<p>"I agree and disagree with where you’re going atlmom. While these people are in violation of a law…why does the analysis stop there? Why just this law?</p>
<p>What of people from one county who finagle records so that their child goes to school in a neighboring county? Is that materially different? Yes, there are people who are draining resources unfairly. But the tunnelvision that makes this just an illegal immigration issue is what I don’t get."</p>
<p>I am ever so glad you brought that up D’yer because I happen to live in a country with generally good schools that vigorously enforces the residency requirement for US citizens from the neighboring counties and the District of Columbia. They catch scores every year and throw them out of the public schools or charge them $13,000 a year tuition. Of course that only applies to US citizens and legal residents. Illegal aliens get to go for free.</p>
<p>“Yes college campuses just magically appear and the faculty gets paid but there are no tax dollars spent that come out of real peoples pockets.”</p>
<p>BIG dollars get paid. In my state, totally from sales taxes. People who earn money and buy things (plus some who don’t earn anything, like tourists) pay for 'em. Doesn’t matter if they are legal or illegal, documented or undocumented, tourist or resident, if you buy something, you pay for those magic college campuses, even if you can’t utilize them. Oh, and if you purchase things in the local stores or from local health care providers, folks who provide the stuff go out and purchase other stuff, all taxed, which pays for those magic college campuses, even if they don’t use 'em.</p>
<p>Last I saw, it’s pretty difficult to get around sales taxes. </p>
<p>Oh, there are also real estate taxes. Renters pay for 'em, money goes to the landlord, and the landlord pays. Of course, there are deadbeat landlords… (but virtually none of 'em undocumented.)</p>
The problem with not doing this is that it’s rewarding all those who managed to ‘get away with it’ so far and will only encourage even more to break our laws to follow the same route (as happened in the past). I know it’s tough but the people who crossed our borders illegaly knew that deportation was a risk when they made their decision to come here despite that risk. Given that, I don’t have any problem with them going back and getting in the back of the line behind all those already working to come here by legal means.</p>
<p>And I don’t think you should feel guilty about your ancestors. It was a different time and different circumstances. A hundred years from now it’ll be a different picture again. Migration patterns are always changing. I think most of us realize that an open border, the only alternative to not enforcing existing laws (even if the laws will be changed over time), would not work well for this country and ultimately not the people who would be coming here. If we had an open border we’d have a veritable onslaught from Latin America, China and most of the rest of Asia, eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and many many other areas of the world.</p>
<p>“If it’s about misallocation of resources, then there are broader solutions that should be advocated. And if it’s a case of someone who is paying into the system, having tax withdrawn, but who is here beyond their visa…then that’s not such a big deal – at least not in terms of misallocation of resources in a state or local school system.”</p>
<p>D’yer - if you are an undocumented alien it is not possible for your employer to withhold and pay your taxes even if he and the illegal alien want to do so. You have to have a social security card in order to pay taxes and you cannot get a social security card if you don’t have legal residency status.</p>
<p>If an employer sends in withheld wages on a phony social security number the government does not ad cannot keep the money. It is returned to the employer. Any illegal alien having taxes withheld is doing one of two things. He is either filing under a phony SS card or he is using a stolen social security number.</p>
<p>So take your myth of the illegal alien paying his way and wrap in the New York Times along with yesterdays fish and put it in the garbage.</p>
<h2>“D’yer - if you are an undocumented alien it is not possible for your employer to withhold and pay your taxes even if he and the illegal alien want to do so. You have to have a social security card in order to pay taxes and you cannot get a social security card if you don’t have legal residency status.”</h2>
<p>Not technically correct…see article linked in Post 100 for exactly how one DOES pay US FIT even though undocumented and in the US illegally.</p>
Not difficult at all if the money earned is sent out of the country to buy goods in foreign countries.</p>
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But RE taxes are scaled based on the value of the property and cost of services. This gets thrown completely off-scale when there are 5 families living in what’s meant to be a single family dwelling putting extra pressure on water, sewage, trash, parking, schools, etc.</p>
<h2>"The problem with not doing this is that it’s rewarding all those who managed to ‘get away with it’ so far and will only encourage even more to break our laws to follow the same route (as happened in the past).</h2>
<p>While I do understand this concern, I just don’t agree. People come here illegally because of the obstacles to legal entry, many of which need to be removed. And suffereing the negative economic impact of sending these people home just to send a message (a message that WILL be ignored btw), is purely the epitome of the old adage ‘cutting your nose off to spite your face.’</p>
<p>Illegal aliens pay tens of billions in taxes, actually. </p>
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<p>What about aliens who use fake numbers? Does it get returned the way higherlead claims? Turns out, Social Security holds on to it. It makes up 10% of the Social Security surplus.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but those consequences are tied to their underground status, not to the fact that they immigrated. As you note in your citation of the story above, here were TWO people employed and paying into my mom’s and my Social Security with the possibility of only one of them ever collecting.”</p>
<p>It is tied to the fact that first they broke one law by immigrating illegally and then committed fraud in order to make it easier to stay. What other laws do they think are optional.</p>
<p>In mini’s world if I rob a bank and shoot the guard on my way out because he tried to stop me I would get a bye on murder because it is tied to my status as a bank robber.</p>
<p>let all the immigrants in, besides america is a country based on immigrants. except for native americans, everyone else is an immigrant, some by force (slave trade). why block off our neighbor mexico? americans or should i say the british…, took land from the natives, took texas from mexico, brought the slaves, and now americans want to set quotas…and close the borders… it’s pathetic.</p>
<p>“And don’t point the finger at others until you are sure your own home wasn’t framed by an illegal immigrant, or the meal on your table wasn’t processed by an illegal immigrant, etc”</p>
<p>Idmom - thank you an itelligent comment. We aboslutely NEED high levels of immigration in this country. Immigration is a good thing but it has to be controled not a wholesale volk movement across our borders. That is why before addressing what we are going to do about the 20 million illegals already here we need to secure the border. That is going to take a combination of things including a fence, more border security, a crackdown on employers who are hiring illegals and a crackdown on local and state governments that are in effect offering sanctuary to illegal aliens.</p>
<p>Once we have re-established control over our borders then we can institute an immigration policy that addresses america’s needs and we can address the problem of what to do with the folks already here.</p>
<p>I am emphatically not anti-immigration. I am anti-illegal immigration. Amnesty failed in the '80’s because it wasn’t coupled with border control and this current bill will fail even more miserably.</p>
<p>“I’m still waiting for you or your daughters to come out to my state to pick cherries.”</p>
<p>mini - my son worked for $7 an hour as a short order cook in NOLA last Summer. If he knew he could get $15 picking cherries he would be hitch-hiking to Washington State right now. But somehow I don’t think your $15 an hour cherry picking job would actually materialize, and I am sure that if it would there would be not shortage of kids showing up to pick cherries.</p>
<p>To be perfectly honest your cherry picking story sounds a lot like some of the one Ron Reagan used to come up with and I don’t doubt you believe it as sincerely as he did.</p>
<p>“wake up and smell the coffee mini. there are jobs that white americans won’t do… back in the day… they gave them to the irish, and the slaves, and now today they give them to hispanics. so many americans are lazy”</p>
<p>Actually they gave them to the Irish because we were more desperate and would work cheaper. The law said you had to feed and clothe your slave.</p>
<p>I can’t believe you said that to mini who can always document what he says.</p>
<p>But in any case, the premise that there would be no shortage of college students taking $15/hr jobs doesn’t hold up, as your son’s story shows.</p>
<p>Your son could have averaged $15 an hour doing firewatch at the Chalmette refinery last summer, even more at the Murphy plant. He could have gone across the lake to Ponchatoula to pick strawberries for $12 an hour. Very little hitchhiking would have been required. I think he could have managed the Chalmette refinery from Uptown on the bus and the ferry if he had to. </p>
<p>Here’s an ad for a summer job on craigslist that I bet your son isn’t going to apply for, at $15/hour PLUS per diem PLUS benefits PLUS beaucoup overtime:</p>
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<p>My kid’s not going to apply for it either, if I have anything to say about it. But a friend of hers [another girl] did it last summer and was bringing home over $1000 a week, at 18 years old.</p>
<p>Your son’s $7 hospitality industry job is a case in point that people don’t take the highest paying job; they balance pay with how much they want or don’t want to do the work and what their other requirements are for transportation, location, etc. </p>
<p>Every year the farmers in Ponchatoula have a struggle to keep the strawberry crop from rotting in the field before it can be picked.</p>
<p>Oh and just for the record I am firmly opposd to a guest worker program. I think it is exploitative. It also would depress wages and opportunities for low skill American high school graduates. I know we are supposed to believe that in America all the kids are above average but the truth is not every kid is cut out to be a brain surgeon or an engineer no matter how many years of biology and math you make them take.</p>
<p>BTW having made a living digging ditches in my day and a lot of other manual trades I can tell you that the average american worker far from being lazy is actually one of the most productive in thr world.</p>
<p>“Not technically correct…see article linked in Post 100 for exactly how one DOES pay US FIT even though undocumented and in the US illegally.”</p>
<p>I believe the people in that article were self-employed with a restaurant. The tax number they got was for the business. I’d also wager they committed nine kinds of fraud one kind or another along the way because they are “illegally” residing in the country.</p>
<p>“let all the immigrants in, besides america is a country based on immigrants. except for native americans, everyone else is an immigrant, some by force (slave trade). why block off our neighbor mexico? americans or should i say the british…, took land from the natives, took texas from mexico, brought the slaves, and now americans want to set quotas…and close the borders… it’s pathetic.”</p>
<p>The British took Texas. That will be news to both Texans and Santa Anna. His countrymen have been looking in the wrong place all these years for Antonio’s cork leg.</p>
<p>BTW the huge majority of slave brought to the New World went to Brazil. The slave trade was well established by the Spanish long before the British erected their first colony in the New World ad britain played the leading role in the supression of the slave trade. Of course for my money limeys are still scum :-)</p>
<p>Do any of you advocate an open border as opposed to enforcing immigration laws? I’m sure you’d like them changed as would I but in the meantime, do you think they should be enforced or should we just go ahead and open the border and allow anyone who wants to to come her?</p>
Conyat brought up Craigslist before I had a chance. Between it (craigslist), garage sales, farmers markets, newspaper ads, etc, it is plenty easy to buy lots of stuff without ever paying a penny of sales tax. There is a huge underground currency in this country.</p>
<p>I am not too familiar with the personal tax ID, but it is a start, in my book. Let them pay taxes, as they should. And, if an illegal alien (again, using the term because its easier than some politically correct term) turns 18 and wants to start the process of applying for citizenship, I think that is a good thing. Then they can also apply for Stafford (and other) loans and campus (or other) jobs. I don’t see in-state tuition as a god-given right. There should be incentives for being here legally, not the other way around. I do not think in-state tuition should be an entitlement for someone who is not a legal resident of the state. Period.</p>