Posted on 12/01/2005 10:42:12 AM PST by Alex Marko
DUH.....Define Amnesty. I will not have amnesty with these aliens.
Remember what happed to Rome using German soilders.
Averagely cunning? A truck with 40 people in the back is nearly dragging it's rear-end on the pavement.
You can spot them a mile away.
I know that you have a "source" of facts to support your position but you understand that those who create legislation and policy have a different set of facts. These people in govt have to use facts that come from sources that the court would recognize as credible. Your source is not credible and were Congress to create legislation based your facts, their legislation would be successfully challenged in court.
There have been numerous studies on the economic impact of immigrants(legal and illegal) done by recognized credible governmental and non-governmental groups. The study done by the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank is considered to be the gold standard.
And yes, there are differences in your facts and these other sources of facts. But these differences in facts is not the the most important difference.
What is most important is how the economic impact is measured.
Your facts uses what is called the snap shot method. It measures the economic impact at a one and only particular point in time. Economists measure the economic impact thru time. Long periods of time. Even into subsequent generations.
An extreme example of this is the illegal known as the "Tomato King". Way back when he and his wife snuck in and he was picking tomatoes it is no doubt that their impact was negative. But thru time he became a labor contrator and further thru time he invented the tomato picking machine and became rich. There is no doubt that his economic impact, thru time, was highly positive.
Another extreme example is Mr Gonzales and his wife who no doubt had a negative impact in the beginning but thru time that impact lessened and eventually turned positive. If you consider their subsequent generation, who became US Attorney General, you would have to say that that their impact, thru time, was highly positive.
These, of course, are extreme examples but the mundane examples work under the same principle. Juan Perez begins sweeping the floor in a factory but gets promoted to spot welder, leadman and eventually foreman. Thru time his impact shifts from negative to positive. His children learn the language, the body of knowledge, and pop culture. They assimilate and contribute more than their father.
If I were given the job of measuring what you contributed to society and the economy, surely you would want me to measure your whole life's contribution , not just what you accomplished up to age 24.
Thanks for your reply, which is not the usual spurious straw man argument commonly used by those that those in support of the President’s Guest Worker Program (GWP). You wonder about my source. I am glad you asked. It is from the Cato Institute’s Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States . This is report that provides the academic policy underpinnings for the Bush GWP. It was published in excerpt in the pro-GWP Wall Stree Journal.
Please download the .pdf and peruse pages 13-14. There you will find the following:
Because low-skilled immigrants earn lower than- average incomes, they and their households do tend to pay less in taxes and to use means-tested programs more frequently than do American households on average….
Low-skilled immigrants do impose a fiscal cost under current law when all government services used and taxes paid are considered. For immigrants without a high school education, which describes most immigrants from Mexico, the NRC model determined the net fiscal impact to be negative $13,000. The original low-skilled immigrants themselves impose a lifetime net fiscal cost of $89,000 each, but that cost is almost entirely offset by the surplus of $76,000 in taxes that their descendants pay during their lifetimes.
Source cited:
National Research Council, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, ed. James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston (Washington: National Academy Press, 1997), p. 153.
So, now that you know that my source is unimpeachable, and that each new immigrant in his lifetime will cost the taxpayer $89,000, I await your acknowledgement that illegal workers are a source of private profit for the few, at public expense for the many.
You will probably reply that the next generation will be a boon, so that is why we need them now. Were that the motivations of GWP advocates the long term interest of the U.S. GWP advocates want cheap workers for their private benefit now, this quarter, this harvest, and not for any public or future benefits. They care no more about the future than for the taxpayer that supports the upkeep of their hires. So please spare us any rhapsodizing about how Pedro and Juanita are going to support us all in our dotage, because that isn’t why GWP advocates want them.
The facts are that illegal immigrants cost the taxpayer enormous amounts, and if the employers had to pay the full freight of their costs, they would be as anti-illegal as the rest of us.
The bottom line is that we don't need illegal aliens in the United States for any reason. Any job that needs to be filled can be filled by either American workers or legal immigrant workers. If we need additional workers, Congress can increase the number of legal immigrants that we let in, either by way of a guest worker program or other visa programs. We can also kick able-bodied Americans off of welfare to increase the number of available workers.
Ben [tapping on monitor], Ben you there?
Think about what you always hear:
Doin the jobs that Americans won't do.
I don't know about you, but that's a slap in my face, my fathers face, my neighbors face...
When I was a kid in the late 60's, I busted my behind on a local farm throwin bales of hay around, get home after dark, only to fall asleep in the bathtub. Saved up enough money to buy a record player (that my dad soon came to hate) and I bought a new pair of shoes for my mom.
I busted my behind for a buck and a quarter an hour.
And I was proud.
Thanks for the link. It was a thorough and comprehesive article with which I have a few disagreements that are only a matter of degree.
Of course the article supports my position that thru time the negative impact of immigrants(legal and illegal) turn positive. Your reply #22 misrepresented the article since you chose to mention only half of the impact and ignore that impact approaches zero thru time.
As I said on the first paragraph of this reply, I disagree with some of this article by degree and this section on economic impact is one of those. Whereas this article states that the impact evens out in the second generation, I suggest that that evening out occurs sooner. Let me explain why.
If you would reread that section you will see that the author first blends legals and illegals, then seperates them, then reblends them. Although he tries to put some numbers to the blend, he omits any numbers for the illegals. There is a good reason for this.
Other articles/studies on this subject point out that since the illegals are a shadowy, undocumented group, no one can say with certainty to what level they participate in health and welfare programs. It is generally accepted that they participate at a much lower level than legal immigrants because legals are entitled and illegals are not entitled
A second thing that skews the number is that a surprisingly large number of legal immigrants, although they are entitled, chose to consume health and welfare benefits at an undocumented level, masquerading as an illegal. They do this because they know that it doesn't count against them.
A third thing that skews the numbers is that in areas/cities/towns close to the border, Mexican citizens consume health and welfare benefits. These people are not illegal aliens but the costs are usually attributed to illegals.
Because of these examples, I suggest that average economic impact of the illegals turn positve sooner than the article indicates.
I have mentioned only health and welfare and ignored education. If you seperate the costs of HEW benefits, you see that, by far, the educational costs are the largest.
I tend to sgree with a number of credentialed anslysts who say that educational costs of the illegal children should not be counted as a negative economic impact.
We have large numbers of legal and illegals in the country for only one reason, a low birthrate. Had our legal immigration policies been more realistic, there would be far fewer illegals and far more legals here and those illegal children we are educating would be children of legal immigrants. Taken a step further, had we maintained a higher birthrate, the children of the legal and illegal immigrants that we are educating would, instead, be the children of native born citizens. Either way, society has to pay the costs of educating them.
Let me suggest that you follow Plutarch's link in #45 and read study the article there. It has a high degree of credibility and contradicts you.
There is nothing in any article that contradicts the fact that we don't need illegal alien lawbreakers in the United States. If we do need more foreign workers, Congress can increase the number of foreigners who will be allowed to legally immigrate to the United States, even under a guest worker program if necessary.
We have bee discussing the merits of Pres. Bush's Guest Worker Program, in which illegals will be issued six year visas, at the termination of which they will be required to return to their native land. This is what you stated you were a supporter of.
Since all the "Guests" will be required to leave after six years, there will not be another generation (mostly from unwed households, and with exceedingly low levels of education) from which we will reap the bounty of tax revenue promised in the study.
The "Willing Workers" report is an advocacy study extolling to the extent credibility allows the manifold benefits of massive illegal migration. They have buried, minimized and qualified the $89,000 per alien figure with professional zeal. If that figure is used in the report the Administration bases its policy on, the figure is incontrovertible.
I've never liked "The Economist" That's my individual taste. This rag always touts the big business/ open borders/ free traitor point of view. Much like the Wall Street Journal but at least the WSJ has some other redeeming features.
The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget
Its findings include:
Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.
Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).
With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social services.
On average, the costs that illegal households impose on federal coffers are less than half that of other households, but their tax payments are only one-fourth that of other households.
Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access them.
If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.
Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status what most illegal aliens would become can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.
Although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77 percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.
The fact that legal immigrants with few years of schooling are a large fiscal drain does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a net drain many legal immigrants are highly skilled.
The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.
The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the National Research Council, [whence comes the $89,000 lifetime figure] which also found that immigrants education level is a key determinant of their fiscal impact.
The Bush Guest Worker Program is a modified-limited hangout Amnesty. Illegals will be granted (ostensibly temporary) legal status and a U.S. Government issued I.D., which will provide additional entree to Federal, State and local social welfare programs. It invites even more burden on the taxpayers.
The business interests clamoring for this scheme will rake in all the profit from cheap Mexican labor and depressed wages. We taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.
Please cite a specific and credible study that refutes the two studies I have provided that demonstrate a heavy burden on the taxpayer. Alternatively, accept that illegals/guest workers do burden the taxpayer, and explain why Citizen A should subsidize these uninvited "Guests", so Citizen B can make extra profit.
President Bush is absolutely wrong on this issue.
We want him to address the issue and get the illegals out of the country. Period!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.