Two things before I continue with the more negative aspects of relatively unchecked illegal immigration, and its affects, on the middle class (trust me I’ll get there; those who are proponents of instant gratification should go buy some half-priced easter candy; those who favor any kind of gratification stopped dealing with me years ago):
“Immigration Crackdown Hits Fence Builder”: This was a KSTP story and can be found at http://kstp.com/article/stories/S311459.shtml. The news contained in this article was less surprising, though still as enlightening as news that would have reported of an inter-insectual (hey, hey, hey!- I said “insectual”- everyone knows that walking sticks are the eunuchs of the insect community) relationship between a lightning bug and a walking stick. Perhaps this news will calm some of the more racist individuals who are violently against all illegals. The article concerns one Mel Kay, a Caucasian fence builder, whose humble beginnings (farming almonds, picking fruit, working at a lumber yard after quitting school at 16, being stiffed by his bosses on payday, leaving his home state, such as it was, to open a saw mill which failed, severing a finger and hand, etc). Kay didn’t face the types of things that Will Smith’s character suffered in “The Pursuit of Happyness” (see part 2), but I would wager that Smith’s character dealt with more apathy and more of a sense of powerlessness than has Kay. And while Smith’s travails are fictititious, there is no denying that the representation of real events, suffered by millions of all nationalities throughout time, was at the heart of the story. Not making a value judgment on who has suffered more, just that they both have dealt with hardships.
From the KSTP story, we learn these broad and specific pieces of information:
Broad info.:
1) 2.7 million illegals took advantage of the Ronald Reagan approved 1986 amnesty bill;
2) installing fences in Southern California’s desert heat and rocky soil, raising 60 pounds over one’s head, and moving wheelbarrows of dirt are not easy tasks;
3) “7 million illegal immigrants are part of America’s work force”;
4) “Prosecutors refuse cases because it is extremely difficult to prove businesses are complicit” in their lawful disregard for illegal immigrant hiring and employment practices;
5) “It is a crime only if 10 workers are knowingly hired,” or if ten illegals are driving a van into a bus, or defecting from an international soccer team- (http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3291411) That link provides the story of seven under-23 Cuban soccer players leaving their team March 12th, 2008). I digress. Somewhere, there are seven illegals kicking a ball through the streets of Tampa and not one law enforcement patrol officer has bothered to phone it in because there aren’t 10 of them. Brilliant!
6) “Only 37,000 of an estimated 7.5 million eligible employers have enrolled” in a voluntary federal program to electronically verify a job applicant’s immigration status, “which the White House wanted to make mandatory under a proposed immigration overhaul that failed last year.” (2007)
Specific info.:
7) Kay believed that in lieu of hiring legal citizens, he would much rather manage Mexican employees, who he says “were more trustworthy and more apt to stay long term.” (this point could just as easily be included in the general points above considering the expanse of merit often attributed to Mexican workers);
8) 75% of Kay’s workers were Hispanic;
9) Kay compensated his illegal workers as they should have been compensated- fairly. They started at $35k a year and could jump to $60k after three years. Full-time workers received health and life insurance, sick leave and vacation benefits;
10) 1/3 of Kay’s workers were illegal immigrants;
11) Kay’s former company was raided in 1999 and 2004 and a few of the illegal immigrants he was caught employing in 1999 were rehired in 2004. (This was the key contention with the federal investigators, that he would have such a willful disregard for the law- re-hiring illegals he was already reprimanded for employing);
12) Government contracts accounted for about 30 percent of his company’s revenue (I wonder if Kay’s company was the single bidder for that work- see part 9);
13) Post-Sept. 11, 2001- 48 of 182 workers at Kay’s largest branch were illegal;
14) 368 workers had Social Security numbers that did not match their names;
15) Kay’s immigration attorney insisted he stop relying on employee referrals to fill jobs and adopted the more traditional, but less effective, (at least for someone in the die-hard field of construction work- given the demands listed in #1 above) of posting help wanted signs, and seeking potential employees at job fairs, halfway houses, probation departments, unemployment offices and community colleges;
16) Kay was confined to his home for six months with permission only to go to the office, because the judge decided he was hardly the epitome of the greedy corporate elitist or business manager who abuses the illegal immigration system, who pay illegals half-wages, who farm out their ethics with the defense- that everyone else is doing it. Kay was forced to fire 200 illegal immigrants, but paid them each two weeks’ severance, though not legally obligated to do so; That is the reason the justice system was so lenient on him, and rightfully so. The immigrants, in several cases, in the course of their employment with Kay, built a few fences constructed to keep those like them (illegals) out of the country. Kay could have wound up in a prison for which his employees constructed the fence, should the judges have been more strict on Kay, a recidivist, with a fine heart. Those taking a hard line, wanting to ship out all of the illegal immigrants who are here- will be the ones who will be working in the desert heat of Southern California, grinding shovel into the rocky terrain, routinely hauling 60 pounds of material over their heads, and directing wheelbarrows full of earth to destinations not all that close in proximity to their spaces of origin? . . . didn’t think so;
17) Kay eventually began, after being forced, to hire employees in the traditional manner, referred to in #15 above, but who didn’t have the conviction and work ethic described in #7; it did not work out quite as well. To the good: he wasn’t found guilty of a crime, to the bad: his business, especially given the slowed construction market, hasn’t faired as well as formerly;
18) Kay insists “ ‘there are thousands of companies like me in Southern California’ ” and rightly insists that the government doesn’t have the “manpower” to “bust ‘em.” Few could argue with that. As we'll see, the possibly complicit nature of governmental non-interference, and the lack of communication between government organizations, whose primary duties seem centered around the idea of preventing illegal immigration, precludes the notion that they don't have enough manpower;
19) A group supervisor for U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who had directed the raid on Kay, was dissatisfied with the result of the case, but it seems that Kay actually rewarded the illegal immigrants under his employ fairly, that he appreciated their efforts, devotion and abilities. Kay is rare, in that many employers simply use up the illegals forced to work twice as hard in unenviable conditions to receive a wage that is far below fair market value for the services they provide. People should remember this prior to chastising illegals, who may very well spend their entire life working harder at a job than a child coddled into elitisim, and contribute more to this country’s welfare and economic viability than their descendants would ever dream. For the record: Kay is an exception to the greedy cliche business owner that uses illegals without fairly compensating them and is in the right; I can't say that for the overwhelming majority of other business owners. However, I do not see that we need tens of millions of illegals in this country. I'll provide my ideas for potential solutions to the problem of illegal immigration, and immigration generally, in part 27.
New arrivals: All that said, and I continue to be skeptical about the idea that we need over 20+ million illegals to support the economy, to build fences, etc. The Pew Hispanic Center report estimates that 850,000* illegal immigrants have arrived in the United States each year since 2000. Pew . . . that does stink. (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8G6U2ko8&show_article=1. I included the same link last time; within that link is a link to the Pew Hispanic Center site). Also contained in the preceding link- Mexicans comprise 56% of illegal immigrants, while another “22 percent come from other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America.” So, if it seems my frustration on the topic of illegal immigrants is directed at the nomads south of the border- well, the fact that Latinos comprise 78% of the illegal immigrant population is why. Illegal immigrants in the U.S. “account for about one in every 20 workers.” (from the breitbart.com article)
Middle class disinformation: Check out http://www.thecornerofficeblog.com/2008/02/18/are-things-really-all-that-bad/ for a Drew Carey delivered video about just how well the middle class has it, economically speaking. The piece consists of multi-millionaire comedian Carey, who has at least one television show in syndication, narrating sub-factual information. It includes an economist that wants us to evaluate our time and how much we work as it equates to earned money we could expect to spend on cars, homes, etc. The video tells that in real dollars, we have to work less and get more than we did almost 40 years ago, and even 80 years ago. Everything is more affordable (jeans, cars, cell phones) if the standard comparison is that we used to have to work 2,000 hours for a cell phone in the late 80s whereas now we only have to work 5 hours, or something of the sort. I really cannot watch the video again.
Preponderance of the evidence: His argument can be defeated quite quickly. I am soon to receive a cost of living increase of maybe 2.5%. After putting money away for food, education, gas, mortgage, heating bills, classes so that my son can learn how to swim and so that my daughter learns to be a social being- because fortunately we don’t have the expense of day care . . . what will be left? Pray, tell me which of those things I should do without. Keep in mind, I do not charge things on credit that I can’t afford to pay off when the bill comes, excepting a new furnace or an auto loan. Try to have two children with an unreliable vehicle during a Minnesota winter- you need a car that will start and run. Economists- tricky little bastards. I wish I could treat them the way potato peels treat a weak garbage disposal—poorly. The piece that Carey narrates is filled with hunyucks discussing how many motorcycles they own, how big a boat they have, while cleaning their boats or preparing their gear for the day trip through the waters of their local lake. These people did not look like the type to prepare the funding for their children’s college education. In these people’s minds is where synapses go to die. My point is not what you might be able to obtain now, but what your children won’t have in the future- oh, like an education, or a home, or money to spend on my potential grandchildren who might be born prematurely, and whose father’s (my son’s) insurance might not foot the bill for an apparatus that might assist with their ability to breathe. An economist is someone whose biggest concern in life is probably fretting over the loss of their vacation tan after they have returned from the Bahamas.
Last time- (the stealing of Social Security Numbers): I wrote that there was only one thing more offensive in the “Immigrants Stealing U.S. Social Security Numbers for Jobs, not Profits” article than the Princeton professor of sociology stating that migrant workers were paying a subsidy of the taxes that Americans would have to pay if illegals were not here. That one thing is that “Illegals are filing for bankruptcy, using someone else’s [social security] number.” As the Sicilian over-thinker from “The Princess Bride” might say- “Inconceivable!” See Martin Lukac’s http://ezinearticles.com/?2005s-Bankruptcy-Laws-Make-Filing-More-Difficult&id=156318 “2005's Bankruptcy Laws Make Filing More Difficult.” He writes- “Those with serious medical conditions, active military and low-income veterans may be able to receive special treatment under the new income test.” They may. Nader, in “The Good Fight,” wrote, “The two major cases of personal bankruptcy are medical expenses and job loss.” (pg. 73) Sure, those sound like abuses of the bankruptcy law. People with massive medical bill debt are financially monitored more closely than the corporations that lobbied for the bankruptcy laws to be strengthened. The government complied with the desires of the rich, offering protections for the strong (financial industries) by regulating the weak (the poor and sickly). Republican hypocrites. Republicans hate regulations of the free-trade industry, but do not fear a middle class backlash of bankruptcy regulations from someone too busy to revolt who is caring for their son’s injuries after he was shot by a hood on the streets of St. Louis.
Domestic Abuse: Again, pull out of Iraq and stop spending $3.5 trillion on the Afghan and Iraq wars (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21766479/) and that way you won’t be so hard-pressed for campaign finance money from the corporate elite. Now, that is what I call domestic abuse- the abusing of people at home, for what- insecure footing abroad? If people filing for bankruptcy have a lot of unnecessary debt on vehicles, homes, televisions, jewelry and other goods then punish them for their shortsightedness. However, I hardly think that the federal government, given the conflict of interest of wanting to pacify the credit card companies, is the best judge in that situation. An illegal immigrant can file for bankruptcy using someone else’s social security number and is likely more successful at doing so than a corn farmer whose second daughter contracts multiple sclerosis and has to spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment, wheelchairs, medications and outpatient visits to the medical clinic. Makes about as much sense as an eggplant accusing the grocer of racism because the black vegetable was not displayed handsomely. I have been exhausting my use of members of the animal kingdom as hyperbolic examples and decided to begin to assign maladies to members of the vegetable community.
Dobbs on bankruptcy: see Dobbs’ War on the Middle Class, pages 59-60: “personal bankruptcy filings actually fell in 2004,” a “Harvard University study showed, nearly 50 percent of bankruptcy filings in the United States are the result of illness and the enormous bills associated with treatment. This, despite the fact that the majority of filers had insurance coverage. I will never agree with the philosophy of an agency in power punishing only those it can find, which is what happens when they strip a struggling family of their assets and let illegals flow in to assume social security numbers and reap the reward of governmental laziness, government’s complicity with business (for seeking cheaper wage-laborers to pack meat, clean hotel rooms, etc.), and political civil war gridlock (the democrats v. the republicans).
Evidence #1: website- http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/04/news /id.php?page=2;**
date: September 7, 2006;
article name: “Immigrants Stealing U.S. Social Security Numbers for Jobs, Not Profits”
author: John Leland;
Quotes: “In 2000, using data from the Social Security Administration, the Utah attorney general’s office found that the Social Security numbers of 132,000 people in the state were being used by other people, far more than the state could prosecute.” If they did prosecute, imagine the taxpayer money that would have been earmarked for such a prosecution.
The assistant attorney general of Utah said: “ ‘I’ve had families denied public assistance for their children or disability payments because records show somebody is working in their Social Security number.’ ”
Simple solutions: One last thing from John Leland’s International Herald Tribune article- there is a call for “better cooperation among the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, and Department of Homeland Security to prosecute workers who use false Social Security numbers and companies that hire them.” Naaaah. Consider Sam Kinnison. In one of Kinnison’s routines from the early to mid 80’s, during the organization of many musical concerts in the U.S.A. for Africa phase of our country’s altruistic history, appeared a rant about the Ethiopians and their inability to find, grow, gather, or otherwise obtain a more prevalent food source. At any rate, Kinnison ranted for a few minutes and broke out one of his classic yells- “IT’S SAAAAAAAND! GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!” Simplistic sure, but funny. The solution to many problems is obvious, the extenuating circumstances are sometimes just excuses, not justifications for not doing something that makes too much sense (see the forthcoming post on state secession), like forcing a golden retriever to become a Scientologist. Those dogs will go for anything. It would be comforting to know that it has at least occurred to the various government agencies that working together to stop illegal activities might be beneficial to the public that pays for such services. See the federal budget information I covered in part 5 if there is a question about whether we pay to expect certain things from our government. A couple of the links I have provided this time, refer to the lack of governmental agency communication, as it concerns the issue of immigration, among other issues, as a problem. Yep, and a cowboy or horse-trader who is allergic to stallions and nags might also be an issue.
U.S. Immigration Support website offers several pieces of information relative to illegal immigration:
Go to: http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/ (and simply add /illegalimmigrant_driverslicense.html, /illegal immigration.html, /border_security.html,*** or vis_h2b.html) to discover interesting pieces of information. Shocking I know, but some illegal immigrants who want to acquire a driver’s license actually want to drive a car. Well, what are the odds that if they obtained a fake ID, or a fake driver’s license, or hell, a real one for that matter, that they are driving cars around the country, that they obtained a loan for by using some three-year-old’s social security number . . . what are the odds that they, that they, . . . are driving with insurance? Moreover, what are the odds that they might actually drive into a car owned by a democrat whose place in heaven is assured them by not seeking compensatory damages? Maybe that illegal drove a van into a bus that was only transporting republican children to school. I do not want a liberal telling me who can come into my country. I can make those decisions for myself. And what if an illegal, or even a legal immigrant, who is legally licensed and fully insured, is involved in, or witnesses, an accident or a crime, etc. and could provide information to law enforcement, but they don’t speak English. Imagine that the illegal does not want to get involved, or cannot tell law enforcement their side of the story, to help the victim, or the parent whose child lies writhing in pain in their arms, bleeding to death. See, this illegal has not bothered to pursue the learning of the English language, which was a qualification for their future residency in the United States and fears deportation should they get involved. If illegals are paid roughly ¾ to ½ of what Americans are paid for doing the same work, what are the odds that they can afford a car, and if they can, there is no reason to believe they can afford insurance. Is there any doubt that someone who breaks the law to come here, and drives a car without a license, would pay for liability insurance? If my Dove truffle eggs overheard me telling my wife that I loved them, they would still wonder at their odds of making it out of March without being consumed. Somehow, we are more gullible than chocolate.
Dobbs on “free” trade as it equates to illegal immigration: “under WTO [World Trade Organization] rules, the United States is required to offer sixty-five thousand H-1B work visas each year. If for any reason, we don’t, other countries can demand international arbitration, and the United States can be penalized and fined for not allowing enough foreign workers into the country. This would seem to usurp Congress’s power over immigration policy.” (pgs. 104-105) Funny, given the number of things for which the average U.S. citizen would like congress’ powers usurped, forcing their hands to stop meddling when it comes to the issue of immigration policy would not be one of them.
Awarded contracts: Also from Dobbs is this—simply hilarious: “The Department of Homeland Security awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to U.S.-based VF Solutions to produce uniforms for U.S. border patrol officers. That company, in turn, subcontracted the work out to Mexico. . . . The people who are guarding our border against illegal aliens are wearing uniforms made in the country they’re watching. But the terms of the contract with VF allow the work to be done in Mexico as a cost-saving measure.” Peter Boyle, who played the father on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond would simply have this to say: “Holy Crap.” Dobbs later wonders what might be next- the “Outsourcing of border patrol jobs?”
Immigrant crime I: from Dobbs: “Immigration judges responded by pointing to the increase in illegal aliens crossing into the United States and the corresponding spike in their caseloads. The nation’s 215 immigration judges handled 254,000 cases and other matters in 2000. In 2005, that number was up 27 percent, to 350,000 cases.” That coupled with the knowledge that some 850,000+ illegals are crossing the border each year makes the phrase ‘job security’ one of the most applicable uses of the phrase since a giraffe was hired as its spokes-animal by a neck-brace company seeking to appeal to the African even-toed ungulate mammal consumer.
Immigrant crime II: Those that think all immigrants, of any kind- legal or illegal, are law abiding citizens- “Immigrant Prostitutes: Victims or Criminals? Crackdown on Illicit Sex Rings Highlights Complex Legal Issues,” by Theresa Vargas of the Washington Post. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23514365/) The story chronicles the brothel activity of well-organized circuits of Latino community prostitution all over the East Coast. We have crime rings with greater histories that are more evolved conducted by Americans whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years, but my point is that- why would we want to allow more crime into a nation when we can’t control the criminals already here? Not wanting to be an alarmist, which will reduce the conservatives' right to pigeon-hole me, I actually think prostitution should be legal. I just don't think you can be say . . . a New York governor and pull it off- i.e. Eliot Spitzer. But, politicians have been prostituting themselves for thousands of years, so who am I to judge.
The truth is out there: -But everyone is not adept at recognizing it- like classmates who need name tags at twenty year reunions. From an April 5, 2005 Truthout article written by Eduardo Porter (http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/10128): one immigrant has done “backbreaking work, harvesting asparagus, pruning grapevines and picking the ripe fruit . . . often working as much as 70 hours a week, [he] contributes more than most Americans to the solvency of the nation’s public retirement system.” I don’t know about that. Some other “truths” that Porter contributes:
1) 7+ million illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. provide the Social Security Administration (SSA)with $7 billion a year. (When amnesty is granted and former illegals begin to get elected to public office- remember, Latinos are the nation’s largest growing demographic- those who paid into Welfare, Medicare and Social Security will most assuredly be granted benefits because liberals of all ages will have been psycholigically indoctrinated into thinking like political eunechs when the topics are racism, government subsidized entitlement programs and immigration. Also, the Truthout article refers to the illegal immigrant’s expectations concerning social security payments they would hope to be delivered after decades of paying in. Funny, they feel more entitled to them than I do and I have been paying in for- huh, two decades);
2) The Social Security money illegals contributed was about 10% of the 2004 total (fairly substantial);
3) Most illegals pay taxes. The IRS would not allow them not to. “Since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, most such workers have been forced to buy fake ID’s to get a job.” They must have a social security number in order to obtain a job. An employer can choose to accept it and not question its legitimacy, but they have to have one. The IRS and SSA will track an employer’s workers to see if they have a valid ID. Those unlucky enough to be raided, like Mel Kay from above, are employing illegals that are likely paying taxes. If they weren’t, the government would, from their perspective, have more cause for complaint. Are there illegals not paying any taxes at all? Sure;
4) Another Mastercard commercial could go like this- fake ID package including green card and social security card- $150; paying into an ever-expanding earnings file homeland security agencies are too complicit with the IRS to crack down on- $2,400 (in taxable income); . . . gaining passage on a ship, piloted by a professional smuggler in the event that a wall is ever constructed along the southern border- $4,000;**** . . . crashing into a bus full of children, killing four when you have neither a valid driver’s license, the ability to apoligize in English, automobile insurance, or the right documentation letting legal authorities determine your residency, or your name . . . priceless. But should you be an illegal, you probably have been approved a credit limit of at least $10k, may have maxed out that limit, and are now in the process of filing for bankruptcy while the bus you crashed into injuring an innocent girl who has to spend the rest of her days on life support for which the insurance company underpays. Further, the government may not allow you to file for bankruptcy caused by the medical bill financial burden under the more stringent 2005 bankruptcy laws. (“America, what a country,” was most famously uttered by Yakov Smirnoff, another immigrant. This phrase was uttered by millions of Americans in the 80s without their realizing that the connotation had as much to do with the simplistic fortune of ironically sad possibilities as with freedoms one might come to expect if they are American residents);
5) The SSA places W-2 earnings reports, connected with “fictitious - Social Security numbers in an ‘earnings suspense file’ in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.” Are they waiting on a leprechaun to go and do that work for them? Well, he is depressed and drunken after having his holiday (St. Patrick’s Day) cancelled by the pope;
6) The SSA released figures in 2002 that indicated “nine million W-2s with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, which accounted for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages.” (Incidentally, 2002 was the last year such figures were released. No chance the federal government wouldn’t want us to know just how poorly it is keeping track of incorrect social security numbers = number of illegal immigrants?);
7) Some social security chief actuary assumes that about 3/4s of illegals pay payroll taxes;
8) If illegals expect to draw on social security, the funding hole would be 10 percent less solvent than it is now;
9) One immigrant tying vines in a vineyard “has no idea what the money being withheld from his paycheck is for. ‘I haven’t asked,’ ” he said. Not very alarming. We don’t really know what the government does with our withheld tax money either and we have asked. With a 2008 federal budget of $2.9 trillion- the federal government might lie or misrepresent where plenty of that money might go, or, as I have indicated, waste it in a manner unbefitting the effort by the citizens who worked to provide it to the government (see part 9).
Center for Immigration Studies: See http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back1202.html, written by Marti Dinerstein, October 2002, (the same year that the SSA stopped providing the public with earnings suspense file numbers). Too many pieces of information are contained in the article to comment on all of them, but it is well worth reading. My primary area of concern is in the overall topic of the middle class economic subjection by the corporate elitists and diminishing role in the country to the wealthy backed by republicans and the poor entitlement recipients backed largely by the democrats. With that in mind: “the SSA has no legal authority to levy fines and penalties against either employees who fraudulently obtain a SSN or against employers who repeatedly submit large numbers of wage reports with incorrect SSNs. They must rely on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to do so, and audits have revealed this rarely happens.” The IRS is likely just a puppet organization that does the bidding of the federal government at large. There is a war to finance, air force one militaristic helicopters to build, people abusing the Medicare system to enable. So, neither the IRS nor the SSA can levy fines or administer penalties and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), seem handcuffed by the federal and state legislative branches that won’t pass any immigration bills. I have often found that the best way to win at anything, even when in the midst of playing cops and robbers with a cute neighbor girl back in my youth, is to completely handcuff yourself. Seems they find vulnerability very endearing. Social injustice, hasn't been this crazy and extreme since I was told not to bring Hungry Hungry Hippos to my grandmother’s house on christmas day in the late 70s.
ITIN is F.U.B.A.R. (ITIN addressed in the cis.org document): The Treasury Department’s IRS division is providing illegals with U.S. government-issued identity numbers in lieu of social security numbers. The Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) was not “implemented in accordance with Internal Revenue Code Regulations;”***** “Many immigrant groups are successfully advocating for the use of identity documents other than a SSN in order to obtain driver’s licenses and consumer benefits.” What, like coupons to get the oil changed on the car they may drive illegally to the emergency room? More- “The Mexican government is pushing the ITIN as an acceptable alternative and, apparently, the IRS has raised no objection,” and “It is difficult to understand why the IRS, the only agency that is knowingly offering an official government ID to illegal aliens, has escaped scrutiny.” It is?
Economic sense: Some people might think that if illegals are paying taxes, their presence here makes financial sense. Meaning, if immigrants are paying taxes to the local, state and federal government, Uncle Sam will not need as much from the middle class. Don’t count on it: “It is believed that the vast majority of illegal residents who file a tax return using an ITIN get full or partial tax refunds because of the low level of their earnings.” Some illegals do receive the “Earned Income Credit, intended to supplement the income of the working poor. Thus, ironically, by issuing ITINs the IRS may actually be reducing the tax revenue received from illegal aliens.” Ironically . . . America, what a country. If they can’t track of illegals once they’re here, can’t get them out, don’t know how many are here, can’t pass a bill to build a wall, can't get land owners in Texas to forego their property rights in order to build the wall and won’t issue reports indicating just how large the earnings suspense file has grown since 2002. . . How in the world would one think that they can track how much money is going back to them in Earned Income Credit money?
“The USA Patriot Act of 2001, passed overwhelmingly by Congress in response to the terrorist attacks on America, explicitly calls for greater information sharing among government agencies, law enforcement and the intelligence community.” Apparently, the supposed expectation of information sharing consists of all of the government agencies telling each other what not to do with the illegals.
Other sources for dismay: http://www.msnbc.com/id/23663338, http://www.fairus.org/site/pageserver?pagename=media_oped_32508.
See the Associated Press article concerning the 2010 U.S. Census- “Technology Glitches Could Cost Billions, Affect Accuracy”- http://www.startribune.com/nation/17001926.html. So, we will not only never know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, but also not be made aware of how many illegals may be residing in this country for the purposes of apportionment of congressional seats and the allocation of $300 billion a year in federal and state funding. Oh, getting a handle on how many illegals are coming into the U.S. each year (850,000 to 1.1 million or more) will have an affect on how much money is thrown at issues such as health care, transportation, crime, education, etc. Has that occurred to anyone?
* FAIR- Federation for American Immigration Reform puts this year’s total at 1.1 million- (http://www.fairus.org/site/pageserver?pagename=media_oped_32508)
** The same http://www.iht.com/ article as last time.
*** From this particular article, we also learn that there are 314 ports of entry and that the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 16 million illegal immigrants since 1994. Agents confiscated more than 1.2 million pounds of marijuana and over 12,000 pounds of cocaine in the 2005 fiscal year, which was estimated at nearly $1.5 billion.
**** See the Associated Press article of March 13, 2008- “Moves on Land may Push Migrants into Pacific” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23619518).
***** From a footnote in the Center for Immigration Studies article. Footnote #4.
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