RE: Uh, no, we’re not. That’s the problem.
Can you elaborate?
In the last twenty years there are over 10-20 million Central Americans that have illegally come to the USA and never left.
Most of them work, but they do not pay income taxes like most of us do. Many also work off the books for people who know they are here illegally.
Even for legitimate companies they state that they have eight dependents. Therefore, they pay SS and Medicare taxes but not FICA. Then a disproportionate amount of their income gets sent out of the country via Western Union.
America is a nation, the United States is a government. Nations are, by definition “a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.” The key words there are “united by common descent, history, culture, or language”. There are two separate nations within the US, both of which claim to be “American”. The first is the group of people that on balance see the founding of the country as a good thing; freedom minded and a force of good through out history. The second is the group of people that on balance see the founding of the country as a bad thing; authoritarian and a force of evil through out history. On the larger scale, these are two competing ideologies. They can not exist in the same space. Eventually, things will come to a head and one or the other will be relegated to the dust bin.
I think TurboPig nailed it here