This is the part of the issue that I really don’t understand.
As Der Trihs pointed out, undocumented workers do pay taxes - sales tax being the most obvious, but also property tax in the form of rent paid to the landlord, vehicle taxes lest they get pulled over for driving on expired plates, and so on.
Income tax is obviously a huge grey area, but in an area with no state income tax (e.g. Texas) most of the social services are paid for by local taxes - property tax, sales tax, vehicle registration, etc. - which the undocumented workers do pay.
So when people cry and hue over the illegals not paying taxes, they’re only talking about income tax, right?
I’ll admit, it’s a big chunk of change, but IMHO it’s not nearly the dire situation that people make it out to be.
Unless I’m mistaken, in which case, please correct me!
With US birthrates declining and baby boomers reaching retirement age, aren’t we going to need an influx of workers from somewhere to keep the economy going?
It seems to me that if we’re going to clamp down on illegal immigration from Mexico, then we need to make legal immigration from Mexico a whole hell of a lot easier.
I’m curious about how much the illegals pay in income taxes. If I were an illegal worker using a fake SSN, I’d claim as many exemptions as I could so that nothing would be withheld for my income taxes, since withholding for those taxes is voluntary (even though most people who aren’t illegals prefer to be on a pay as you go basis and opt to have their income taxes withheld). That is, the employer bears no risk and breaks no laws if its employee(s) do not have enough withheld from their paychecks for their Federal income taxes. FICA and Medicare tax are deducted from wages on a percentage of income basis and are deducted from wages no matter what. If I was an illegal working here on a fake SSN I wouldn’t sweat the IRS or my 1040 income taxes, but I don’t have any idea if that is a common attitude among illegals or not.
Sure, we need 'em, Spoke, but we want 'em to come here legally, and not just jump the border or overstay their visas at their convenience.
On the other hand, Nava raises the very real objection that INS is extremely inefficient and makes legal immigration much more difficult than it has to be.
Don’t forget that lower-class citizens have to compete with illegals for work, for education, for medical care, and for public assistance in general. Every time the government grants assistance to illegals, it generates resentment among poor and working class citizens. Dismissing their resentment as mere racism is both callous and closed-minded.
And for once, can we please not hear that BS about how illegals take work that Americans won’t do? There are plenty of citizens who’ll do construction and agricultural work, they just can’t afford to compete with illegals who’ll work for one half or one third of what an American needs to meet basic living expenses.
An illegal immigrant’s basic cost of living is the same as a citizen’s plus certain possible extras (e.g., debt owed a coyote). So why are they willing to work for less?
We have a fair amount of Mexican immigrants around here. (NC) I have worked with several on construction jobs. From what I gather, most of them cram as many into an apartment as they can to save money. Often these apartments are the cheapest and nastiest around. Migrant workers have it worse. I strongly suspect their cost of living is much below average.
http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive_Index/In_the_Strawberry_Fields.html
*The strawberry has long been known to migrants as la fruta del Diablo – the fruit of the devil. Picking strawberries is some of the lowest-paid, most difficult, and therefore least desirable farmwork in California. * …
*At the height of the season, when berries are plentiful and growers pay a piece-rate of $1.25 a box, the fastest workers can earn more than $150 a day. *
True, that’s the fastest workers. But it’s the fastest worklers in the lowest paid field of migrant farm workers. Note that many work a 6 day week, that’s $900/wk. That ain;t bad. (Of course, the work is very hard).
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*They are refusing to work for less than $15 an hour, more than double the California minimum wage of $6.75… Several other day laborer sites have set minimum wages of $8 or $10, but the rate in Agoura Hills is believed to be the highest in the nation.
Occasionally, potential employers balk at the idea of paying workers — frequently illegal immigrants who don’t speak English — so much money. But many employers, laborers say, agree to the fee.*
Don’t get me wrong- it’s damn hard work. But they are (usually) getting fair wages for it.
I guess the thing that bothers me so much about it is that the US government seems to be turning a blind eye to the Mexican illegal immigrants, while deny visas to people from other countries who have jobs waiting on them. I am going to use hockey as an example, because it is an area I have some limited knowledge of. Last season, late in the season, we had a player who had to quit playing because he’d gotten three concussions in a relatively short span of time. (These are young players - our coach wants them to have a functioning brain when their hockey career is over.) Coach was interested in signing another Canadian player who had been recommended, but couldn’t get a visa for him - because there are only a certain number of visas for hockey players issued each year. I don’t think that’s a real good way to run things - turn down someone who has a legit job waiting, but “wink wink nod nod” at illegals coming over the other border.
As for Mexicans working in construction…I worked construction for a time for an outfit that had hired a mostly Mexican masonry subcontactor. The first problem was the language - even if they spoke English, the would pretend they didn’t so it was very difficult to get mistakes corrected. Did I mention mistakes? I was hired as a finishing helper - mirrors, grab rails, trim, etc. When we went into the bathrooms to install the mirrors, the super nearly had a heart attact. The walls were so off level we couldn’t install the mirrors level, because the place would have looked like a fun house. So employers may be getting cheap labor, but in some cases they are getting exactly what they pay for.
And I won’t go into having a guy run off another job site for calling me a “puta”… He didn’t realize I knew what the word meant, and decided to be cute in front of a bunch of his buddies in the elevator…
Nah, not really. The unemployment rate in the US is currently 4.6. It’s pretty much exactly where the fed wants it to be. Lower, even. Every citizen can find a job that really wants one (it may not be perfect, but hey, it’s a job. I even got two! That kinda sucks but it’s a different thread), and if the employment rate was any lower inflation would be too high due to wage pressures on employers. The fed tries to keep it around 5%. You just have to think about that number to realize that American citizens are getting the better jobs, but low unemployment is creating a labor vacuum which is filled by unskilled Mexican workers. Because they’re not citizens, they usually occupy the menial and manual labor niches.
Second, we haven’t touched on another facet of this issue that politicians (especially in an election year) love to rail about. Hide your children… it’s… Terrorism! Oh my! Now, I think any foreign terrorists are more likely to cross the Canadian border than swim across the Rio Grande, but it’s still used as an argument to tighten security along our southern border. Especially that idiotic “let’s build a wall” idea.
I’d still like the main focus of this thread to be about the economic issues, but I think we should at least touch on the security aspects as well.
Implying citizens could live at a lower cost, if they were willing to be satisfied with those living conditions.
You know, after the Civil War, the Republican Party billed itself as the party of the “free, white working man” and was dedicated to keeping blacks out of the West and Midwest – for fear that blacks, being paid significantly less than white workers, would depress the wages of the latter. No one seems to have seriously questioned the assumption that blacks always would, and should, accept lower pay than whites.
Well, the illegals are willing. Two of the guys I work with come from Chiapas. Have you ever seen Chiapas? They were raised in a hut housing nine where the only electrical power came from a single extension cord hanging from the ceiling. The brothers grew up, went to America looking for jobs (they sure as hell weren’t going to find them in Chiapas) and ended up in Brunswick, GA. Sure, the two live with seven other Mexicans in a ratty ass one bedroom apartment; but they’re from Chiapas. They’re thinking, “Indoor plumbing! We’re living large.”
Save your snide commens for the Pit, Monkey. I clearly read what you said. I also clearly made a factual comment about it. You have problems with fact, then that’s your problem, not mine.
No, you didn’t say anything snide in that posting. I just find it ridiculous that you’re asserting something that you obviously know is not the case. That does not excuse my comment, though, about snide. For that, I’m sorry.