"In 2001, the Social Security Administration concluded that undocumented immigrants "account for a major portion of the billions of dollars paid into social security that don’t match SSA records," which payees, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, can never draw upon. As of July 2003, these payments totaled $421 billion."
$421 billion dollars paid into a system they can't touch.
More on the myths about illegal immigration and the dangers of the raids is discussed over at Digby's.
(edited for bizarre grammar and incoherence.)
4 comments:
Hey, It's not fair using facts. Everyone knows facts have a liberal bias. I mean, look around, the facts always support the liberal point of view, so the bias is obvious.
Damn! That means to appear to be unbiased I gotta lie....
Riiiight... because a small monetary benefit is a good reason to allow them to continue to break the law.
The unpaid-for medical services they receive, the jobs they soak up, the countless drains on a society they suck from but do not support are all good reasons to allow them to continue.
Studies show both benefits and negatives from the flood of immigrants, especially those who are uneducated:
The IRS estimates that about 6 million unauthorized immigrants file individual income tax returns each year.[6] Research reviewed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that between 50 percent and 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes.[6] Undocumented workers are estimated to pay in about $7 billion per year into Social Security.[7]
Professor of Law Francine Lipman [8] writes that the belief that undocumented migrants are exploiting the US economy and that they cost more in services than they contribute to the economy is "undeniably false". Lipman asserts that "undocumented immigrants actually contribute more to public coffers in taxes than they cost in social services" and "contribute to the U.S. economy through their investments and consumption of goods and services; filling of millions of essential worker positions resulting in subsidiary job creation, increased productivity and lower costs of goods and services; and unrequited contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs."[9]
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reviewed 29 reports published over 15 years on the impact of unauthorized immigrants on the budgets of state and local governments. While cautioning that the reports are not a suitable basis for developing an aggregate national effect across all states, they concluded that:[6]
State and local governments incur costs for providing services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited options for avoiding or minimizing those costs
The amount that state and local governments spend on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a small percentage of the total amount spent by those governments to provide such services to residents in their jurisdictions
The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants, although the impact is most likely modest.
Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.
Aviva Chomsky, a professor at Salem State College, states that "Early studies in California and in the Southwest and in the Southeast...have come to the same conclusions. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, are more likely to pay taxes than they are to use public services. Illegal immigrants aren't eligible for most public services and live in fear of revealing themselves to government authorities. Households headed by undocumented immigrants use less than half the amount of federal services that households headed by documented immigrants or citizens make use of."[10]
We will always have illegal immigrants, there is literally no way to stop them. So what to do with them?
In comments in this post we circle around the conundrum of illegal immigration/ undocumented workers.
There are no easy answers.
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