell the American people immigration laws are no longer going to be enforced. That might start a revolution. Instead they conspire to obstruct enforcement.
Take heart. I am not at liberty to discuss details just yet but you will soon see something positive on this subject. Please trust me on this. The tide is going to turn.
I'm too busy working to pay my taxes this year. When is Tax Freedom day...sometime in June?
This makes my blood boil, and if they get me mad enough to "protest", I'm gonna protest from the rooftops.
But, Buckaroo. How can this be? I am, by your own words, a figment of your imagination. Does that get Jim Rob another donation so you and I can continue to communicate on this medium? Otherwise, people might think you really are imagining things.
That is mighty good advice Travis.
There have always been men who have desired to rule the world. Even when it took years to travel across the world (or even before they knew the extent of the planet), some men still desired to rule it all. With those obstacles removed, only a fool would believe that men do not exist today who desire to rule the world.
World domination was attemped most recently by the Soviet Union. Like a cancer, they were gaining ground in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and even Western Europe. For 30 years, even America was yielding to them. The traitors in America believed that the United States would fall to the "evil empire". They did everything in their power to undermine our freedom, religion, and belief in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. They worked through schools, the media, and the political system to commit their treason. There was little difference between the GOP and the democrats back then, as both favored appeasement and compromise with the communists.
Then a man named Reagan came along. He reminded Americans about our Constitution and Declaration of Indpendence. He rekindled the flames of freedom that had been lit at Lexington in 1775, when a group of farmers stood up against the most powerful army in the world. The flame was always there; Americans had just forgotten about it. Americans from all walks of life rallied behind the truths that Reagan spoke. The communists were defeated, but the "domestic traitors" remained.
These "domestic enemies of the Constitution" then realized that as long as American culture was dominant, that someone like a Reagan could always reignite the flame of liberty, no matter how much (or for how long) the traitors had suppressed it.
The solution to this problem was to make sure American culture was no longer dominant. The primary way of doing this was to open the borders and let people in who neither understand our basic Freedoms, nor who desire to assimilate to American culture. Their next step was to assault the Constitution itself through the media and the public school system. As more and more un-indoctrinated immigrants come here, this step it met with less resistance, thus making even more illegal immigration possible; and the cycle keeps repeating.
But people are slowly starting to wake up to the game. One by one, Americans are realizing the path that we are on. The tyrants realize this also. They know that if people realize just what has been happening, the political revolt will destroy them. BUT their game plan is to have enough illegal immigrants here, that when people do wake up, it will be too late since we will then be outnumbered.
The stakes are incredibly high-- if the Constitution is defeated, Freedom will perish from the earth forever. And that is EXACTLY the goal of the tyrants.
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