OK, I'm convinced ...
Elves on the Border!
Posted on 12/19/2002 11:49:09 AM PST by firebrand
EDITORIALS & OPINION
Make Them Legal
Thousands of Mexicans watched and cheered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral last week as runners arrived with a torch bearing a flame that had come unextinguished from Mexico City, as part of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The flame, as Tamar Jacoby reported in our columns, was brought to New York City as “a seamless blend of devotion and protest designed to draw the White House’s attention to the plight of illegal immigrants.” Hard as it may be to imagine, here’s a constituency that actually is aching for the chance to pay more taxes. Right now, the city provides services to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants — teaching them in schools, treating them in hospital emergency rooms, putting out fires in their apartments. But the illegal immigrants don’t repay the city — or the state or federal government, for that matter — for the services. It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s just that the government won’t issue a Social Security number to someone who snuck into the country without permission. And it’s hard to pay either payroll taxes or income taxes without a Social Security number.
President Bush has been talking with President Fox of Mexico about ways to normalize the status of the millions of illegal immigrants living within American borders. Those efforts stalled following the September 11 terrorist attacks, which gave an unwarranted boost to those who want to pull up the drawbridge to America.
None of the September 11 hijackers was Mexican. It seems ridiculous to punish them. The best argument against normalizing illegal immigrants in America is that it rewards the lawbreakers and punishes those who have obeyed our immigration rules and who have been waiting patiently outside our borders for entry visas. But if the status of those already here were adjusted hand-in-hand with reforms dramatically raising the quotas of those allowed into America legally from abroad, then the injustice would be less. It might even be worth it to require those in America illegally to exit and then reenter under the newly relaxed entry rules, under which they’d be treated the same as those who have been obeying the laws and waiting outside.
The other argument made against increased levels of legal immigration is that it costs the taxpayers more in welfare to support such immigrants than the immigrants pay in taxes. If such claims were correct, they’d be an argument for welfare reform, not for less immigration.
New York is a city of immigrants, and New York’s mayor has often been a national leader in the debate on immigration issues. Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the city’s politicians are ready to deal with the city’s budget problems by raising taxes on the existing taxpayers. With a little leaning on Washington, the city could tap the hundreds of thousands of workers eager to help share the burden. Instead of raising tax rates, the city could broaden the base. We realize this doesn’t count as a budget “cut” in the traditional sense, but it’s a waste for the city, and the nation, to refuse income from perfectly eager potential taxpayers.
Advocates for immigrant rights estimate the number of illegal immigrants in New York City to be about 500,000. A more precise count was made in a March 2002 study from the Urban Institute, which found that there were about 275,000 illegal immigrants between the ages of 18 and 64 living in New York City. The study further found that 80% of these immigrants were participating in the labor force.
Figure an average of $20,000 a year in income for these immigrants — the Urban Institute study finds that most immigrants have an income in this range. At that level, New York would collect $110 million in city income tax revenue by registering labor force-active immigrants, legitimizing their status as members of American society, and making them legal wage-earners and taxpayers.
It's just another example of Emerson's famous quote, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
It seems to escape the folks who make arguments like this that there is more than one reason to be concerned about immigration....
ROTFLMAO!!!! I might have to steal that one from you.
What about the 55,000 illegals who don't? How do they survive and who pays for it?
Tell me walls like they had at 'Helm's Deep' wouldn't make the Border Patrol's job on the borders easier. Note the doors along the ramparts that swing open that would give the Border Patrol a clear shot at any climbers with their new pepper ball launchers, while still protecting them from projectiles.
There's the guys that can build them for us. Peter Jackson's crew look like bonafied experts at building those fortificationss.
Look at all the room for advertising space on those walls!
Can't you just see the McDonald's, Pepsi, Coke, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Sears industrial, digging, drilling and cutting tools ads on those walls, now?
Those walls would generate a positive cash flow! ;^)
Kindly note that it's much easier (and much cheaper) to create the illusion of immense walls on a movie screen than it is to build those walls in reality.
Did you see the movie, yet? Did you get a load of all of that potential advertising space?
Why we can pay for the construction of the walls, their maintenance and upkeep and retire the 'national debt'!
Not a "little" harder.
It will be MUCH harder. Those walls were probably a mixture of a few tens of feet of outdoor set and computer-generated imagery.
A real wall of that size would consist of 2,100 miles of concrete and rebar stretching tens of feet skyward.
It would thus be much more expensive.
Did you see the movie, yet? Did you get a load of all of that potential advertising space?
I haven't seen the movie. I've read the book, and I know what you're talking about.
Why we can pay for the construction of the walls, their maintenance and upkeep and retire the 'national debt'!
Advertising costs depends in part on how much traffic goes past the point where the advertisment is placed. On most of the US-Mexican border, that traffic, excluding jackrabbits, coyotes, and rattlesnakes (all of which do not have money), is "nil," which in turn indicates that the advertising revenues will be nil. You wouldn't even break even on the cost of building the walls.
A construction plan from 1978-1981--the MX ICBM Mobile Protected Shelter (MPS) basing concept in the Nevada/Utah Great Basin--would have been the largest public works program in the history of the United States had it gone forward. It was killed mostly due to the enormous price tag it would have cost if everything had gone perfectly. The missiles wound up getting built and stuck into existing silos in Wyoming, so they weren't the main issue.
Your proposal dwarfs the MX MPS program by a wide margin, and would probably not survive Congressional debate as a result.
OK, I'm convinced ...
Elves on the Border!
Dwarves on the Border!
Ah, but you didn't say we wouldn't make any money at all. So, how much do you believe we would make?
Would the advertising cover half the cost?
What was the projected cost of the MX ICBM project back in 1978 - '81?
With the walls providing protection and security, more people might be motivated to live near the border.
Hey Ajnin, you resemble any of the characters in 'The Two Towers'?
Heck, that'll make it even easier than I thought.
Logic never goes very far with those consumed in the search for False Dilemmas. America can protect the borders of other countries quite effectively but somehow when it comes to protecting our own borders the task suddenly becomes "too expensive" or "impossible". It's amazing how some peoples' agenda will warp their ability to reason.
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