I have been reading quite a bit about illegal immigrants lately. There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant, only an illegal alien. The Immigration and Nationality Act defines an "alien" as any person not a citizen or national of the United States. It then goes on to define an "immigrant" as an "alien" in the US performing legal work or study or who has applied to be here.
These illegal aliens take jobs away from citizens and immigrants who need them, pay no taxes, but in many cases may be eligible for social services and in some cases are eligible for in state tuitions at colleges. This angers me as I live in a rural area and have seen friends lose jobs to these illegals.
There are those who argue the aliens are paid properly, but let's do some math. Take out your paycheck stub and look at it. Looking at my last paycheck, one third went to the government through taxes, social security, etc. For minimum wage it is usually about 20%. Working 40 hours at minimum wage would gross $286. Take home would be around $228. Now take that poor alien who is only being paid $6 an hour, not even minimum wage, he takes home all $6 because he pays no taxes so for 40 hours he makes $240. Suddenly it doesn't seem so bad.
Now say he gets sick. He can't afford a doctor so he goes to the emergency room and they patch him up. He has no insurance or social security number so they send him several bills and never receive a cent back. Those unpaid bills are picked up by the rest of us. Now he can't go back to work for a while so in some places he goes and files for social services. They help him out and we pay more in taxes to pick up that bill. He finally goes back to work, but guess what? He works "under the table" so it's not reported and he can keep getting those social services. He is now making more than a legal resident making minimum wage AND getting help. 24.5% of all illegals receive some form of social services.
Another point to ponder: what other corners are being cut by the people who hire illegals because it cheaper? I try not to think about this, especially in the food industries, because it makes me sick. Maybe that is why I have lost 35 pounds in the last year.
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Comments: 43
It's illegal for most offices to ask whether a person is illegal in many states.
Taxpayers in our country pay more than $100 billion every year on health care and other services for illegal immigrants, including education, law enforcement costs, and housing.
-U.S. Congressman Dean Heller-Jan. 2008
Stopping illegal immigration and ridding our country of millions of illegal aliens IS THE ANSWER. And contrary to the wailing bleeding hearts, our economy won't tank, it will have been relieved of over $100 billion in cost.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein released in April 2008:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 2008) , is the National Research Council (NRC)'s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants' foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world's poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn't some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
If they are illegal, I'd assume they have no valid social security number, so how can their checks have taxes taken out? If taxes are taken out, where is it going? Is the company pocketing that money? You'd think the government would know if money was coming in under *no* or *bogus* SS numbers
As an immigrant who spent almost 11 years to obtain my legal US citizenship, I totally feel the pain. I paid more taxes than US citizens (because there are credits and deductions not available to non-citizens) and a lot of my tax dollars go to pay for the illegals like the emergency room and social service you pointed out. I had to take my daughter Kyleigh to the emergency room once, and the total bill was $600! My insurance determined that it was not a true life-threatening emergency and did not cover it. (But being a brand new mom - Kyleigh was only 3 months old then - What else did they expect me to do on a Sunday when the regular pediatrician did not open??)
I'm working hard at being stress free.
According to the Wikipedia, the US has approximately 117 million taxpayers. That would mean each immigrant costs the average taxpayer less than 8 one-thousandths of a cent. As a taxpayer myself, I can live with that.
Would I prefer that my tax dollars were spent helping people who are living in the United States legally, rather than illegally? Sure. But when a scared mother brings her three-month old daughter into the emergency room, I don't want her to be required to prove that both her and her daughter are in the US legally before anybody will help the baby.
If the mother can't afford to pay the bill, then so be it. I'm not willing to look that woman in the face and say "If you can't pay, I won't allow my tax dollars to be spent trying to help your baby. If she dies, that's just too damned bad." Therefor, I'll accept my share of the bill for her treatment.
I heard and read this, often, always written and spoken by people who are guessing or repeating what they've heard others say. My experience has been the opposite - I've known people who were here illegally and who paid taxes, knowing that they knew they'd never get that money back.
That would mean each immigrant costs the average taxpayer less than 8 one-thousandths of a cent. As a taxpayer myself, I can live with that. Thanks for this, Wil. The "welfare" reality is about the same. But, there are people in this country who would rather cut off their legs than have 25cents of their hard-earned dollars go to help another person. (I always wonder just how hard those poor people must work to get so stingy and ugly.)
Aren't their plenty of Americans in the delta region of Mississippi, the mountains of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia...and other impoverished areas of the U.S. for that matter...who would be overcome with joy if they received that 25 cents?
After reading the Rubenstein report and seeing how he came to that $9000 figure, I definitely can live with that. If you can't, maybe you can try not paying your taxes. That'll probably work, don't you think?
Out of curiosity, did you read the Rubenstein report before you made up your mind about covering your share of that $9000?