So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Leader blames those people. (job loss, sucking money from economy, rape, drugs, crime)
Base starts to believe. (already did really)
They are the reason for our failure or country declining.
Get state TV (Fox, Breitbart, etc. , and all radio talk shows) to spew propaganda regardless of facts or reason.
Base believes they are the reason for their troubles.
Implement policy that starts rounding them up with declaration from Sessions (Goebbles)
Get Law Enforcement to comply and that is the right thing to do.
Put them in camps in cages (or walls with chain link fences)
Not similar to 1938 at all.
Comparing us now to Nazi Germany is a joke. Please stop.
The comparison has been made and it's legitimate.
We are supposed to learn from our mistakes... not repeat them. The holocaust started with baby steps and mutated into something grotesque. Sarajevo had just hosted the Olympics before bursting into a horrific civil war.
Stop the downward spiral at the outset. Don't wait for shit to hit the fan and be one of those freaking idiots asking, "What happened?"
This is what my wife is yelling at me lately. We are both libs, but I'm getting more conservative on immigration as gang issues get worse here in the NYC metro area.
The child separation situation is horrific, but if I were to commit a crime, I'm sure I'd be separated from my child.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
No, they should be shot on sight.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy as all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excise taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
An even larger boost would come from a full implementation of the executive actions that Obama rolled out for undocumented youths and parents earlier in his term: deportation relief granted to youths who arrived as children without authorization and a similar initiative for parents who are undocumented but have children born in the United States.
Under these policies—which have been obstructed by court challenges—up to 5.2 million undocumented immigrants could be granted relief, and cumulatively contribute “an estimated $805 million a year” in state and local taxes.
Election-season politics aside, ITEP calculates that state coffers have a lot to gain from essentially handing the undocumented green cards: about $2.1 billion annually on top of the current $11.6 billion, based on the most recent data, about half of that from personal income tax withheld, and a third from sales and excise taxes. In other words, if only our immigration system were rationalized to treat these people as what they actually are: permanent residents.
According to ITEP executive director and report author Matt Gardner, most of the additional wage gains would come from “just more people being incorporated into the system and having income tax withheld from their paychecks who aren’t having that income tax withheld right now.” But legalization would also bring a more positive long-term personal ripple effect: They will earn more, with a wage boost of some 10 percent under full legalization.
For many low-wage undocumented workers, Gardner says, “currently undocumented families will earn more once they’re incorporated into the system. That obviously means they’re going to pay more taxes in their income, they’re going to spend more, they’re going to pay more sales taxes on their spending.”
Though they would pay more taxes, it’s estimated that many of the undocumented would willingly get “on the books” if it meant shielding their families from deportation; there’s an immeasurable benefit to keeping families intact instead of tearing them apart through deportation and detention. And they might actually qualify for the benefits they help fund, like earned-income tax credits that help lift low-wage workers out of poverty, and Medicare and Social Security in later years. (Many undocumented workers already pay federal tax through automatic payroll deductions.)
Green cards wouldn’t remedy the inequities endemic to the neoliberal economy, but for the workers cast across borders by globalization, some of the poorest would gain basic recognition of their economic citizenship.
Critics might point out that there’s no total figure for the undocumented population’s fiscal “cost”—how much undocumented immigrants consume in services. With Malthusian vitriol, the Trump camp might argue that migrants are scrounging from “our” public health and social services and filling up schools with their (native-born citizen) kids. Gardner cautions against such a simplistic calculus as an arbitrary and politically squishy exercise: Would an emergency room visit count as an undocumented person’s liability—or is this offset by better health that allows them to stay employed and productive? Do their kids merely take up classroom slots, or could they grow up to obtain careers that enhance society and improve their communities?
Let me take your 5 year old child by force and throw them in a cage without you knowing where they are, then talk to me about abuse, tough guy
People like you are giving America a bad name, you should be ashamed
You have zero empathy, for anyone, and its disgusting
Not true. I have empathy for the taxpayers that have to fund this mess.
HA How about the 20 billion dollars your president wants us to pay for an idiotic wall....after promising he would convince Mexico to foot the bill for 2 years? How about the 2 trillion dollars their tax plan adds to our deficit?
Is this guy for real?
You are a hypocritical mess...
I actually kinda think that spending the money on the wall would be cheaper in the long run than prosecuting thousands upon thousands of people and putting the kids up to stay in warehouses every year.
Really? You think this zero tolerance policy is going to continue on a yearly basis?
I have no idea. Let’s say they remove the zero tolerance- they still have war torn countries and cartels forcing people out of their countries for safety and ending up here. Look at Europe, most of those countries bordering the type of countries have walls/fences/etc. and prosecute & throw people out who try to come in. But it can’t be cheap.
Ma'am, how much do you think we spend on prosecuting these folks currently?
Perhaps we could do a better job of not turning down so many folks at the legal ports of entry? A lot of people who are currently being prosecuted and have had their kids sent to these horrible wallmart cages tried to do it the right way but were not able to get in. If you travelled halfway across the world out of a war torn country only to be told the legal port is full, what would you do? Turn around and go traverse back to your war torn country or do what these folks did?
It looks like they're working on something to keep parents with their children while being detained. Unless they're a threat to the immigrants being detained. Hopefully something will happen soon.
Similarly, we know immigration enforcement is a huge drain on the federal budget, but that’s not the problem of the undocumented so much as it is an issue of irrational priorities, according to reform advocates. Consider the billions spent on enforcement, including checkpoints and electronic surveillance, Border Patrol personnel and weaponry, and private prison contractors commissioned to run dungeonlike detention centers.
Another potential ramification of regularizing the status of over 11 million people is that it would help dismantle a two-tier labor structure that enables exploitation of and discrimination against immigrants. Along with facilitating abuse ofunauthorized workers, the systematic alienation of the “foreign-born” workforce abets the trafficking oftemporary “guest workers” imported by low-wage employers.
If labor standards were more equalized across communities, enforcing the rights of immigrant laborers would help fix the epidemic wage theft that currently acts as a de facto “tax” on low-wage immigrants’ earnings.
In economic terms, the data offers a critical counterpoint to the bigoted assumption that immigrants inherently pose a burden.
“Political leaders have often found it convenient to pretend, or even really strongly claim, that this is a population that is a ‘bad deal for America,’” Gardner says, but now “having this data out there…certainly makes it hard for people to claim that this is a population that doesn’t make any contributions.”
ITEP’s fiscal projections don’t capture the full social landscape of what a more integrated, democratic economy would be—that’s immeasurable. They do show that recognizing people’s rights can often be a good deal for all workers. Yet it also shows the contributions that are happening now, which politicians steadfastly overlook: a social force so entwined with everyday culture in this country that it’s barely noticed…until we realize that in politics, and in life, we can’t imagine America without them.
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy as all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excise taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
An even larger boost would come from a full implementation of the executive actions that Obama rolled out for undocumented youths and parents earlier in his term: deportation relief granted to youths who arrived as children without authorization and a similar initiative for parents who are undocumented but have children born in the United States.
Under these policies—which have been obstructed by court challenges—up to 5.2 million undocumented immigrants could be granted relief, and cumulatively contribute “an estimated $805 million a year” in state and local taxes.
Election-season politics aside, ITEP calculates that state coffers have a lot to gain from essentially handing the undocumented green cards: about $2.1 billion annually on top of the current $11.6 billion, based on the most recent data, about half of that from personal income tax withheld, and a third from sales and excise taxes. In other words, if only our immigration system were rationalized to treat these people as what they actually are: permanent residents.
According to ITEP executive director and report author Matt Gardner, most of the additional wage gains would come from “just more people being incorporated into the system and having income tax withheld from their paychecks who aren’t having that income tax withheld right now.” But legalization would also bring a more positive long-term personal ripple effect: They will earn more, with a wage boost of some 10 percent under full legalization.
For many low-wage undocumented workers, Gardner says, “currently undocumented families will earn more once they’re incorporated into the system. That obviously means they’re going to pay more taxes in their income, they’re going to spend more, they’re going to pay more sales taxes on their spending.”
Though they would pay more taxes, it’s estimated that many of the undocumented would willingly get “on the books” if it meant shielding their families from deportation; there’s an immeasurable benefit to keeping families intact instead of tearing them apart through deportation and detention. And they might actually qualify for the benefits they help fund, like earned-income tax credits that help lift low-wage workers out of poverty, and Medicare and Social Security in later years. (Many undocumented workers already pay federal tax through automatic payroll deductions.)
Green cards wouldn’t remedy the inequities endemic to the neoliberal economy, but for the workers cast across borders by globalization, some of the poorest would gain basic recognition of their economic citizenship.
Critics might point out that there’s no total figure for the undocumented population’s fiscal “cost”—how much undocumented immigrants consume in services. With Malthusian vitriol, the Trump camp might argue that migrants are scrounging from “our” public health and social services and filling up schools with their (native-born citizen) kids. Gardner cautions against such a simplistic calculus as an arbitrary and politically squishy exercise: Would an emergency room visit count as an undocumented person’s liability—or is this offset by better health that allows them to stay employed and productive? Do their kids merely take up classroom slots, or could they grow up to obtain careers that enhance society and improve their communities?
Continued...........
this is the funny part of the unsung argument. undocumented immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take. it's just another lie from the right they will have you believe to mask their inherent racist agenda.
Migrants are not just field workers. They're care givers, nannies, cooks, dishwashers, meat processors, building's trades workers, landscapers, day laborers, janitors, etc. This country's economy would come to a screeching halt if they stopped coming. And please, please let me know when the wealthy white business owner and political donor actually serves time for hiring undocumented workers.
It looks like they're working on something to keep parents with their children while being detained. Unless they're a threat to the immigrants being detained. Hopefully something will happen soon.
Could be as easy as a phone call....but our president, you know......he's a....he's a piece of shit.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy as all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excise taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
An even larger boost would come from a full implementation of the executive actions that Obama rolled out for undocumented youths and parents earlier in his term: deportation relief granted to youths who arrived as children without authorization and a similar initiative for parents who are undocumented but have children born in the United States.
Under these policies—which have been obstructed by court challenges—up to 5.2 million undocumented immigrants could be granted relief, and cumulatively contribute “an estimated $805 million a year” in state and local taxes.
Election-season politics aside, ITEP calculates that state coffers have a lot to gain from essentially handing the undocumented green cards: about $2.1 billion annually on top of the current $11.6 billion, based on the most recent data, about half of that from personal income tax withheld, and a third from sales and excise taxes. In other words, if only our immigration system were rationalized to treat these people as what they actually are: permanent residents.
According to ITEP executive director and report author Matt Gardner, most of the additional wage gains would come from “just more people being incorporated into the system and having income tax withheld from their paychecks who aren’t having that income tax withheld right now.” But legalization would also bring a more positive long-term personal ripple effect: They will earn more, with a wage boost of some 10 percent under full legalization.
For many low-wage undocumented workers, Gardner says, “currently undocumented families will earn more once they’re incorporated into the system. That obviously means they’re going to pay more taxes in their income, they’re going to spend more, they’re going to pay more sales taxes on their spending.”
Though they would pay more taxes, it’s estimated that many of the undocumented would willingly get “on the books” if it meant shielding their families from deportation; there’s an immeasurable benefit to keeping families intact instead of tearing them apart through deportation and detention. And they might actually qualify for the benefits they help fund, like earned-income tax credits that help lift low-wage workers out of poverty, and Medicare and Social Security in later years. (Many undocumented workers already pay federal tax through automatic payroll deductions.)
Green cards wouldn’t remedy the inequities endemic to the neoliberal economy, but for the workers cast across borders by globalization, some of the poorest would gain basic recognition of their economic citizenship.
Critics might point out that there’s no total figure for the undocumented population’s fiscal “cost”—how much undocumented immigrants consume in services. With Malthusian vitriol, the Trump camp might argue that migrants are scrounging from “our” public health and social services and filling up schools with their (native-born citizen) kids. Gardner cautions against such a simplistic calculus as an arbitrary and politically squishy exercise: Would an emergency room visit count as an undocumented person’s liability—or is this offset by better health that allows them to stay employed and productive? Do their kids merely take up classroom slots, or could they grow up to obtain careers that enhance society and improve their communities?
Continued...........
this is the funny part of the unsung argument. undocumented immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take. it's just another lie from the right they will have you believe to mask their inherent racist agenda.
I was going to ask a question about this.
Do we know how many of them get welfare or don't pay certain bills?
If the above isn't a significant cost then I would actually consider to opening out borders and saving billions on enforcing border laws and integrate the people since they are contributing.
President Trump began his campaign assailing immigrants as ruthless lawbreakers who steal American jobs with impunity. To halt them, he has vowed to build a wall along the border with Mexico, hire thousands of new immigration agents, ramp up immigrant detention and subject visa applicants to even more rigorous vetting. His administration has been largely silent, however, about the strongest magnet that has drawn millions of immigrants, legal and not, to the United States for generations: jobs.
American employers continue to assume relatively little risk by hiring undocumented immigrants to perform menial, backbreaking work, often for little pay. Meanwhile, as Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown accelerates, families are being ripped apart, and communities of hard-working immigrants with deep roots in this country are gripped by fear and uncertainty. As long as employers remain off the hook, a border wall and an expanded dragnet can only make temporary dents in the flows of undocumented immigrants.
There was widespread, bipartisan acknowledgment of this reality the last time lawmakers managed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which outlined a carrots-and-sticks approach to reducing the number of undocumented workers in the American labor force. The bill offered a pathway to citizenship to roughly 2.7 million people who had been living in the United States without permission, set in motion an era of tighter controls at the border and made knowingly hiring undocumented people a crime.
Some immigration experts contend that E-Verify sounds like a no-nonsense solution but that it’s essentially a political fig leaf, with so many significant flaws and loopholes that it allows employers to continue to knowingly hire undocumented workers with few repercussions.
It looks like they're working on something to keep parents with their children while being detained. Unless they're a threat to the immigrants being detained. Hopefully something will happen soon.
Could be as easy as a phone call....but our president, you know......he's a....he's a piece of shit.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that if they put a stop to this horrible policy he will take all the credit all of it since he already has put it in his supporters mind that this is all a democrat created mess !
Let me take your 5 year old child by force and throw them in a cage without you knowing where they are, then talk to me about abuse, tough guy
People like you are giving America a bad name, you should be ashamed
You have zero empathy, for anyone, and its disgusting
Not true. I have empathy for the taxpayers that have to fund this mess.
HA How about the 20 billion dollars your president wants us to pay for an idiotic wall....after promising he would convince Mexico to foot the bill for 2 years? How about the 2 trillion dollars their tax plan adds to our deficit?
Is this guy for real?
You are a hypocritical mess...
I actually kinda think that spending the money on the wall would be cheaper in the long run than prosecuting thousands upon thousands of people and putting the kids up to stay in warehouses every year.
Really? You think this zero tolerance policy is going to continue on a yearly basis?
I have no idea. Let’s say they remove the zero tolerance- they still have war torn countries and cartels forcing people out of their countries for safety and ending up here. Look at Europe, most of those countries bordering the type of countries have walls/fences/etc. and prosecute & throw people out who try to come in. But it can’t be cheap.
Ma'am, how much do you think we spend on prosecuting these folks currently?
Perhaps we could do a better job of not turning down so many folks at the legal ports of entry? A lot of people who are currently being prosecuted and have had their kids sent to these horrible wallmart cages tried to do it the right way but were not able to get in. If you travelled halfway across the world out of a war torn country only to be told the legal port is full, what would you do? Turn around and go traverse back to your war torn country or do what these folks did?
I don’t know, bust out your calculator and let me know. There’s no cages by the way, I haven’t read any info saying that kids are in cages lol. And maybe you’re misssing the point but the reason they’re being prosecuted is to send a message that they can’t just turn around and try it illegally, it’s supposed to deter emigration unless it’s legal and with a visa. Is it working? Obviously not. I’m just saying that the whole shit is assbackwards and can’t be cheap the way it is now. We’ll have hundreds of these Walmart asylums before you know it and then we’re dealing with a humanitarian disaster. The cartels know what they’re doing, they’re not trying to save people, they’re taking their money and making our government deal with them.
Similarly, we know immigration enforcement is a huge drain on the federal budget, but that’s not the problem of the undocumented so much as it is an issue of irrational priorities, according to reform advocates. Consider the billions spent on enforcement, including checkpoints and electronic surveillance, Border Patrol personnel and weaponry, and private prison contractors commissioned to run dungeonlike detention centers.
Another potential ramification of regularizing the status of over 11 million people is that it would help dismantle a two-tier labor structure that enables exploitation of and discrimination against immigrants. Along with facilitating abuse ofunauthorized workers, the systematic alienation of the “foreign-born” workforce abets the trafficking oftemporary “guest workers” imported by low-wage employers.
If labor standards were more equalized across communities, enforcing the rights of immigrant laborers would help fix the epidemic wage theft that currently acts as a de facto “tax” on low-wage immigrants’ earnings.
In economic terms, the data offers a critical counterpoint to the bigoted assumption that immigrants inherently pose a burden.
“Political leaders have often found it convenient to pretend, or even really strongly claim, that this is a population that is a ‘bad deal for America,’” Gardner says, but now “having this data out there…certainly makes it hard for people to claim that this is a population that doesn’t make any contributions.”
ITEP’s fiscal projections don’t capture the full social landscape of what a more integrated, democratic economy would be—that’s immeasurable. They do show that recognizing people’s rights can often be a good deal for all workers. Yet it also shows the contributions that are happening now, which politicians steadfastly overlook: a social force so entwined with everyday culture in this country that it’s barely noticed…until we realize that in politics, and in life, we can’t imagine America without them.
The private prison statement I have a problem with. I built them for 15 years and they are anything but dungeon like. There are strict rules on detention facilities.
Everything else in the article I can understand and can get behind.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
Interesting note on something someone said above. I’m from ny so we had pretty good schools when I grew up. Upon having to send my kid to a school here in Texas I quickly learned how shitty the schools are down here. Now don’t attack me, I’m just explaining what I’ve found personally- there’s so many first generation English speaking families here that it slows down the progression in the classroom to an almost full halt, and they add on new kids every year- they don’t just all start as preschoolers. Each grade my daughter has been in there’s upwards of 15 new children in her grade, and 80% of them don’t speak English. The teacher is so inundated with having to bring up to speed these new kids that the other kids suffer dramatically. We eventually figured out it was better to send her to a different school and pay out the ass for tuition than it wasn’t to spend a few grand a semester on tutoring so she would be at the appropriate level for her age. It just made me think of it when someone was talking about immigrant families mooching off the system or something. I don’t think it’s mooching personally, but it certainly was eye opening to see what’s happened down here in the schools due to it.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
Most definitely eating some delicious tacos and barbacoa made by undocumented (and in one case very vocal and outspoken) immigrants this weekend.
Oh shit, now I want some of those as well. Have plans both days...soon, and I am going to throw Cristina a c-note to put toward however she is fighting these fucking idiots.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy as all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excise taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
An even larger boost would come from a full implementation of the executive actions that Obama rolled out for undocumented youths and parents earlier in his term: deportation relief granted to youths who arrived as children without authorization and a similar initiative for parents who are undocumented but have children born in the United States.
Under these policies—which have been obstructed by court challenges—up to 5.2 million undocumented immigrants could be granted relief, and cumulatively contribute “an estimated $805 million a year” in state and local taxes.
Election-season politics aside, ITEP calculates that state coffers have a lot to gain from essentially handing the undocumented green cards: about $2.1 billion annually on top of the current $11.6 billion, based on the most recent data, about half of that from personal income tax withheld, and a third from sales and excise taxes. In other words, if only our immigration system were rationalized to treat these people as what they actually are: permanent residents.
According to ITEP executive director and report author Matt Gardner, most of the additional wage gains would come from “just more people being incorporated into the system and having income tax withheld from their paychecks who aren’t having that income tax withheld right now.” But legalization would also bring a more positive long-term personal ripple effect: They will earn more, with a wage boost of some 10 percent under full legalization.
For many low-wage undocumented workers, Gardner says, “currently undocumented families will earn more once they’re incorporated into the system. That obviously means they’re going to pay more taxes in their income, they’re going to spend more, they’re going to pay more sales taxes on their spending.”
Though they would pay more taxes, it’s estimated that many of the undocumented would willingly get “on the books” if it meant shielding their families from deportation; there’s an immeasurable benefit to keeping families intact instead of tearing them apart through deportation and detention. And they might actually qualify for the benefits they help fund, like earned-income tax credits that help lift low-wage workers out of poverty, and Medicare and Social Security in later years. (Many undocumented workers already pay federal tax through automatic payroll deductions.)
Green cards wouldn’t remedy the inequities endemic to the neoliberal economy, but for the workers cast across borders by globalization, some of the poorest would gain basic recognition of their economic citizenship.
Critics might point out that there’s no total figure for the undocumented population’s fiscal “cost”—how much undocumented immigrants consume in services. With Malthusian vitriol, the Trump camp might argue that migrants are scrounging from “our” public health and social services and filling up schools with their (native-born citizen) kids. Gardner cautions against such a simplistic calculus as an arbitrary and politically squishy exercise: Would an emergency room visit count as an undocumented person’s liability—or is this offset by better health that allows them to stay employed and productive? Do their kids merely take up classroom slots, or could they grow up to obtain careers that enhance society and improve their communities?
Continued...........
this is the funny part of the unsung argument. undocumented immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take. it's just another lie from the right they will have you believe to mask their inherent racist agenda.
I was going to ask a question about this.
Do we know how many of them get welfare or don't pay certain bills?
If the above isn't a significant cost then I would actually consider to opening out borders and saving billions on enforcing border laws and integrate the people since they are contributing.
A nation needs immigrants to grow and prosper.
Hey, if you've got a sturdy back and a strong work ethic, I say Welcome to America!
So do you all think that anyone should be able to enter the country without being stopped? Should everyone be able to travel freely across all borders?
Not one person has said that.
Hell, I'll say it. I don't know if there is such thing as "freely", but what would really change from what's happening right now? You could spend all of these resources we devote to border control on human services for these people where we know they already cross and devote law enforcement to focusing on the crime that is occurring in their jurisdictions.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
Let me take your 5 year old child by force and throw them in a cage without you knowing where they are, then talk to me about abuse, tough guy
People like you are giving America a bad name, you should be ashamed
You have zero empathy, for anyone, and its disgusting
Not true. I have empathy for the taxpayers that have to fund this mess.
HA How about the 20 billion dollars your president wants us to pay for an idiotic wall....after promising he would convince Mexico to foot the bill for 2 years? How about the 2 trillion dollars their tax plan adds to our deficit?
Is this guy for real?
You are a hypocritical mess...
I actually kinda think that spending the money on the wall would be cheaper in the long run than prosecuting thousands upon thousands of people and putting the kids up to stay in warehouses every year.
Really? You think this zero tolerance policy is going to continue on a yearly basis?
I have no idea. Let’s say they remove the zero tolerance- they still have war torn countries and cartels forcing people out of their countries for safety and ending up here. Look at Europe, most of those countries bordering the type of countries have walls/fences/etc. and prosecute & throw people out who try to come in. But it can’t be cheap.
Ma'am, how much do you think we spend on prosecuting these folks currently?
Perhaps we could do a better job of not turning down so many folks at the legal ports of entry? A lot of people who are currently being prosecuted and have had their kids sent to these horrible wallmart cages tried to do it the right way but were not able to get in. If you travelled halfway across the world out of a war torn country only to be told the legal port is full, what would you do? Turn around and go traverse back to your war torn country or do what these folks did?
I don’t know, bust out your calculator and let me know. There’s no cages by the way, I haven’t read any info saying that kids are in cages lol. And maybe you’re misssing the point but the reason they’re being prosecuted is to send a message that they can’t just turn around and try it illegally, it’s supposed to deter emigration unless it’s legal and with a visa. Is it working? Obviously not. I’m just saying that the whole shit is assbackwards and can’t be cheap the way it is now. We’ll have hundreds of these Walmart asylums before you know it and then we’re dealing with a humanitarian disaster. The cartels know what they’re doing, they’re not trying to save people, they’re taking their money and making our government deal with them.
Really? If you haven't read any info saying that, it's clear you haven't sought one fucking article about this. I screen grabbed what showed up when I simply searched "cages" on Google just now. No mention of Trump, or immigration or anything - and yet, would you look at those results! What other obvious and immediately provable realities would you like to ignore?
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
No surprise here when Team Trump Treason totally disregards them in practice and with who he cuddles with, putin on the ritz and the very honorable Un.
Solution #5. Have every able bodied person spend a minimum of a four of their working years doing the kind of work undocumented workers handle- field work, house cleaning, dish washing, etc. Those able bodies souls unwilling to co-operate would be deported and have their citizenship transferred to immigrants willing to do the work.
That would solve the problem in a hurry.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Let me take your 5 year old child by force and throw them in a cage without you knowing where they are, then talk to me about abuse, tough guy
People like you are giving America a bad name, you should be ashamed
You have zero empathy, for anyone, and its disgusting
Not true. I have empathy for the taxpayers that have to fund this mess.
HA How about the 20 billion dollars your president wants us to pay for an idiotic wall....after promising he would convince Mexico to foot the bill for 2 years? How about the 2 trillion dollars their tax plan adds to our deficit?
Is this guy for real?
You are a hypocritical mess...
I actually kinda think that spending the money on the wall would be cheaper in the long run than prosecuting thousands upon thousands of people and putting the kids up to stay in warehouses every year.
Really? You think this zero tolerance policy is going to continue on a yearly basis?
I have no idea. Let’s say they remove the zero tolerance- they still have war torn countries and cartels forcing people out of their countries for safety and ending up here. Look at Europe, most of those countries bordering the type of countries have walls/fences/etc. and prosecute & throw people out who try to come in. But it can’t be cheap.
Ma'am, how much do you think we spend on prosecuting these folks currently?
Perhaps we could do a better job of not turning down so many folks at the legal ports of entry? A lot of people who are currently being prosecuted and have had their kids sent to these horrible wallmart cages tried to do it the right way but were not able to get in. If you travelled halfway across the world out of a war torn country only to be told the legal port is full, what would you do? Turn around and go traverse back to your war torn country or do what these folks did?
I don’t know, bust out your calculator and let me know. There’s no cages by the way, I haven’t read any info saying that kids are in cages lol. And maybe you’re misssing the point but the reason they’re being prosecuted is to send a message that they can’t just turn around and try it illegally, it’s supposed to deter emigration unless it’s legal and with a visa. Is it working? Obviously not. I’m just saying that the whole shit is assbackwards and can’t be cheap the way it is now. We’ll have hundreds of these Walmart asylums before you know it and then we’re dealing with a humanitarian disaster. The cartels know what they’re doing, they’re not trying to save people, they’re taking their money and making our government deal with them.
Really? If you haven't read any info saying that, it's clear you haven't sought one fucking article about this. I screen grabbed what showed up when I simply searched "cages" on Google just now. No mention of Trump, or immigration or anything - and yet, would you look at those results! What other obvious and immediately provable realities would you like to ignore?
I m pretty sure there are no cages at the detention centers, I think the cages are there when they are initially charged.
Comments
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy as all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excise taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
An even larger boost would come from a full implementation of the executive actions that Obama rolled out for undocumented youths and parents earlier in his term: deportation relief granted to youths who arrived as children without authorization and a similar initiative for parents who are undocumented but have children born in the United States.
Under these policies—which have been obstructed by court challenges—up to 5.2 million undocumented immigrants could be granted relief, and cumulatively contribute “an estimated $805 million a year” in state and local taxes.
Election-season politics aside, ITEP calculates that state coffers have a lot to gain from essentially handing the undocumented green cards: about $2.1 billion annually on top of the current $11.6 billion, based on the most recent data, about half of that from personal income tax withheld, and a third from sales and excise taxes. In other words, if only our immigration system were rationalized to treat these people as what they actually are: permanent residents.
According to ITEP executive director and report author Matt Gardner, most of the additional wage gains would come from “just more people being incorporated into the system and having income tax withheld from their paychecks who aren’t having that income tax withheld right now.” But legalization would also bring a more positive long-term personal ripple effect: They will earn more, with a wage boost of some 10 percent under full legalization.
For many low-wage undocumented workers, Gardner says, “currently undocumented families will earn more once they’re incorporated into the system. That obviously means they’re going to pay more taxes in their income, they’re going to spend more, they’re going to pay more sales taxes on their spending.”
Though they would pay more taxes, it’s estimated that many of the undocumented would willingly get “on the books” if it meant shielding their families from deportation; there’s an immeasurable benefit to keeping families intact instead of tearing them apart through deportation and detention. And they might actually qualify for the benefits they help fund, like earned-income tax credits that help lift low-wage workers out of poverty, and Medicare and Social Security in later years. (Many undocumented workers already pay federal tax through automatic payroll deductions.)
Green cards wouldn’t remedy the inequities endemic to the neoliberal economy, but for the workers cast across borders by globalization, some of the poorest would gain basic recognition of their economic citizenship.
Critics might point out that there’s no total figure for the undocumented population’s fiscal “cost”—how much undocumented immigrants consume in services. With Malthusian vitriol, the Trump camp might argue that migrants are scrounging from “our” public health and social services and filling up schools with their (native-born citizen) kids. Gardner cautions against such a simplistic calculus as an arbitrary and politically squishy exercise: Would an emergency room visit count as an undocumented person’s liability—or is this offset by better health that allows them to stay employed and productive? Do their kids merely take up classroom slots, or could they grow up to obtain careers that enhance society and improve their communities?
Continued...........
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Ma'am, how much do you think we spend on prosecuting these folks currently?
Perhaps we could do a better job of not turning down so many folks at the legal ports of entry? A lot of people who are currently being prosecuted and have had their kids sent to these horrible wallmart cages tried to do it the right way but were not able to get in. If you travelled halfway across the world out of a war torn country only to be told the legal port is full, what would you do? Turn around and go traverse back to your war torn country or do what these folks did?
Similarly, we know immigration enforcement is a huge drain on the federal budget, but that’s not the problem of the undocumented so much as it is an issue of irrational priorities, according to reform advocates. Consider the billions spent on enforcement, including checkpoints and electronic surveillance, Border Patrol personnel and weaponry, and private prison contractors commissioned to run dungeonlike detention centers.
Now imagine if that funding were redeployed in legal services or rehabilitation for refugee families.
Another potential ramification of regularizing the status of over 11 million people is that it would help dismantle a two-tier labor structure that enables exploitation of and discrimination against immigrants. Along with facilitating abuse of unauthorized workers, the systematic alienation of the “foreign-born” workforce abets the trafficking of temporary “guest workers” imported by low-wage employers.
If labor standards were more equalized across communities, enforcing the rights of immigrant laborers would help fix the epidemic wage theft that currently acts as a de facto “tax” on low-wage immigrants’ earnings.
In economic terms, the data offers a critical counterpoint to the bigoted assumption that immigrants inherently pose a burden.
“Political leaders have often found it convenient to pretend, or even really strongly claim, that this is a population that is a ‘bad deal for America,’” Gardner says, but now “having this data out there…certainly makes it hard for people to claim that this is a population that doesn’t make any contributions.”
ITEP’s fiscal projections don’t capture the full social landscape of what a more integrated, democratic economy would be—that’s immeasurable. They do show that recognizing people’s rights can often be a good deal for all workers. Yet it also shows the contributions that are happening now, which politicians steadfastly overlook: a social force so entwined with everyday culture in this country that it’s barely noticed…until we realize that in politics, and in life, we can’t imagine America without them.
https://www.thenation.com/article/undocumented-immigrants-contribute-over-11-billion-to-our-economy-each-year/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
www.headstonesband.com
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Could be as easy as a phone call....but our president, you know......he's a....he's a piece of shit.
Do we know how many of them get welfare or don't pay certain bills?
If the above isn't a significant cost then I would actually consider to opening out borders and saving billions on enforcing border laws and integrate the people since they are contributing.
A nation needs immigrants to grow and prosper.
President Trump began his campaign assailing immigrants as ruthless lawbreakers who steal American jobs with impunity. To halt them, he has vowed to build a wall along the border with Mexico, hire thousands of new immigration agents, ramp up immigrant detention and subject visa applicants to even more rigorous vetting. His administration has been largely silent, however, about the strongest magnet that has drawn millions of immigrants, legal and not, to the United States for generations: jobs.
American employers continue to assume relatively little risk by hiring undocumented immigrants to perform menial, backbreaking work, often for little pay. Meanwhile, as Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown accelerates, families are being ripped apart, and communities of hard-working immigrants with deep roots in this country are gripped by fear and uncertainty. As long as employers remain off the hook, a border wall and an expanded dragnet can only make temporary dents in the flows of undocumented immigrants.
There was widespread, bipartisan acknowledgment of this reality the last time lawmakers managed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which outlined a carrots-and-sticks approach to reducing the number of undocumented workers in the American labor force. The bill offered a pathway to citizenship to roughly 2.7 million people who had been living in the United States without permission, set in motion an era of tighter controls at the border and made knowingly hiring undocumented people a crime.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/opinion/no-crackdown-on-illegal-employers.html
Some immigration experts contend that E-Verify sounds like a no-nonsense solution but that it’s essentially a political fig leaf, with so many significant flaws and loopholes that it allows employers to continue to knowingly hire undocumented workers with few repercussions.
So yea, its all the kids fault. Lock them up after separating them from their families.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Everything else in the article I can understand and can get behind.
I still think that the Wire Season 3 got it right. Quit trying to stop the inevitable and focus on how we can reallocate the funds more appropriately.
Hey, if you've got a sturdy back and a strong work ethic, I say Welcome to America!
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
U.S. expected to withdraw from U.N. human rights council - POLITICO https://apple.news/AirOvhjrdTq66vZZKBNn-Cw
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©