Without immigrants, we simply wouldn’t have the people we need to do the jobs we want done.
Illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes. They use up an enormous amount of government-subsidized unemployment and medical coverage. They are lawbreakers. They take our jobs. That’s the image. Is it true? Well, let’s run the numbers.
As Tony Snow recently pointed out, 66 percent of illegal immigrants pay social security, 62 percent pay income taxes. How do they do it? They use false social security numbers. That means illegal aliens are contributing to a system that will never give them back a dime of the money they put in.
And it’s a lot of dimes. In 2003, the Social Security Administration reported that it had accumulated 374 billion dollars in funds from unmatched numbers, 40 billion dollars from 1990 to 2000 alone.
Most illegal immigrants are men who have left their families behind in order to build up money here and send it back to their wives and children. As a result, fewer than 10% of illegals have children in the public school system, while only 5% receive unemployment or food stamps.
True, nearly 40% of illegals don’t pay income tax, but that really doesn’t make them much different from most Americans. As Bruce Bartlett and Thomas Sowell frequently point out, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 34 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent pay 54 percent, the top 10 percent pay 66 percent, and this despite the fact that the top 10 percent only earn 43 percent of the money.
So, given that the top quarter of taxpayers pay 84 percent of all taxes, it follows that seventy-five percent of Americans pay just sixteen percent. In fact, the bottom fifty percent of Americans pay just 4 percent of income taxes, although they make 14 percent of the money. Indeed, the Earned Income Tax Credit actually gives the bottom 30 percent of workers a negative tax rate – that is, they pay no income tax but get a "refund" from the government anyway.
So, illegals pay into the system just as naturalized Americans do, but with one difference: unlike Americans, illegals will never receive a tax refund or a social security check.
But aren’t illegals criminals? Well, as Linda Chavez points out, entering the country without proper papers is a misdemeanor civil offense. Similar civil violations are committed by people who don’t put the lids on their trash cans tightly enough or don’t keep the weeds in their yards properly cut.
And, as Snow points out, illegals actually commit less crime than economically comparable Americans. The crime rates along the border are lower than in comparably sized non-border cities. Indeed, California saw its crime rate halve while its Hispanic population more than doubled.
But illegals take jobs from decent Americans! In fact, one Harvard study shows that wage-earner jobs were depressed 8 percent by illegals!
True. But consider what we get for that 8 percent. New Orleans, for instance, has become a mecca for illegal workers, who labor in respirators 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and sleep six to ten to a hotel room. They work in houses so mildewed and decayed the rotten stench oozes out into the street. The filth is so overpowering, they need a new pair of shoes for each day’s work.
Many prominent voices insist that illegals cut New Orleans non-Hispanic minorities out of jobs. Local residents should be doing this work!
Well, perhaps they should, but they refuse to come back and do it. How is it that native Louisianians, fortified with government aid checks, can’t afford travel back home? How is it that natives of New Orleans can’t locate the city’s hotels once they get there? The illegals can barely find the state on a map, much less the city, and they certainly aren’t getting government subsidies for travel, yet they manage both quite easily.
So, yes, illegal immigrants are displacing Americans born and bred here. But that’s to be expected. For the last forty years, fewer and fewer Americans have been born and bred here. America citizens have had below-replacement level fertility since 1972.
Fully 70% of America’s population growth since 1995 has been due to immigrants and the families they conceive. If it were not for them, America would face Europe’s future: a rapidly aging, enfeebled population.
Without immigrants, we simply wouldn’t have the people we need to do the jobs we want done. Given all they give to this country, we need to get a new vision of immigrants. Instead of looking at illegals as interlopers, we should view them as the children we never had.
As Tony Snow recently pointed out, 66 percent of illegal immigrants pay social security, 62 percent pay income taxes. Very interesting. I have never heard those numbers before.
Another piece of propaganda from a person who believes that the upper income bracket is paying their fair share. As an example, an upper income bracket person writes off 75% of his total income and pays 40% of 25% of his actual income. An average income person writes off 25% and pays 25% of 75% of his total income. $40% is more than 25%, right? And the brain washing continues. 40% 0f 25% is actually only 10% of the actual total while the average person pays 25% of 75% or nearly 20% of his total in taxes. Isn't about time we did away with all deductions from a person's total income, except a flat equal amount that everyone gets, and then tax all of the rest at a flat percentage? Answer – the rich will never go for it. They'd probably end up paying over twice as much as they pay now. The propaganda phrase is "Adjusted Gross Income", to confuse people into thinking the rich are paying their fair share. The upper income "Adjusted Gross Income" is a whole lot lower percentage of their total income than the "Adjusted Gross Income of the middle income group.
That's a cute, idealistic approach to the topic. But let's be realistic. First of all, there's no solid numbers on even how many illegals are in this country, so percentages of what they're paying, and how that breaks down, are probably pretty tough to come by and may or may not be entirely accurate (in fact, they could just be skewed so that immigrants are viewed in a more positive light, since that's in the best interest of the current administration, about half the Republican party, and the entire Democratic party. Nahhh, couldn't be). But even so, let's use your convoluted logic: The bottom 75% of American's pay no taxes, and illegal immigrants with fake Social Security numbers do. That's interesting. You say the bottom 75% of American's, which includes anyone making under, what, 60k per year? Aren't paying taxes. Yet the illegal Mexican's, who are working at menial, low paying jobs that American's are too lazy to take, are? Hmmm. So basically, for their much-needed services, they are not only being given free welfare, free medical benefits, free education, and the exlusive right to cross the border whenever they feel the whim (all provided by the system that "will never give them back a dime of the money they put in"), but they're also being paid in the upper 25% earnings bracket that actually pays taxes? Ah well, I guess we owe it to them since they have contributed every dime of the 375 billion dollars the Social Security Administration has collected from unmatched numbers over the last 75 years. Because nobody else in that time period has used a false Social Security number, of course (why would they have to? I mean, they're not being picked on and discriminated against like the hard-working Mexican's are). <continued>
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Fertility rates can be addressed as a separate issue. We do not need to accept that folks who gate crash US borders are the proper solution to declining population. While fertility rates historically can present a problem to nations, if detected early enough, it is a problem that can be solved without resorting to illegal immigration. Assimilation presents problems of its own. It would be interesting to compare the numbers presented in the article with costs associated with providing support services to illegal immigrants and with crimes committed by illegal immigrants.