GARBAGE!

The Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment is in full swing.

Of course they take American jobs. Shills for labor exporting countries like Mexico and China backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies will of course deny it. Thankfully about 70 percent of the population recognize the problem. The tough part is finding someone to represent their views and actually end or limit H1/Green Cards/Illegal labor. The Republican leadership, backed by Chamber dollars is pushing for a expanded “guest worker” program to make up for the increased border security. And of course, the Democratic Party is equally guilty.

These jobs are let out to the lowest bidders. Jail employers.

By all reports the number of immigrants – both legal and illegal is way down from recent years. Most immigrants take the jobs that Americans won’t. They work hard to get ahead. In some cases they are better trained and educated because they believe in delaying gratification. If our citizens would work hard in school and place education about sports and after school jobs and would strive to go to college, we would be better off and our future would look brighter.

More then half afraid of deportation. Then they ain’t legal.

It’s not our fellow workers that are the enemy, it is the scum of the corporate government that planned out this scenario all along. They hire the illegals for cheap labor, outsource what they can to foreign labor, manipulate stocks and artificially alter the value of various commodities (including the American labor market), all in order to convince Americans that illegals are taking the jobs they want – and to elect terrible politicians that will allow this cycle to continue in perpetuity.

It’s no conspiracy if it’s not a secret.

I love that last line

“It’s no conspiracy if it’s not a secret.”

More flexible on wages and mobility are key to the equation. Plus, the study did not include American businesses who are exporting “our” jobs. No surprise there, as the machine has been fully geared and ramped up to lay ALL blame on foreigners for several years now.

Do recall, there is one political party, and only one, that passed legislation to reward US companies who outsource their work, and has called for lower wages and fewer benefits since the old Robber Baron era.

No real need to name it.

But one question remains unanswered by any poll. Does anybody know a single American worker who, if faced with the loss of a job and no prospects of a replacement who would spend what’s left of his money to ride across the country in a locked trailer, knowing full well that, at the first sign of trouble would walk away from the truck without bothering to unlock the trailer on the promise that there “might” be a job at the end of the ride?

QuadSlacker, it’s not only NOT a secret, it’s not even news. It’s been going on for decades, and speaks clearly that PT Barnum was not only right, but an optimist.

There is no question that illegals are taking jobs from Americans, over 20 million of them. When can we get our elected officials to enforce the laws?

Stop buying services and products produced with illegal immigrant labor. It’s why I stopped going to McDonald’s, well, that and that so-called food it serves.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want any immigrants stealing my back breaking, sub-minimum wage, dawn to dusk, no health insurance, slave labor, tomato picking job!

When can we get our elected officials to enforce the laws?

That would be never because the corporations depend on illegal immigrant labor to bring in a good bottom line. Either that or they ship our jobs to Communist China.

Does anyone have a problem with buying crap made by Communist Chinese?

Super computer anyone?

“And are immigrants pushing down wage levels?”

Pshaw!
A major plank with the Alt Media ‘parody’ of the Left is ‘No One is Illegal’ ?
If yer a capitalist, then yer theory tells you, to ‘get the most for the cheapest’?
Once you get the ‘most’, you can buy any number of Professional Politicians to buy a Left wingers, as easily as you can buy a Tea Bagger.

One of the biggest problems for the corporatists on the Left side is always explaining away the hypocrisy of the Union movement which leverages the demand of ‘labor’ to protect wages, while paying for campaigns to promote a steady stream for the ‘supply of labor’?

Socialists told you about that problem years ago…
Capitalism doesn’t work.

(at least the Right comes up with new names to avoid THEIR base…)

Labor in the Indiana “other than trades” part of the construction industry is all Hispanic. Even the Amish use Hispanics instead of their own people. They do take away the work of lots of people.

easy solution, actually
place a bounty, payable by the employer, on each illegal worker who is reported. that bounty paid to the person who reported the illegal hire will fuel a cottage industry and rid our ranks of those who are working illegally, opening jobs which could otherwise be performed by American citizens, for a fair wage

In an effort to serve the online community best, please verify your Disqus account so that your comments will appear as soon as they are posted. Thanks.
(copy/paste the email link directly to your browser if clicking on it does not work)
If you prefer, you can also log in using your Facebook,Yahoo,Twitter or OpenId account.

This is bs. Illegals take construction jobs while Americans set laid off and thats just one example. Painters hire illegals, many hotels and restaurants do not have American workers

People will say anything to convince themeselves that illegal labor does not take jobs and wages from legal laborers.

Oh yeah – they finally figured THAT out? Which individual deserves a hot steel helmet? This is truly ridiculous. I know, I say that frequently. Something has to change on OUR side. We can’t let these rights and laws get overturned. I remember Ted Kennedy – when he wailed on the senate about the minimum wage and “how much does it take?” I know – I’m speaking to the choir on this but there has to be something other than volunteering and keeping the grass-roots energized. It’s getting to be very hard especially in the lowest income areas. But, I also think tht the dems are going to let the repukes win so everyone can once again see where the real problem is – when you pre-print a sign to protest politely is no longer respected!! Ok, we can stomp on their heads – “that’ll show them”! I speak from experience because that’s exactly what a violent man/husband has to be endured by women – it hasn’t stopped. But that’s ok – let’s go out and arrest that man who was having coffee and then thrown out only to be tacked by one of the fattest police officer that I’ve ever seen. I know that we think that we are better than them and surprized when those redneck officers beat up peaceful protestors. I remember “4 dead in Ohio”.

Illegals covers a sector that most of us will never dare to go into. Lets have a show of hands of how many of you will get up at 3am to get a ride with someone else to a factory to strip skin of chickens for 16hours straight???? Or pick up tomatos under a blazing sun for minimun or less than minimun wage and miss Oprah at lunch? Come on people, many of unemployed these days are white collar workers due to the banking and housing crisis. these people have masters degrees and many years of office work.That is the type of work they want back, they don’t want to strip chicken gouts for 16 hours a day. Factory workers left out want their $25 hr union benefit jobs back, not to pick tomatos of a farm for 16 hours straight, they will be better off with food stamps and unemployment checks. The point is this, there is a reason why the came in in the first place, they did to fill a vacuum left by the American worker. Now like in theird Reich Germany a scapegoat is needed to blame the economic failures of world economics and like always pick on the lower end of the tottem pole. I want to see how many of us get up a 2am to prepare food and get it to a truck and try to sell is on the streets every day seven days a week from sun up till sun down for just a couple of bucks a day!!!! also lets see how many here have hire them for “menial ” jobs around our yards? Yeah like the California candidate Whitman!!!!! Now unemployed crying out loud Hey…i need that job!!!! Employers keep hiring them because they are cheap and reliable, something a Burger King restaurant dreams about, cheap labor, nevers calls off and never ask for a raise. Either hire that or a 17 yo teen that calls off every nice weekend to go out with girll or boyfriends and ask for a raise every pay period.

maybe that’s your neighborhood. in mine, here in california, the ‘jobs americans won’t do’ seem to include restaurant workers, construction workers, landscapers, fast food workers, retail jobs and anything else employers can get away with. you call someone for an estimate, the english speaking, american business owner comes and sells the job, and on monday the crew of non-english speaking, undocumented workers show up, and the boss is nowhere to be found. this has been our experience with every job we’ve contracted out; fence installation, concrete work, dirt and tree removal, etc. only our plumber and electrician have actually showed up to do the work themselves.

Perhaps you are thinking of the wobblies: Industrial Workers of the World. Read about Joe Hill and while you’re at it read about Sacco & Vancetti for those who haven’t known about these people.

I disagree because I’ve known a few democrats irl. You need to study this – a lesson(s) will teach you. The Balad of Joe Hill was made into a movie but that was back in the early 1970′s and shown on most campus theaters at that time. So was the story of Sacco & Vanzetti – they were framed as anarchists just to please the crowds. Joe Hill was given the death sentence based upon flimsy evidence and the fact that he was Swedish. He wouldn’t admit that he had really been with a married woman in bed (isn’t that the way you get caught – sex). He was executed anyway. So much for morality among the rich and powerful.

The 3ird Reich Germany was a scapegoat to blame the economic failures of world economics and like always pick on the lower end of the totem pole”. Apparently you know nothing of the causes of WW1 which fed into eventually WW2. The reason that the Nazi’s were able to gain power was because they were stripped of all lands and territories and required to make war reparations to the Allies. Hitler appeared as a savior to these war torn communities. Alot of these people did not like the Treaty of Versailles. And, to top that off, the Allies (Actually just Great Britain & the US) divided up territories so that the entire middle east was broken up not in compliance with their cultures, etc. And, that is the reason we still have problems with the ME.

Does anyone else see the hypocrisy when righteous-wing teaparty nutjobs cry over the mass infusion of immigrants here in Silicon Valley and other tech centers while at the same time brokering no quarter in their quest to convert our schools into Christian Mosques? I’m the only native born person in our team (the rest are Indian and Chinese) and it’s really not hard to see why.

Between this perfectly timed propaganda, and the perfectly timed “terrorist threat” we were frantically informed of today, I’m thinking maybe it’s ALL smoke and mirrors. Who controls the media? A handful of huge corporations. Who controls the politics? 400 people who control 25% of the money in America who own the corporations. A consortium of oil rich Arabs own ll the parking meters in Chicago fercrissake! They can’t have a street fair unless they pay them the lost parking revenue that day. The Penn Turnpike is also for sale.

I’m rambling, but the point is, while we blame our problems on immigrants or Muslims, the American Experiment (democracy) slips away. When your charter says profits no matter what, it also means no matter US. (pun intended)

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jerry, Trakgalvis. Trakgalvis said: ‘Politically explosive’ study suggests immigrants taking jobs from Americans | Raw Story http://goo.gl/7JIY [...]

[...] 'Politically explosive' study suggests immigrants taking jobs from AmericansRaw StoryA new Pew study is being widely touted as demonstrating that as the nation struggles to recover economically, immigrants are gaining jobs at …Report: Foreign-born workers gained jobs while native-born lost themWashington PostImmigrants gaining jobs, native-born Americans aren'tChristian Science MonitorImmigrants top native born in US job huntCNNMoneyDailyFinance -AFP -KGUNall 179 news articles » [...]

These studies and polls are just an attempt by our market makers – who pay for them, and then distribute the distorted results through their media partners, to cultivate the expected response in the social mind, and thus the expected lever pull at the poll. In word everyone is familiar with, it’s bullshit. It’s manufactured consent, and in these partisan and confusing days, when most are just wondering which end is up, it’s really working. We’ve seen them move the numbers on the Prop 19 polls.

Of course, there’s one little detail also left out of this study, which companies and individuals are hiring all these foreign-born workers inside the United States?

My guess, the same ones (practically all Repiglicans) who are for outsourcing American jobs overseas to cheap-labor foreign markets. IOW, notice how this “study” is slanted toward “studying” foreign-born workers while conveniently leaving out the companies and individuals hiring them. Duuuh, I wonder why?

Of course the Dems are in on it. Unlimited cheap labor for business, unlimited bodies for union recruitment – they’re undercutting their existing membership now, and lots of new Dem voters etc. Why else would they have made eligibility for health care extend to all citizens as well as “all aliens legally present” with those eligible for tax subsidies too and then turn around and press for “comprehensive immigration reform” with its “path to citizenship” if not to make them “aliens legally present” and so have those tens of millions of cheap laborers available to business with their health care paid by public funding. Breaking the bank? Add social security, medicare, $4-6 Trillion war liabilities going forward, and 12-20 M more people on the health care bill than claimed ($3-4T v, the $0.9T estimate). Then, listen to Obama advisor Volker float trial-balloons about VAT taxes (or the Repub’s national sales taxes), the most regressive of taxes, to pay for the criminal acts of the W.S. financiers and the four mentioned deep holes. Or, Bernanke openly attempting to fuel inflation as a means of repudiating U.S. debt.

Make no mistake about it, however much or little you understand about economics, both parties are bent on intentionally reducing our standard of living – if they cannot do it by wage deflation for political reasons, then by purposeful inflation and devaluation of the dollar. To save us and our nation? Hardly. Magnifying the carnage are structural distortions, that they have no interest in addressing, that accelerate the disparities in income between the rich and not-rich. Such decisions come easily when one has millions, or even billions, to fall back on in the new plutocracy.

IPC is anything but an objective source of information on illegal migrants or immigration. What would one expect from them.They are a blatantly activist group that tries to present themselves as nonpartisan and neutral arbiter of the facts, but they are far from it. And PEW, not much better. Those of us who live at the center of the storm (on the Southern border) have a hard time convincing those who observe from a distance through the MSM and distant bloggers, what is really going on here. However, we do see both what is happening and how it is being presented to the rest of the country and there is little or no agreement between the two.

[...] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/study-immigrants-jobs-americans/ [...]

THis is a cool page….

http://www.pbs.org/race/003_RaceTimeline/003_00-home.htm

I like your reasoning, BUT US POLLS ARE A HOAX. The upper house [THE JEWISH CONTROL] keeps what it wants to do. It has been decided as Zionist news paperDEBKAFILE/intelligence [THE VERY PEOPLE BEHIND 9/11] has said that they favour republicans this election to take over the house/s. So that economic depression can be continued to keep presidency with democrats, who favour the zionism more than repubs.

They tuuuk Ahhh jaaaabs muhahahaha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLni3wbndls

I knew that,I lived in germany for 8 yrs and ret army w 22 yrs, think I know some geopolitics.

The headline is bogus: “…taking jobs from Americans”

No one is taking any job away from any citizen except, of course, those who hire illegally.

—-

“And are immigrants pushing down wage levels?”

Immigrants also tend to be more flexible about their wage expectations

The two statements are from the article above. The reality is the the owners of production is pushing this country’s standard to a lower standard because it means more wealth for the owners of production.

We already know that the owners of production gets their profits from cheap labor. But it is also true that our standard of living is based on the wages paid. If that standard of living can be lowered then the owners of production will gain more wealth because they will not have to pay for the standard of living we once knew.

The immigration issue is a false flag. It is a talking point to get us to lean to the right aka be sheeps lined up for slaughter. Does it make sense for the right to pretend they are looking out for us by taking a stance against immigration when the right is secretly funding thier talking points with foreign money? Think U.S Chamber of Commerce.

The correct way to look at this is by adding all the facts. Note: Libertarians are just like Conservatives both hate facts and will fix the facts to fit their policies. The facts we need to add to this picture is this:

Wages have gone down for almost all Americans. The top 1 per cent as known nothing but gain in the last 30 years. The gap between have and have nots is wider today than even during the 1920′s. The gap is the widest in all of U.S history. All the wealth in this nation is concentrated in the hands of only 10 per cent of the nation. They will gain more if our standard of living is lowered, which is where we are heading.

The propaganda of the right. Take a look at the talking heads, Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly etc. They make millions yet not a single one created jobs. Their wealth comes from nothing other than spewing propaganda and that doesn’t create jobs. It also has an added feature in that they stand to see personal gain for themselves only and not for their viewers, if we are stupid enough to listen to then. We are sheeps to slaughter.

This isn’t an immigration issue. It is and issue to con us into swing toward the right and you my as well take a gun to your head if you are going to do that.

I find this article mistaken. Grossly mistaken. You cannot compare legal immigrants with border jumpers, many legal immigrants do have desirable skills and educations, border jumpers steal jobs, blue collar jobs. They take the jobs of roofers, painters, yard crews. Those were the jobs Americans fell back on thru hard times, now, they don’t exist, and your political representative could care less.

NAFTA was suppose to employ N Americans, so they could stay home and work. They still come here and greedy employers will hire the cheap labor every time. Can’t wait til MI becomes right to work, maybe I’ll start a service (slave) business?

Would you please make sense.

NAFTA was supposed to provide Wall Street with an over abundance of cheap, disposable labor, a way to avoid environmental and safety laws, and a means to blackmail U.S. citizens by threatening to send our jobs south and north of the border. It also contained a provision allowing lawsuits if a companies profits are endangered. NAFTA worked!

We are told that the democrats wants the illegals for the votes, that may be true but with the unemployment as high as it is it seems they are risking a backlash from citizen voters that donate money to them. Many of the jobs that they take are jobs that our young people would and could be doing, yet look at the unemployment stats for the 24 and under age bracket.
Also we are told that the republicans want cheap labor, does this offset the loss of voting power when in most election cycles they are the minority party.
One argument says they pay taxes that is a net gain for the economy. I do not know how it is other than where I live, I know many contractors in the construction field that hire illegals and everyone I have talked to have told me they cannot get a crew to work for them if they do not pay them in cash. Then about the only tax they would pay would be sales tax on the goods they purchase.
I cannot see the logic in all of this. I feel there is more to the issue than we are being told.

More crap articles.

Uhm except illegals can’t and DONT vote.

I agree with Patricia this is a bogus article drawing a FAULTY conclusion from a study that DID NOT ask the question that the headline implies.

I agree with you that the Dem’s risk a back lash thanks in a large part to poor journalism feeding a low information and critically thinking challenged electorate.

No wonder the GOP is succeeding with a slate of “stooopid is as stooopid” does candidates!

Yeah.. like enforcing the laws that say it’s illegal to EMPLOY those illegal immigrants, right? You want to know when our pro-corporation government is going to hold corporations accountable to the law?

Me too.. but I suspect as long as CEOs are moving from the private sector into oversight positions in government that watch their old (and future) industry, we’ll not see those CEOs that are getting filthy rich by ignoring the laws doing anything for “we, the people” any time soon.

Your vote matters. Stop voting for multi-millionaires that appoint other multi-millionaires to positions of oversight and regulation enforcement. Get it through your head that rich people want to get richer, and are happy to kill you to do it.

Let me modify your question and put the blame where it belongs…

“When are Americans going to elect officials that care about the rule of law and the public?”

There is one very simple and cost effective way to halt illegal employment….put the EMPLOYER’S in the gray bar hotel…and not just the hiring managers but the EXECUTIVES, after all they are ones getting the big buck/benefits from hiring these people so why shouldn’t they pay the price for breaking the law.

Yes, blame the illegals for being here when it was the U.S., through NAFTA, that destroyed their agriculture industry by flooding their markets with subsidized corn.. and then fail to blame the EMPLOYERS who hire illegals.. keep blaming everyone but those who should actually be being put in jail… people who hire illegal workers.

As the real economy grows worse and worse, the number of divisive articles appearing has increased over 1,000 percent. (Divisive as in pitting young against old, women against men, race against race [hard to prove without a definite DNA profile], ethnic group against ethnic group.)

Now, whenever I hear something from Pew, I always reflect on why would the oil companies wish us to believe that, as that’s where their money derives.

So too, when I hear something out of the American Enterprise Insitute, I reflect on why the hedge funds wish us to believe that, as that’s where their money chiefly derives.

Also, whenever I hear anything out of the Cato Institute, I reflect on why the Koch brothers wish us to believe that, as that’s where their money derives.

If one doesn’t realize the source, when will always be that ungangly puppet on the end of THEIR strings….

Now you’re beginning to sound sensible, my dear.

We’re all getting crapped upon. And the banksters and oil companies keep planting their stories….

um……mexico IS part of north america……..

Overpopulation imposed by the pedophile Vatican and its mother-killing politicians — like Catholic extremist Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey (hope his Democratic pro-choice challenger ousts him) — is the cause of global unemployment and illegal migrations. Electing pro-choice politicians who support international family planning will bring back outsourced American jobs and will also keep illegals back home in their own countries when their own job markets improve because they no longer have to support large families and compete with child slave labor. Anti-choice tea baggers are treasonously and suicidally promoting global unemployment and poverty. Too bad no pro-choice politician bravely explains this “pro-life” overpopulation = unemployed poverty cause and effect that links loony values to stolen jobs.

Better yet, arrest the source of this job-stealing poverty invasion: anti-family planning pedophile priests and their colluding politicians who keep Third World women in incubating slavery. Arrest priests and politicians here in the U.S. and globally. I promise you that when Third World couples are freed from this deadly downward spiral, they’ll stay home. Start with Catholic-ruined Mexico and Haiti.

Pro-choice Dems could win if they’d bravely blame anti-choicers like Rep. Chris Smith-R of NJ for keeping Third World women in incubating slavery. Standards of living improve for everyone when women are allowed to have smaller families.

“EMPLOYERS who hire illegals”, though guilty, are simply taking advantage of the mother-killing, child-raping 2,000-year-old human trafficking racket of the Vatican. Putting couples back in control of their reproduction and arresting priests and their bully politicians are the only ways to stop this human tsunami of poverty at its source. Most couples are begging for family planning because only pedophile priests want women to die in childbirth and their orphans to trade sex for food.

Family planning created America’s middle class which also created the self-respect surge of priest molestation victims to fight back through lawyers and journalists for their stolen childhoods. Starving Third World children don’t have those options. You won’t hear about some of the worst pedophile priests because their illiterate overseas mission victims don’t speak English. This is largely why the Vatican pushes poverty, bribes corrupt elite men with annulments-on-demand and child hookers (Gingrich, Randall Terry and Deal Hudson), and backed Catholic extremists like Adolph Hitler. As WWII ended, the Vatican ran Nazi ratlines to smuggle 100,000 Nazis to North America to resurrect its beloved slave labor camps that punished “sinful” birth control-using feminists, non-clergy gays, and non-Catholic “heretics”. Nobody notices the similarity between Ireland’s notorious Magdalene slave laundries for “sinful” women and the Nazi labor camps — Hitler won Vatican backing by targeting “sinners” for “repentance”. Denial of family planning creates large pools of unstable, unemployed desperate young adults who drive down the wages of the barely employed. Sexually harassing employers also benefit by exploiting the fear of their expendable employees. Politicians with Catholic “family values” keep these exploited poverty and slave labor cycles churning for the parasitic elite. Their biggest fear is women doing the modern equivalent of throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery by popping birth control pills. Birth control brings their genocide and slavery machine to a thundering halt.

.

The American Dream is available for more than JUST Americans…

.

Better yet, put bounties on pedophile priests who smuggle in these illegal breeders and who force us tax payers to fund their gay-bashing Catholic Charities to birth their anchor babies. If they don’t breed, employers can’t hire their next generation. Punish the priests first.

“The poll also found that 70 percent of foreign-born Latinos think they are being held back by discrimination,” the Washington Post adds, “and half of all Latinos think the United States has become less welcoming toward immigrants than it was just five years ago. … More than half of all Latinos told Pew pollsters they are worried that family members, close friends or they themselves could be deported.”

Gee Wally, I wonder why-the-phuck that’s happening? Maybe it’s because Americans are fed up with the tsunami of third-worlders pouring over our all-but-unsecured border? Maybe we’ve had a gut full of people who want all the benefits of being an American citizen, but want to keep their loyalty to whatever barbaric hell hole they departed.
Assimilate assholes! My ancestors did it, so should you.

I wonder how many people would be happy with open immigration from India? What would happen to your job if 10 million Indians with college degrees who speak English moved to the US? They could for example work for 60% of your salary and still be much better off than they would be in India. That’s just India. What if China, Indonesia, Russia and so on could do so also. Would you still consider illegal immigration so harmless then? Would you still think it had no effect on wages? If it is OK for Mexicans to work here why not open the doors to everyone?

Clearly and without a doubt, illegal immigrants compete with American citizens, lower wages on the low end and take away jobs on the low end. Think about it. They are willing to work in blue collar jobs for less money than an American. Even if they grow the overall economy, doesn’t common sense then say they have an effect on wages?

This nation was built and made great with a lot of monopoly and a some slavery – to rebuild it as the new world order envisions, the monopolists need a lot of slaves and that is the future. Get used to it.

The big question is whether this is good or bad for the rest of the economy? At the wages immigrants are paid they are harder and better workers. In a sense we are trading out the lowest level of American workers for cheaper and harder working foreign workers.

This could still be a good thing overall because it keeps inflation down and it selects for people with a lot of drive and motivation to be able to achieve the dirty and dangerous trip across the border to work undercover in a foreign country. They are perhaps more likely to be people who will start businesses and perhaps even stimulate the economy further than Americans who might otherwise fill those jobs and not be very satisfied or happy doing so.

Realistically if Mexico wants its people to be able to move and work here then they need to offer us something to make it worthwhile. If Mexico wants its citizens to be able to move here then they should offer us something to make such a deal attractive to us.

If we do nothing in response to that then our displaced people will get paid less money, be unemployed more often and be a bigger drain on social services and welfare. Just because someone is born an American does not make him any smarter or better than someone who is born Mexican. It’s highly racist to think that all Americans at the lowest level should automatically be able to out compete immigrants by simply getting more education. If the immigrants weren’t here those Americans who currently are not willing to work the hours for the wages paid in a meat packing plant would be the only choice. The meat packing plant would have to pay higher wages. If we had fewer low wage immigrants there would be fewer people using our hospitals and schools and we would pay lower taxes in the short term at least.

The quickest way to reduce income inequality in America would be to raise the wages at the low end. The quickest short term way to increase the price of anything is to reduce the competition and reduce the supply. If there were no illegal immigrants, construction companies, agricultural companies, meatpackers, wealthy home owners and so on would all have to pay higher wages and hence reduce income inequality.

On the other hand maybe meatpackers might just outsource the slaughter to Mexico and completely shutdown the plant in the US. Grocery stores might buy all their produce from Latin America. You’d have to cut off illegal immigration and also cut off foreign trade. The problem is in the past cutting off foreign trade has always been the quickest way into a depression.

Allowing all immigration and all trade with no controls or balances in return means you are chasing the lowest common denominator. How is that good in the long term for anyone but the very best and smartest of us?

A free labor treaty would likely have similar positive and negative effects. We need to balance those in a treaty that benefits both sides and we need to recognize some people will lose out. We need to at least mitigate their losses perhaps by providing opportunities for less expensive college education and adult college education.

It’s not just Mexicans and construction, service and agricultural jobs.
The H-1B, L-1 and H-2 visa programs used to be for a tiny number of people with rare skills or to fill critical shortages in health care professions. They’ve turned into a form of indentured servitude which replaces American workers with lower-paid foreigners who don’t have the right to seek other employment. It’s take it or leave the country, and it has gotten rid of hundreds of thousands of jobs which use to go to American citizens.

That’s one of the reasons that “more math and science in education” is a fucking lie. Unemployment in science, technology and a lot of health care professions is high, and wages are low. Every time there’s a change in the market which could raise wages – think nursing twenty years ago – more visas are issued to keep us all hungry, insecure and unable to negotiate a better wage.

“In the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009,”

There is no great recession there is a Silent Depression!

[...] ΩΩHere is a news example that gives important data but is surrounded by a hodgepodge of excuses trying to deny reality:  ‘Politically explosive’ study suggests immigrants taking jobs from Americans | Raw Story [...]

You can thank Mother Teresa for dismantling India’s family planning programs to punish “sinful, selfish, greedy” Americans. I would love to see unemployed Americans getting in the faces of deadbeat daddy/adulterous wife-dumpers/fetal idolators Randall Terry, Newt Gingrich, Chris Smith, Henry Hyde and Deal Hudson for outsourcing their jobs to the overpopulated Third World. Don’t confront Mexicans and Indians — confront Catholic anti-choicers who made them overpopulate for the pedophile Vatican and slave-owning corporatists.

They’re taking all the jobs that the Repubs say unemployed people with college educations should take, but don’t because they are lazy.

Like all the lucrative Migrant Worker jobs out there picking fruit paying $2 an hour under the table.

You don’t have a recession when the economy is growing, no matter how slow, much less a Depression.

Using the term “Silent Depression” suggests “Beck fan” to me.

When will you sheeple realized that no country, including the U.S.A., can provide free: healthcare, jobs, schooling, housing, etc., to the rest of the world forever???

Oh God, we fucking get it already. Could you say something else now?

Those darn immigrants are keeping me from pursuing my career picking lettuce!

In an effort to serve the online community best, please verify your Disqus account so that your comments will appear as soon as they are posted. Thanks.
(copy/paste the email link directly to your browser if clicking on it does not work)
If you prefer, you can also log in using your Facebook,Yahoo,Twitter or OpenId account.

Well, they should stay home and work then – oh wait NAFTA didn’t do that at all now, did it?
Another lie from the makers of our current depression – the FED and Goldman Sachs.

Wrong Again Bob, I don’t own a television so I couldn’t be a Beck Fan, instead of slurs lets talk facts.

By The Numbers
By David Glenn Cox

I was told that I should offer a light at the end of the tunnel, but I can’t. I wish that the news was good. I wish, I could hold out an optimistic hope but until we begin to move forward in this country, we face only black days.

The Federal Reserve has passed out to the banks more than $800 billion for one quarter of one percent interest. The interest owed by the American taxpayer is 2.625 percent. Each million dollars lent to the banks is lent at $24,000 below the cost to the taxpayer. $24,000 times a thousand million, times 800 or $20 billion dollars. What do we get for all that money? Nothing!

See any Republican’s on the floor of the house apoplectic with outrage? See any signs at tea bagger rallies saying, “cut free money to banks?” Have you heard President Obama say this “grand give away to the banks must stop!”

The banking industry is puffed up full of bad paper and bad debt and rather than addressing the situation. The Fed gives them free money so that they can generate huge profits to hide the costs of all these bad debts. Its pumping up a tire with a leak, it works temporarily but fails to address the leak. Three years in and the numbers are still pointing down.

We are approaching our ten millionth home foreclosure since the mortgage crisis began. Ten million families out in the street, do the math, Mortgage lenders predict that mortgage lending will drop below one trillion dollars for the first time since 1996. Half a trillion dollars below this years $1.4 trillion and just how low is that? In 2003 there were 3.8 trillion dollars lent on home mortgages. Real property values have dropped 30 percent and yet the politicians have the nerve to try and tell you that this crisis is over.

Sweet flipping Jesus, this is a disaster! The numbers are all pointing down and the politicians are telling you its getting better. Meanwhile, aliens from some cosmic outer space science fiction movie are eating American’s brains and they follow mindlessly waving bags of tea. Mutants of Democrats are calling for budget cuts and cuts to Social Security while Republican Zombies want to repeal the minimum wage? Give me a club and call me Grog if we’re going back to the stone age!

Profits at Proctor & Gamble the worlds largest maker of consumer products declined by 6.8 percent in the third quarter. Why does that matter? Because unlike Ford or Microsoft Proctor and Gamble is a bell weather, they manufacture products that people use daily. They make soap and laundry detergent and toothpaste, things people just can’t do without. Kimberly-Clark Corp., the maker of Kleenex, Huggies diapers and Scott toilet paper, posted a 19 percent drop in third-quarter profit yesterday.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has ended work on a new rail tunnel to New York. Christie argued the the project was too expensive at $8.9 billion dollars. The cost of the project would have been shared by New Jersey, New York and the Federal Government. Instead of a tunnel, New Jersey will have to repay $350 million dollars to the Federal Government and fill in the big hole in the ground. The new tunnel would have doubled the capacity for rail commuters to New York not to mention that the old tunnel is 100 years old. It’s a clear case of don’t just do something, stand there! New Jersey lost over 20,000 jobs last month and now will lose 6,000 more.

The major banks are forecasting reduced profits next year because of fewer homes loans, fewer consumer loans and millions of American who no longer even have a checking account. You can’t fill the bucket out of a dry well, those ten million American families who have lost their homes have also lost their credit and most will never get it back.

Maytag plans on laying off five thousand workers due to reduced sales which will ripple out as fewer purchases made by the former Maytag workers. California Governor Schwarzenegger’s furloughs of state workers cost the workers 15 percent of their income. It might have helped the state but it clobbered the Sacramento economy. We can’t cut our way out to prosperity. Somebody has got to have a job and every job cut only adds to the misery vortex.

In Berlin at the end of World War 2 the provisional government paid women, old men and boys to clear rubble from the streets with their bare hands. The economy was crushed flat, the choice was clear, either feed the people or put them to work. Feeding them solved the immediate problem but did nothing to rebuild the economy. It is unconscionable to do nothing and absurd to pretend the problem doesn’t exist

U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force.

September 2009, 5.3 percent – September 2010, 5.5 percent

U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force.

September 2009, 6.0 percent – September 2010, 6.1 percent

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

September 2009, 9.5 percent – September 2010, 9.6 percent

U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers.

September 2009, 9.9 percent – September 2010, 10.3 percent

U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

September 2009, 10.8 percent – September 2010, 11.0 percent

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

September 2009, 16.1 percent – September 2010, 17.1 percent

The question we must ask ourselves is how long can we go on like this? How long can we watch layoffs continue? In September there were 1,486 mass layoff actions involving 133,379 workers.

In September there were 102,134 home foreclosures in America. Where do the people go? Where do they live now?

In August home prices declined a further two tenths of a percent.

“The consensus view is that the latest S&P/Case-Shiller report is gloomy in the extreme, pointing to further erosion in U.S. home values, with many more Americans falling under water with their mortgages as their home equity collapses. Not a hopeful sign that the global economic crisis will soon end.”

This is why the banks are in trouble, they hold the paper on these homes that are losing value. George W. Bush wanted to leave this problem up to the banks to solve. Barack Obama wants to leave the problem up to the banks to solve. The Republicans wanted to offer no help and the Democrats offer little help but the problem won’t go away. These problems are all interconnected just as we all are interconnected.

Each worker laid off, each business closed makes the weight carried by the rest of us just that much greater. 102,134 homes stopped paying property taxes last month. State government fears investment in needed infrastructure projects because they fear tomorrow. Last year’s stimulus money buoyed state budgets. This year state aid was added to the jobs bill but what about next year?

How long can we go on like this? How long can we continue to ask Americans to go on like this? Spending billions of dollars to prop up banks without addressing the root cause of the problem? Watching as millions are dispossessed from their homes and in the process each one of them lowers the value of your home.

We continue to fight and expand a war that the American people never wanted and did not need. We went into Afghanistan to force the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden and now ten years later I think we’ve made our point. Our leaders offer no exit strategy but instead, they talk about the next ten years.

We are cutting funds to education and have eliminated 100,000 teaching positions. Or as Mark Twain said, “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.”

I promised no light at the end of the tunnel but there are train tracks leading out of the tunnel. We are not lost, we are misplaced. Our leaders don’t lack for tools they only lack for courage. Too addicted to the easy money, sold to the highest bidder mentality to understand that until they turn around and start to fight for us they might one day be forced to fight against us.

“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Not that many of you will get this, but democracy is the problem…

Our country is not supposed to be a democracy, it is supposed to be a republic…

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule. Mobs are nothing more than loud, screaming, idiotic and confused charlie foxtrots.. Mobs are reactive, ESPECIALLY when trying to be proactive. Mobs are easily swayed by fear and greed. Mobs are the purest form of collectivism, and the true ugly face of collectivism. Mobs are always controlled by a small few “leaders” who advance their goals by sacrificing unwitting members of their own flock. Riot control 101:
Identify the leader class in a mob, they can be easily spotted giving orders and pointing where trouble is about to erupt.. If these few troublemakers can be detained, the riot will quickly disperse. Mobs can never do anything constructive, they at a minimum obstruct normal activity, at worst they burn and pillage.

This nation has devolved into nothing more than a confused mob of countervailing special interests, each feeding on each other, but fed mostly by the populations stupidity, laziness and greed.

You voted for generations for your “chicken in every pot”, but never considered who raised all those chickens.

You voted for every unsustainable promise, never wondering when the check would come due.

You educated yourselves for pointless jobs that dealt more in constructs of fancy than reality.

You believed idiotic lies such as: “Debt is wealth!!”, and “Bad credit history is better than no credit history!!”..

Those chickens have come home to roost, the checks are overdue, you now need a real job, and real money is becoming a real issue…

Most of you reading this on this website are screwed, most of you are incapable of facing the reality of this unprecedented monetary event descending upon us.

This is FAR worse than a depression, this is a systemic monetary collapse.

No government can or even will save you, the closer to government you are, the worse this event will be on you. In fact, you best remember what governments/mobs resort to when it goes REALLY bad: They eat their own…

Here’s a survival tip for ya’ll: Start eating a lot of pork, that way when you resort to eating each other you can more convincingly lie to yourself that it’s just another pork chop.. Human, the other white meat…

Me, I’ll be enjoying my grass raised lamb and mutton, with garden raised garlic and carrots.

Baa! BAAA! Little sheeple, have you any meat to pay the wolves?

David, very nicely set out but what would you suggest we do? Preferably with how you would go about getting to whatever goals you set. It is not enough to say that leaders lack courage. It isn’t always that, although tactics may be used for good a necessary reasons that we out here don’t understand. But going at something in a bull headed demanding, full speed way is not always, is even rarely effective.

reply to any of my comments. Thanks

Follow FDR,

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

http://www.oldelmtree.com/index.php?topic=15350.0

No, of course we can’t! Not when we fire missiles that cost 3/4 of a million dollars to destroy a mud hut. Not when we build electric power plants in Afghanistan that run on diesel fuel. Fuel that has to be trucked over 1,200 miles through unfriendly territory. We can’t afford these things because we build plastic airplanes that cost $800 million dollars a piece and have to be housed in air conditioned hangers to keep them from melting.

We spend another $10 billion dollars a year to develop a missile defense shield that after 30 years of research has yet to knock down one missile. A shield that proponents admit is ineffective against cruise missiles and short range missiles.

Why can’t we fix our schools? Too expensive! Why can’t we have single payer health care? Too expensive!

The question isn’t can society work, the question is can society be made to work for us?

Well spoken.

Well spoken.

The productive capacity of the US economy DOES generate enough profit to care for all in all situations. If not for the greed of the corporations and the hyper wealthy there would be no deficit or problem with healthcare. Consider these three simple facts. Since the 1950′s the EFFECTIVE corporate tax rate has dropped from 22% to around 8%. This has forced the individuals pick up the slack and the government to borrow to support programs that were sustainable previously.

Two, since 1980 the EFFECTIVE tax rate of individuals making over 1 million has dropped from over 20% to around 17% once again forcing the rest of us to pick up the slack or the government to get out the credit card.

Three, the US spends roughly $700 BILLION more for healthcare than our fellow industrialized competitors and do not cover 15% of the population. Many economists have pointed out that covering the uninsured would add to the GDP by cutting lost productivity and stimulating consumption outside the medical industry. There would also be savings for Medicare and Medicaid which would reduce the need for general tax revenues.

So S2M I say raising the EFFECTIVE tax rates on corporations and the hyper rich can build a stronger financial system AND reforming the medical delivery system can provide a chicken in every pot without killing the economy or mortgaging the future, but it can only happen with publicly financed campaigns to remove undue influence of moneyed interests who opperate the levers of power at our expense.

In an effort to serve the online community best, please verify your Disqus account so that your comments will appear as soon as they are posted. Thanks.
(copy/paste the email link directly to your browser if clicking on it does not work)
If you prefer, you can also log in using your Facebook,Yahoo,Twitter or OpenId account.

In an effort to serve the online community best, please verify your Disqus account so that your comments will appear as soon as they are posted. Thanks.
(copy/paste the email link directly to your browser if clicking on it does not work)
If you prefer, you can also log in using your Facebook,Yahoo,Twitter or OpenId account.

You are right and no country does provide free health care. They charge premiums that are paid for via TAXES!

1 3
STATE-LEVEL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION
In April 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law SB 1070, also known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act—a sweeping law with the intent of eliminating unauthorized immigration in the state through state and local law-enforcement actions. However, a federal district court enjoined several of the most controversial parts of the law, including the provision that explicitly required state and local law-enforcement officials to inquire about immigration status during any lawful stop, detention, or arrest, as well as the provision making it a misdemeanor to fail to carry proper immigration documents. Despite criticism of the Arizona law from Republicans, Democrats, police officials, religious leaders, and civil rights leaders, legislators in at least 23 states—Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah—have introduced or are considering introducing similar legislation.
SB 1070-TYPE LAWS ARE NOT A REAL SOLUTION TO OUR IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS
•
The justification for SB 1070 doesn’t hold water. While proponents of SB 1070 claimed the law was a crime-fighting measure, data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics show that unauthorized immigration is not associated with higher crime rates. While there is real violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, SB 1070 does nothing to address it.
•
The police have always had the authority to arrest immigrants for crimes they commit. If a police officer sees an immigrant commit a crime (such as theft or murder), or suspects that an immigrant has committed a crime, that police officer can arrest that immigrant for that crime. The police also have the authority to arrest immigrants for criminal violations of immigration law, such as re-entering the U.S. after being deported. Furthermore, the police have always had the ability to contact ICE and inquire about an arrestee’s immigration status, and many prisons and jails have an ICE presence, so that immigrants can be identified and placed into removal proceedings.
•
SB 1070-type laws would be expensive. In addition to the enormous costs of implementing the legislation, the Mayor of Phoenix estimated the loss of convention revenue to Arizona as a result of SB 1070 will be at least $90 million over 5 years due to boycotts. A study released in July 2008 by the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy concluded that economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent, if all non-citizens, including unauthorized workers, were removed from Arizona’s workforce. About 14 percent of the state’s 2.6 million workers are foreign-born, and about two-thirds to three-fourths of non-citizens are unauthorized.
•
SB 1070-type laws could leave states less safe. If police spend their time detaining and questioning people they suspect of being unauthorized immigrants, it will detract from their ability to investigate and solve more serious crimes. In Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio has diverted his department’s resources to immigration enforcement, and response times to 911 calls have increased, arrest rates have dropped, and thousands of felony warrants have not been served.
•
SB 1070-like laws jeopardize the federal government’s ability to set priorities in immigration enforcement. SB 1070 would divert scarce federal resources away from finding dangerous criminals throughout the United States, focusing instead on detaining and deporting non-violent immigrants in one state: Arizona
1 4
•
SB 1070-type laws could lead to racial profiling. Such laws open the door to intrusive questioning for anyone when there is a suspicion that the individual may be here without authorization. While most U.S. citizens do not carry their passports, lack of such documentation could subject them to lengthy questioning, and possibly arrest or detention, if they cannot persuade an officer that they are in the U.S. legally. In particular, critics fear that persons who are Hispanic or dark-skinned, who have accents, or otherwise appear “different” are more likely to face racial profiling given the demographics of unauthorized immigration.
•
SB 1070-type laws would result in costly litigation for states. So far, seven lawsuits have been filed to stop implementation of SB 1070 in Arizona, and the costs are yet to be seen. Other states and localities that passed anti-immigrant legislation and ordinances—such as Fremont, Nebraska; Farmers Branch, Texas; and Hazleton, Pennsylvania—have been caught up in costly litigation to defend their laws.
•
While people are genuinely frustrated over the failure of the federal government to fix our broken immigration system, creating a patchwork of potentially unconstitutional and confusing laws is not an answer. A recent poll conducted by Politico shows that people don’t necessarily want states to jump into the fray as much as they want solutions. While 23% of respondents supported states taking action, 61% supported passing comprehensive immigration reform through Congress. A CNN poll showed that while 55% of Americans favored SB 1070, an astounding 81% supported a plan that would legalize unauthorized immigrants if they had a job and paid back taxes.
1 5
WHY DON’T UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS JUST COME LEGALLY?
Many Americans wonder why unauthorized immigrants do not come to the U.S. legally or simply “get in line” for permanent residency (a “green card”). In fact, the legal immigration system is grossly out of date and has not kept up with the labor demands of our economy. Our immigration laws have not been updated in 20 years, and there are only limited avenues available for legal immigration. The overly restrictive legal limits on green cards mean that virtually all unauthorized immigrants have no alternative for legal entry into the U.S.
THERE ARE VERY FEW WAYS TO COME TO THE U.S. LEGALLY
•
There is no “line” for the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants: Accusations that an estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants—about 5% of the U.S. workforce—should simply “get in line” miss the point: There is no “line” and the “regular channels” do not include them.
•
Unauthorized immigrants would rather come legally: Many Americans think that unauthorized immigrants want to be unauthorized. However, opinion surveys of unauthorized immigrants indicate that, if given a choice, 98% would rather live and work legally in the U.S. and would do so if they could. But most do not have the necessary family relationships to apply for legal entry, do not qualify as refugees unless they come from a handful of countries experiencing political unrest, and do not work in professions that currently qualify for a green card.
•
Getting a green card is easier said than done: The ways to “come legally” to the U.S. are restricted to certain categories of people.
o
The employment-based immigration system is out of sync with America’s needs: The number of green cards is limited to 5,000 per year for the entire United States for less-skilled workers such as landscapers, hotel workers, and construction workers. This grossly insufficient number of green cards for workers in these types of jobs is the crux of the unauthorized immigration problem in the U.S.
o
Family immigration is highly restricted: U.S. citizens and green-card holders who meet strict eligibility requirements can petition to bring in certain eligible foreign-born family members. However, there are numerical limits on most family categories, and demand is typically higher than the number of available green cards. This results in significant backlogs for most family members hoping to enter the U.S. legally, with immigrants from some countries waiting decades for entry.
o
Refugees: Persons who can prove a “well-founded fear of persecution” may, in some cases, be granted political asylum or refugee status. However, the burden of proof is high and the process is rigorous. An immigrant does not qualify as a refugee because of poverty or difficult economic conditions in his or her home country.
1 6
IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION
Many Americans are concerned that immigrants do not learn English, are living in isolated enclaves, and will not integrate into U.S. society. These are the same fears that Americans have harbored for centuries when confronted by each new wave of immigrants. However, research shows that today’s immigrants are integrating into U.S. society just as the generations of immigrants before them. They, and their children, learn English, buy homes, intermarry, become U.S. citizens, and otherwise become part of the nation’s social fabric.
IMMIGRANTS ARE INTEGRATING JUST AS THEY ALWAYS HAVE
•
Immigrants are learning English: The U.S. Census Bureau found that 91.4% of all people in the United States spoke English “very well” in 2008. In immigrant communities, mastery of English increases dramatically from generation to generation. According to surveys by the Pew Hispanic Center, only 48% of first-generation Latino immigrants report that they speak English “very well,” but this figure rises to 98% in the second generation. Among Latino adults who are third generation or higher, 97% speak English “very well.”
•
More immigrants are taking the oath and becoming U.S. citizens: According to the Office of Immigration Statistics, large and increasing numbers of immigrants are becoming U.S. citizens. The number of naturalizations has grown from an average of 120,000 per year in the 1950s and 1960s to 680,000 per year between 2000 and 2009. Roughly 570,000 immigrants applied for naturalization in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 alone. Many immigrants who applied for citizenship in the summer of 2007, hoping to vote in the November 2008 elections, were not able to do so because their applications had not been processed. However, in 2008, over 1 million persons were naturalized.
•
There is nothing more American than a 30-year mortgage: Homeownership is a key indicator of entry into the American middle class. Studies have shown that rates of homeownership rise among immigrants the longer they are in the country. Research by Dowell Myers, a prominent demographer at the University of Southern California, found that in 2005, Latino immigrants in California who had been in the U.S. for 30 years or more had a 65% homeownership rate, compared to 16% among those who had been here for less than 10 years.
1 7
IMMIGRATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Some commentators argue that immigration contributes to “over-population” in the U.S. and therefore causes more pollution, greater consumption of scarce resources, and more damage to the environment. This argument not only ignores the economic forces that drive immigration, but also misses the fundamental point that “over-population” is not the cause of U.S. environmental woes. Solving our environmental problems isn’t as simple as curbing immigration to the U.S. Ultimately, immigrants are not the problem—the U.S. lifestyle, our systems of production and consumption, and the policies that shape them are. We need real, rational solutions and leadership on environmental issues, not scapegoats.
IMMIGRATION IS NOT BAD FOR THE ENVIROMENT
•
“Over-population” is not what damages the U.S. environment: Levels of environmental destruction and resource consumption are not directly related to population size, even in countries such as the U.S. and those of the European Union (EU) that have similar standards of living. Rather, they are conditioned by a wide range of factors, such as the degree to which a society depends upon polluting and non-renewable fossil fuels; utilizes pollution-reduction technologies; develops systems of mass transit to minimize individual automobile use; uses plastics and other non-biodegradable materials in manufacturing and packaging consumer goods; recycles potentially recyclable materials; and controls agricultural run-off into waterways.
•
A few people can pollute a lot, or a lot of people can pollute a little: According to the World Resources Institute, the United States is home to 30% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet produces 40% more greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide and methane. In fact, U.S. emissions of GHGs on a per capita basis are more than double those of the EU-15. The problem is not the number of people in the U.S.; rather, the problem is the way the U.S. produces goods and consumes resources.
•
Blaming immigrants for climate change suggests that less-developed countries should stay that way: According to those who blame immigrants for our environmental woes, immigrants would ultimately produce less CO2 if they just remained in their less-industrialized (and therefore less-CO2-emitting) home countries. Based on this logic, unauthorized immigration isn’t the problem, increased wealth and international development are.
•
The U.S. isn’t a lifeboat with limited resources that will sink with too many people: When it comes to the global warming crisis, we’ll all sink or swim together.
1 8
SURVIVING IMMIGRATION INTERROGATIONS
Quick Responses to the Toughest Questions
SOLVING UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION:
Q: “What are you going to do about illegal immigration?”
A: Immigration reform must be tough, practical, and smart. It is unacceptable to have 11 million people in our country living outside the legal system, and Americans know we can’t deport 11 million people to solve the problem.
America wins when we face reality and take action on immigration. Realistic solutions require the U.S. to do more than secure the border, crack down on employers who operate outside the law, and pursue smugglers who profit from our broken immigration system. We must address the underlying causes of unauthorized immigration. Moreover, reform won’t work unless we address the 11 million immigrants living here without legal status. We must require them to come forward to legalize their status, pay back taxes, learn English, and pass criminal background checks.
America needs a legal immigration system that enhances our security, strengthens our economy, and benefits our communities. We need a realistic, legal immigration framework that protects U.S. workers while providing needed labor to American businesses. Reasonable limits on family immigration would encourage the unification of families and the building of stable communities. The foundation for this kind of immigration system is strong and sensible enforcement that disentangles immigration from crime and national security threats, and focuses enforcement efforts on weeding out the bad actors in the workplace and our communities.
BORDER CONTROL:
Q: “How will you control the border?”
A: Securing our border is vital for national security, but we can’t deport our way to safety. We must supply adequate manpower and groundbreaking technology to secure the border, but we can’t be lulled into thinking that enforcement alone will control the border. Walls, raids, and billions of dollars spent at the border aren’t stopping unauthorized immigration. The annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased nine-fold, and the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border has grown nearly five-fold, since Fiscal Year (FY) 1992. But the unauthorized population of the United States has tripled in size, from roughly 3.5 million in 1990 to 11 million today. America needs leaders who will move beyond the deportation-only mentality and implement real solutions to secure the border and restore the rule of law. Enacting comprehensive immigration reform and creating legal channels so that immigrants entering our borders do so lawfully will free up the Border Patrol to focus on drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal activity rather than chasing busboys through the desert.
1 9
IMMIGRANTS AND THE ECONOMY:
Q: “Should we pass immigration reform while we’re in an economic downturn?”
A: In this economic downturn, many may argue that immigration reform is not a priority, but reforming our broken immigration system is an important part of our economic recovery. A recent study by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda found that comprehensive immigration reform which includes the legalization of unauthorized immigrants already in the U.S. would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP over a ten-year period, generate billions in additional tax revenue and consumer spending, and support hundreds of thousands of jobs. Currently, many unauthorized immigrants are working in the underground economy, and unscrupulous employers are able to exploit them and create unfair competition by violating labor laws and paying sub-minimal wages. We need to make sure everyone working in the U.S. is working legally, and we need to enforce labor laws against employers who undercut U.S. workers and exploit unauthorized immigrants. Leveling the playing field for both workers and employers will eliminate unfair competition and improve the wages and working conditions of all workers. Putting all immigrant workers in the formal economy will increase wages, tax revenues, and consumption.
IMMIGRANTS AND TAXES:
Q: “Is it true that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes and drain our economy?”
A: As Ben Franklin said, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Like the rest of us, unauthorized immigrants pay taxes on their property and anything they buy. More than half of them have taxes taken out of their paychecks, but because our immigration system is dysfunctional, these taxes are paid under false Social Security numbers. We need a new regimen in which we know who is paying taxes and can ensure that no one is getting a free ride. The only way to do that is to pull unauthorized immigrants out of the shadows and get them on the right side of the law.
Three state-level studies have found that unauthorized immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in benefits. In Iowa, unauthorized immigrants pay an estimated $40 to $62 million in state taxes, while they and their employers contribute an additional $50 million to $77.8 million in federal, Social Security, and Medicare taxes from which they will never benefit. In Oregon, unauthorized immigrants—who are not eligible for any state benefits—pay between $134 million and $187 million in taxes each year. Finally, in Texas, the State Comptroller found that, without unauthorized residents, the gross state product in 2005 would have been $17.7 billion less.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP:
Q: “Wouldn’t eliminating birthright citizenship resolve our immigration problems?”
A: Eliminating birthright citizenship would be unconstitutional, impractical, expensive, complicated, and would not stop unauthorized immigration. It would impose a significant burden on all Americans who would no longer have an easy and inexpensive way to prove their citizenship. All American parents—not just immigrants—would have to prove the citizenship of their children through a cumbersome process. Since children born to unauthorized immigrants would presumably be unauthorized, the size of the unauthorized population would actually increase as a result of the new policy.
2 0
STATE-LEVEL IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION:
Q: “Should my state pass legislation similar to Arizona’s SB 1070?”
A: No. Such laws are not effective at resolving the problems with our broken immigration system. Only the federal government can reform our immigration laws. Laws like SB 1070 are expensive, devote precious law-enforcement resources to questioning immigrants about their status, and divert law-enforcement resources away from investigating serious criminal activity. SB 1070-like laws can also lead to racial profiling and discriminatory behavior. Police already have the ability to arrest immigrants for any crimes they may commit, and they can already cooperate with the federal government to enforce immigration laws.
While people are genuinely frustrated over the failure of the federal government to fix our broken immigration system, creating a patchwork of potentially unconstitutional and confusing laws is not an answer. A recent poll conducted by Politico shows that people don’t necessarily want states to jump into the fray as much as they want solutions. While 23% of respondents supported states taking action, 61% supported passing comprehensive immigration reform through Congress. A CNN poll showed that while 55% of Americans favored SB 1070, an astounding 81% supported a plan that would legalize unauthorized immigrants if they had a job and paid back taxes.
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME:
Q: “Aren’t a lot of immigrants criminals?”
A: Immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born. Americans are justifiably concerned about crime in their neighborhoods, and immigration restrictionists are quick to point the spotlight at cases in which immigrants have committed horrible crimes. Anyone who commits a crime should be punished, but there is ample evidence that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be in prison, and high rates of immigration are not associated with higher rates of crime. In fact, the incarceration rate for native-born men age 18-39 was five times higher than for immigrant men in 2000.
Recent studies in two immigrant-rich states, New Jersey and California, reached similar conclusions. In New Jersey, U.S. citizens are twice as likely to land in prison as either legal or unauthorized immigrants. And in California, foreign-born adults have lower incarceration rates than their native-born counterparts.
IMMIGRANTS AND INTEGRATION:
Q: “Why aren’t new immigrants assimilating like our ancestors did?”
A: Learning English, swearing allegiance, and buying homes—what could be more American? Roughly 92% of all people in the United States spoke English “very well” in 2008. Immigrants know the ticket to success in this country is speaking English, and that’s why sociologists have dubbed America the “language grave-yard.” Large and increasing numbers of immigrants are also becoming U.S. citizens. Roughly 570,000 immigrants applied for naturalization in 2008 alone (in the 1960s the annual average was 120,000). Finally, rates of homeownership—a key indicator of entry into the American middle class—rise among immigrants the longer they are in the country.

8
IMMIGRANTS AND PUBLIC BENEFITS
Many Americans fear that immigrants disproportionately use welfare programs or public benefits. Some believe that immigrants are eligible for special benefits that Americans cannot receive. The fact is that unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for most public benefits and do not use them surreptitiously. Legal immigrants are also restricted from receiving many benefits. Immigrants pay taxes to fund welfare programs, but are not eligible to reap the benefits of many of them.
UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS AREN’T ELIGIBLE FOR PUBLIC BENEFITS
•
Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federal public benefits: This includes income supplements—e.g., Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), health care (Medicaid and Medicare), and food stamps.
•
Legal immigrants face tough restrictions on accessing public benefits: Federal law also imposes harsh restrictions on legal immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. Most documented immigrants cannot receive federal Medicaid, TANF, food stamps, or SSI during their first five years or longer in the U.S., regardless of how much they have worked or paid in taxes.
•
Immigrants use less health care, on average, than U.S. citizens: Low-income immigrants are less likely to receive public benefits than are U.S. citizens. Immigrants do not come to the U.S. to receive public benefits, and once they are here, they do not disproportionately use public benefits. According to a study in the American Journal of Public Health, immigrants do not impose a disproportionate financial burden on the U.S. health care system. The per capita total health care expenditures of immigrants are less than half those of U.S.-born persons, and immigrants are significantly less likely to use the emergency room than are citizens. Further restricting immigrants’ access to benefits is not a solution to our immigration problems. In fact, the more people paying into a healthcare system, especially healthier working-age people, the more the costs are spread out.
BUT THEY PAY ANYWAY
•
Immigrants pay taxes into the system that funds public services: Even the majority of unauthorized immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. And all immigrants pay sales taxes and property taxes. Many studies have found that immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. The National Research Council estimated in 1997 that “the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits.” Many state-level studies have also found that immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take out.
9
UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS AND TAXES
As the debate over unauthorized immigration continues to rage, some pundits and policymakers are claiming that unauthorized immigrants do not pay taxes and rely heavily on government benefits. Neither of these claims is supported by the facts. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized men have workforce participation rates that are higher than other workers, and all unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for most government services, but pay taxes as workers, consumers, and residents.
MANY PAY BUT DON’T COLLECT
•
Like the rest of us, unauthorized immigrants pay taxes: Between one-half to three-quarters of unauthorized immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. All unauthorized immigrants pay sales taxes (when they buy anything at a store, for instance) and property taxes (even if they rent housing).
•
Unauthorized immigrants pay into Social Security, but do not collect: The Social Security Administration (SSA) has concluded that unauthorized immigrants “account for a major portion” of the billions of dollars paid into the Social Security system under names or Social Security numbers that don’t match SSA records; payments from which immigrants cannot benefit while unauthorized. As of October 2005, the reported earnings on which these payments are based—which are tracked through the SSA’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF)—totaled $520 billion.
STATE STUDIES ANALYZE UNAUTHORIZED TAX CONTRIBUTIONS
•
TEXAS: A 2006 study by the Texas State Comptroller found that “the absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received.”
•
OREGON: A 2007 study by the Oregon Center for Public Policy estimated that unauthorized immigrants in Oregon pay state income, excise, and property taxes, as well as federal Social Security and Medicare taxes, which “total about $134 million to $187 million annually.” In addition, “taxes paid by Oregon employers on behalf of undocumented workers total about $97 million to $136 million annually.” As the report goes on to note, unauthorized workers are ineligible for the Oregon Health Plan, food stamps, and temporary cash assistance.
•
IOWA: A 2007 report from the Iowa Policy Project concluded that “undocumented immigrants pay an estimated aggregate amount of $40 million to $62 million in state taxes each year.” Moreover, “undocumented immigrants working on the books…and their employers also contribute annually an estimated $50 million to $77.8 million in federal Social Security and Medicare taxes from which they will never benefit. Rather than draining state resources, undocumented immigrants are in some cases subsidizing services that only documented residents can access.”
1 0
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME
The persistent myth that immigrants are more prone to criminality than the native-born continues to circulate viciously among politicians, commentators, and the public despite a century’s worth of contrary evidence that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be in prison, and that high rates of immigration are not associated with higher crime rates.
IMMIGRANTS HAVE LOWER CRIME RATES THAN THE NATIVE-BORN
Immigrants are five times less likely to be in prison than the native-born: A 2007 study by University of California-Irvine sociologist Rubén G. Rumbaut found that the 3.5% incarceration rate for native-born men ages 18-39 was five times higher than the 0.7% rate for immigrant men in 2000. The lower incarceration rates of immigrants compared to natives “holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”
Unauthorized immigration is NOT associated with higher crime rates: Although the unauthorized immigrant population doubled from 1994 to 2005, the violent crime rate in the United States declined by 34.2 % and the property crime rate fell by 26.4% during the same period. Border cities and other cities with large immigrant populations also experienced decreasing crime rates.
HIGHER IMMIGRATION RATES = LOWER CRIME RATES
•
Crime is lowest in the states with the most immigrants: According to a 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation, crime rates are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates. From 1999 to 2006, the total crime rate declined 13.6% in the 19 highest-immigration states, compared to a 7.1% decline in the other 32 states. In 2006, the 10 “high influx” states—those with the most dramatic, recent increases in immigration—had the lowest rates of violent crime and total crime.
o
New Jersey: An analysis of data from the New Jersey Department of Corrections and U.S. Census Bureau by New Jersey’s Star-Ledger in April 2008 found that “U.S. citizens are twice as likely to land in New Jersey’s prisons as legal and illegal immigrants.” In fact, “non-U.S. citizens make up 10% of the state’s overall population, but just 5% of the inmates in prison.”
o
California: Foreign-born adults in California have lower incarceration rates than their native-born counterparts. According to a June 2008 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, “the incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared to 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults. The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population, a proportion that has remained fairly constant since 1990.”
•
The argument that unauthorized immigrants are “criminals” because they are “illegal” is highly misleading. “Unlawful presence” in the United States (such as overstaying a visa) is a civil violation of immigration law, not a criminal violation. “Entry Without Inspection” (entering the United States without authorization) is a misdemeanor. More importantly, neither of these offenses constitutes a threat to public safety—unlike crimes such as murder, assault, and robbery, all of which immigrants are much less likely to commit than natives.
1 1
LOCAL POLICE AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
Recently there has been increased public attention on the role of state and local police agencies in immigration enforcement. Currently, about 67 localities have entered into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the 287(g) program. The 287(g) program refers to the section of federal law created in 1996 that establishes a program for local police to be trained by ICE to enforce immigration law. Approximately 1,075 police and correctional officers had been trained as of January 2010. Even when local police officers are not deputized to perform immigration enforcement, ICE does work through the criminal justice system to identify deportable noncitizens through programs such as the Criminal Alien Program (CAP) and the Secure Communities program. Critics argue that these policies which involve local police in the enforcement of federal immigration law lead to increased discrimination and racial profiling, stretch the limited resources of law enforcement, and erode—rather than promote—trust between immigrant communities and the police, thus endangering public safety.
LOCAL COPS DON’T WANT TO BE IMMIGRATION OFFICERS
•
There is strong and broad-based opposition to local police enforcement of immigration laws: Advocates for victims of domestic abuse, faith-based organizations, immigrant rights groups, elected officials, and law-enforcement officials all agree that state and local police should not be enforcing federal immigration laws.
•
When police enforce immigration laws, or are perceived to be enforcing immigration laws, public safety decreases: When police are turned into immigration agents, immigrants (legal and unauthorized) who are victims or witnesses of crime are fearful of cooperating with the police. This puts entire communities at risk.
•
When police enforce immigration laws, other crimes go uninvestigated: The experience of Maricopa County, Arizona, has shown that when police are highly invested in enforcing immigration laws, other crimes do not receive the attention they deserve, and response times to emergency 911 calls increase.
•
Enforcing immigration law is costly: The federal government does not cover the costs incurred by localities that enforce immigration laws. After only three months, Maricopa County had a deficit of over $1 million. The Prince William County, Virginia, jail spent nearly $800,000 more than expected to hold suspected unauthorized immigrants. This money could be better spent on public safety.
•
When local police enforce immigration law it is likely to lead to racial profiling, discrimination, and costly litigation: When local law enforcement gets involved in immigration enforcement, particularly without proper training and oversight, people are often targeted on the basis of their accent or appearance. This can lead to serious violations of the civil rights of legal permanent residents and even U.S. citizens.
1 2
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Anti-immigrant groups and legislators have persisted in their attempts to restrict or repeal birthright citizenship in State Houses and the U.S. Congress. Several bills have been introduced that would deny U.S. citizenship to children whose parents are in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution—the cornerstone of American civil rights—affirms that, with very few exceptions, all persons born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Following the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, the Fourteenth Amendment restated the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship, which had been temporarily erased by the Supreme Court’s “Dred Scott” decision denying birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of slaves. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld birthright citizenship over the years.
ELIMINATING BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, IMPRACTICAL, EXPENSIVE, COMPLICATED, AND WOULD NOT STOP UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship would impose a significant burden on all Americans, who would no longer have an easy and inexpensive way to prove their citizenship. If simply being born in the U.S. and having a U.S. birth certificate were not proof of citizenship, Americans would have to navigate complex laws to prove their citizenship. Other than a birth certificate, most Americans do not have government documents that establish U.S. citizenship.
•
All American parents—not just immigrants—would have to prove the citizenship of their children through a cumbersome process. Some Americans would have to prove they derive U.S. citizenship through one or both of their parents—a process that can be difficult for even experienced immigration attorneys. In some cases, whether one’s parents were married or unmarried at the time of one’s birth makes a difference in determining citizenship. Moreover, the gender of the U.S.-citizen parent can affect the determination.
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship would not solve the problem of unauthorized immigration. Since children born to unauthorized immigrants would presumably be unauthorized, the size of the unauthorized population would actually increase as a result of the new policy. While some children could acquire the citizenship of their parents, others would be left with no citizenship or nationality, leaving them stateless.
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship is a distraction that moves us away from fixing the real problems with our broken immigration system. Immigrants come to the U.S. to work, to reunite with their families, or to flee persecution. Denying birthright citizenship will not discourage unauthorized immigrants from coming to the U.S., and it will not encourage those already here to leave.

8
IMMIGRANTS AND PUBLIC BENEFITS
Many Americans fear that immigrants disproportionately use welfare programs or public benefits. Some believe that immigrants are eligible for special benefits that Americans cannot receive. The fact is that unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for most public benefits and do not use them surreptitiously. Legal immigrants are also restricted from receiving many benefits. Immigrants pay taxes to fund welfare programs, but are not eligible to reap the benefits of many of them.
UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS AREN’T ELIGIBLE FOR PUBLIC BENEFITS
•
Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federal public benefits: This includes income supplements—e.g., Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), health care (Medicaid and Medicare), and food stamps.
•
Legal immigrants face tough restrictions on accessing public benefits: Federal law also imposes harsh restrictions on legal immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. Most documented immigrants cannot receive federal Medicaid, TANF, food stamps, or SSI during their first five years or longer in the U.S., regardless of how much they have worked or paid in taxes.
•
Immigrants use less health care, on average, than U.S. citizens: Low-income immigrants are less likely to receive public benefits than are U.S. citizens. Immigrants do not come to the U.S. to receive public benefits, and once they are here, they do not disproportionately use public benefits. According to a study in the American Journal of Public Health, immigrants do not impose a disproportionate financial burden on the U.S. health care system. The per capita total health care expenditures of immigrants are less than half those of U.S.-born persons, and immigrants are significantly less likely to use the emergency room than are citizens. Further restricting immigrants’ access to benefits is not a solution to our immigration problems. In fact, the more people paying into a healthcare system, especially healthier working-age people, the more the costs are spread out.
BUT THEY PAY ANYWAY
•
Immigrants pay taxes into the system that funds public services: Even the majority of unauthorized immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. And all immigrants pay sales taxes and property taxes. Many studies have found that immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. The National Research Council estimated in 1997 that “the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits.” Many state-level studies have also found that immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take out.
9
UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS AND TAXES
As the debate over unauthorized immigration continues to rage, some pundits and policymakers are claiming that unauthorized immigrants do not pay taxes and rely heavily on government benefits. Neither of these claims is supported by the facts. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized men have workforce participation rates that are higher than other workers, and all unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for most government services, but pay taxes as workers, consumers, and residents.
MANY PAY BUT DON’T COLLECT
•
Like the rest of us, unauthorized immigrants pay taxes: Between one-half to three-quarters of unauthorized immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. All unauthorized immigrants pay sales taxes (when they buy anything at a store, for instance) and property taxes (even if they rent housing).
•
Unauthorized immigrants pay into Social Security, but do not collect: The Social Security Administration (SSA) has concluded that unauthorized immigrants “account for a major portion” of the billions of dollars paid into the Social Security system under names or Social Security numbers that don’t match SSA records; payments from which immigrants cannot benefit while unauthorized. As of October 2005, the reported earnings on which these payments are based—which are tracked through the SSA’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF)—totaled $520 billion.
STATE STUDIES ANALYZE UNAUTHORIZED TAX CONTRIBUTIONS
•
TEXAS: A 2006 study by the Texas State Comptroller found that “the absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received.”
•
OREGON: A 2007 study by the Oregon Center for Public Policy estimated that unauthorized immigrants in Oregon pay state income, excise, and property taxes, as well as federal Social Security and Medicare taxes, which “total about $134 million to $187 million annually.” In addition, “taxes paid by Oregon employers on behalf of undocumented workers total about $97 million to $136 million annually.” As the report goes on to note, unauthorized workers are ineligible for the Oregon Health Plan, food stamps, and temporary cash assistance.
•
IOWA: A 2007 report from the Iowa Policy Project concluded that “undocumented immigrants pay an estimated aggregate amount of $40 million to $62 million in state taxes each year.” Moreover, “undocumented immigrants working on the books…and their employers also contribute annually an estimated $50 million to $77.8 million in federal Social Security and Medicare taxes from which they will never benefit. Rather than draining state resources, undocumented immigrants are in some cases subsidizing services that only documented residents can access.”
1 0
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME
The persistent myth that immigrants are more prone to criminality than the native-born continues to circulate viciously among politicians, commentators, and the public despite a century’s worth of contrary evidence that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be in prison, and that high rates of immigration are not associated with higher crime rates.
IMMIGRANTS HAVE LOWER CRIME RATES THAN THE NATIVE-BORN
Immigrants are five times less likely to be in prison than the native-born: A 2007 study by University of California-Irvine sociologist Rubén G. Rumbaut found that the 3.5% incarceration rate for native-born men ages 18-39 was five times higher than the 0.7% rate for immigrant men in 2000. The lower incarceration rates of immigrants compared to natives “holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”
Unauthorized immigration is NOT associated with higher crime rates: Although the unauthorized immigrant population doubled from 1994 to 2005, the violent crime rate in the United States declined by 34.2 % and the property crime rate fell by 26.4% during the same period. Border cities and other cities with large immigrant populations also experienced decreasing crime rates.
HIGHER IMMIGRATION RATES = LOWER CRIME RATES
•
Crime is lowest in the states with the most immigrants: According to a 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation, crime rates are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates. From 1999 to 2006, the total crime rate declined 13.6% in the 19 highest-immigration states, compared to a 7.1% decline in the other 32 states. In 2006, the 10 “high influx” states—those with the most dramatic, recent increases in immigration—had the lowest rates of violent crime and total crime.
o
New Jersey: An analysis of data from the New Jersey Department of Corrections and U.S. Census Bureau by New Jersey’s Star-Ledger in April 2008 found that “U.S. citizens are twice as likely to land in New Jersey’s prisons as legal and illegal immigrants.” In fact, “non-U.S. citizens make up 10% of the state’s overall population, but just 5% of the inmates in prison.”
o
California: Foreign-born adults in California have lower incarceration rates than their native-born counterparts. According to a June 2008 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, “the incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared to 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults. The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population, a proportion that has remained fairly constant since 1990.”
•
The argument that unauthorized immigrants are “criminals” because they are “illegal” is highly misleading. “Unlawful presence” in the United States (such as overstaying a visa) is a civil violation of immigration law, not a criminal violation. “Entry Without Inspection” (entering the United States without authorization) is a misdemeanor. More importantly, neither of these offenses constitutes a threat to public safety—unlike crimes such as murder, assault, and robbery, all of which immigrants are much less likely to commit than natives.
1 1
LOCAL POLICE AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
Recently there has been increased public attention on the role of state and local police agencies in immigration enforcement. Currently, about 67 localities have entered into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the 287(g) program. The 287(g) program refers to the section of federal law created in 1996 that establishes a program for local police to be trained by ICE to enforce immigration law. Approximately 1,075 police and correctional officers had been trained as of January 2010. Even when local police officers are not deputized to perform immigration enforcement, ICE does work through the criminal justice system to identify deportable noncitizens through programs such as the Criminal Alien Program (CAP) and the Secure Communities program. Critics argue that these policies which involve local police in the enforcement of federal immigration law lead to increased discrimination and racial profiling, stretch the limited resources of law enforcement, and erode—rather than promote—trust between immigrant communities and the police, thus endangering public safety.
LOCAL COPS DON’T WANT TO BE IMMIGRATION OFFICERS
•
There is strong and broad-based opposition to local police enforcement of immigration laws: Advocates for victims of domestic abuse, faith-based organizations, immigrant rights groups, elected officials, and law-enforcement officials all agree that state and local police should not be enforcing federal immigration laws.
•
When police enforce immigration laws, or are perceived to be enforcing immigration laws, public safety decreases: When police are turned into immigration agents, immigrants (legal and unauthorized) who are victims or witnesses of crime are fearful of cooperating with the police. This puts entire communities at risk.
•
When police enforce immigration laws, other crimes go uninvestigated: The experience of Maricopa County, Arizona, has shown that when police are highly invested in enforcing immigration laws, other crimes do not receive the attention they deserve, and response times to emergency 911 calls increase.
•
Enforcing immigration law is costly: The federal government does not cover the costs incurred by localities that enforce immigration laws. After only three months, Maricopa County had a deficit of over $1 million. The Prince William County, Virginia, jail spent nearly $800,000 more than expected to hold suspected unauthorized immigrants. This money could be better spent on public safety.
•
When local police enforce immigration law it is likely to lead to racial profiling, discrimination, and costly litigation: When local law enforcement gets involved in immigration enforcement, particularly without proper training and oversight, people are often targeted on the basis of their accent or appearance. This can lead to serious violations of the civil rights of legal permanent residents and even U.S. citizens.
1 2
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Anti-immigrant groups and legislators have persisted in their attempts to restrict or repeal birthright citizenship in State Houses and the U.S. Congress. Several bills have been introduced that would deny U.S. citizenship to children whose parents are in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution—the cornerstone of American civil rights—affirms that, with very few exceptions, all persons born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Following the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, the Fourteenth Amendment restated the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship, which had been temporarily erased by the Supreme Court’s “Dred Scott” decision denying birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of slaves. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld birthright citizenship over the years.
ELIMINATING BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, IMPRACTICAL, EXPENSIVE, COMPLICATED, AND WOULD NOT STOP UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship would impose a significant burden on all Americans, who would no longer have an easy and inexpensive way to prove their citizenship. If simply being born in the U.S. and having a U.S. birth certificate were not proof of citizenship, Americans would have to navigate complex laws to prove their citizenship. Other than a birth certificate, most Americans do not have government documents that establish U.S. citizenship.
•
All American parents—not just immigrants—would have to prove the citizenship of their children through a cumbersome process. Some Americans would have to prove they derive U.S. citizenship through one or both of their parents—a process that can be difficult for even experienced immigration attorneys. In some cases, whether one’s parents were married or unmarried at the time of one’s birth makes a difference in determining citizenship. Moreover, the gender of the U.S.-citizen parent can affect the determination.
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship would not solve the problem of unauthorized immigration. Since children born to unauthorized immigrants would presumably be unauthorized, the size of the unauthorized population would actually increase as a result of the new policy. While some children could acquire the citizenship of their parents, others would be left with no citizenship or nationality, leaving them stateless.
•
Eliminating birthright citizenship is a distraction that moves us away from fixing the real problems with our broken immigration system. Immigrants come to the U.S. to work, to reunite with their families, or to flee persecution. Denying birthright citizenship will not discourage unauthorized immigrants from coming to the U.S., and it will not encourage those already here to leave.

Vote For Ruth McClung in the Arizona 7th district US House race !!!

Vote out Leftist-liberal-Progressive Raul Grijalva !!!

While at the University of Arizona he was a member of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA).

Political positions

Grijalva co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is widely considered one of the most liberal members of Congress—in 2008, he was among 12 members rated by National Journal as tied for most liberal overall.

Leftist, liberal, and Progressive activist groups routinely give him high marks for his voting record. For the first session of the 111th Congress, Grijalva received a 100 percent score from Americans for Democratic Action, Peace Action, the League of Conservation Voters, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and several other notable left-wing-liberal-Progressive groups.

He has been a vocal opponent of the recently enacted Arizona law that mandates police checks of citizenship documentation for anyone subjected to a legitimate law enforcement stop, detention or arrest as long as the officer does not consider race, color or national origin during the stop, detention or arrest.

Shortly after the measure was signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Grijalva called on legal, political, activist and business groups not to hold their conventions or conferences in the state, a position he says has been misconstrued as a call for a general boycott of the state economy.

He has criticized the recently announced deployment of 1,200 National Guard units to the U.S.-Mexico border as “political symbolism” that he believes will not adequately address the issues of immigration and border security.

Boycotting Arizona

Grijalva suggested that civic, religious, labor, Latino, organizations of color refrain from using Arizona as a convention site, to refrain from spending their dollars in the state of Arizona until Arizona repeals its anti-illegal-alien immigration law.
Abortion

Grijalva has a pro-choice voting record and voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He was strongly critical of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which sought to place limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Gun control

Grijalva supports increasing restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns and increasing enforcement of existing restrictions on gun purchase and possession. He was one of the 67 co-sponsors of the 2007 Assault Weapons Ban, HR 1022. Grijalva has an F rating from the NRA.

Health care

Grijalva supported and voted for Obamacare !!!

As co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Grijalva was a prominent supporter of a public option throughout the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The House-approved Affordable Health Care for America Act included a public option—however, the Senate version did not include a similar provision, and it was ultimately not a part of the final reform package.

Grijalva has a long history in community health activism as an early supporter of Tucson’s El Rio Community Health Center. He supports single-payer health care, but voted in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act because he felt it was a major improvement over the status quo.
Immigration

Grijalva supports the DREAM Act and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act (CIR ASAP) and has recently come to greater prominence because of his role in promoting immigration reform,

aka, “Amnesty”

He has opposed the expansion of a border fence, citing cost effectiveness concerns and potential damage to sensitive wildlife habitats. The CIR ASAP bill includes his Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009, which prioritizes remote cameras and other border monitoring techniques with a relatively slight environmental impact.

The pro-illegal-alien-invasion-crime-fraud-menace-amnesty group, Immigrant Justice Advocacy Campaign gave him a 100 percent score for the first session of the 111th Congress. In previous years he voted against H.R. 4437 and the the Secure Fence Act, and opposed Arizona Proposition 200 in 2004.
Supposed 2004 Voting Irregularities:
Grijalva Calls for the United Nations to Monitor US Elections !!!

Concerned about allegations of voting irregularities purportedly leading to disenfranchisement, in 2004 Grijalva joined Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and several other House Democrats in requesting that the United Nations observe and certify elections in the United States.

After the General Election, Grijalva was one of 31 Representatives who voted in the House not to count the electoral votes from Ohio on grounds of unacceptable irregularities.

Hey, I read a lot of WordPress blogs on a frequent basis and numerous blogs don’t have any real material however, I simply desired to make a speedy comment to express EXCELLENT weblog! I’ll be stopping by regularly now. Keep up the great job! :-)

That’s funny, this site has really been an eye opener. Are there any forums that you recommend I join ?

Hello everyone! :) I’m wondering if somebody may possibly support me out! Really I need to watch this unique page upon my personal brand-new iPad, nevertheless it doesn’t present up appropriately, So I used to be asking yourself if someone can propose me any optimum solution? I don’t know but should I try and locate out an update for my software program plan or anything at all else? I realize this is anything kinda off the subject, but please replace me and thanks in advance for that aid! Sophie :)

I have really enjoyied reading your well written article. It looks like you spend a lot of effort and time on your blog. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!

[...] Raw Story [...]