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.