The second half of the thread's title is in response to occassional statements I've read criticizing the author's membership in the Democratic party.
As for the article, well I've not found a single thing I disagree with so far. He hits all the nails on the head, in my book, most especially the ones concerned desperate poverty which leads to (illegal) immigration, the fact that we're ultimately illegal immigrants anyway, and most especially that generally speaking, Americans don't want the jobs they do at the wages they earn in the homes they live in.
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posted
Yup, I agree with him too. I've really been missing chewing over World Watch lately; glad it's back.
The point I was struck with was the bit about taxes; I've heard people argue against illegal immigration with the 'not-paying-taxes' tact, and I've always instinctively mistrusted that point. The article helped to put my thoughts into coherent sentences, which is always a plus for me *grin*.
quote:The point I was struck with was the bit about taxes; I've heard people argue against illegal immigration with the 'not-paying-taxes' tact, and I've always instinctively mistrusted that point.
I've posted this in another thread. But, all the studies I've seen. And I've seen several, agree that illegal emmigrants, as a group, pay far more taxes than the cost of the services they consume. Reason: they pay the taxes, often with assumed documents, to avoid calling attention to themselves. And, they don't claim the services to avold calling attenting to themselves. "Taxes" is not only a red herring, it is a smelly one
<Edit: Fixed ubb code. --PJ>
[ July 13, 2006, 01:47 AM: Message edited by: Papa Janitor ]
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posted
Hey, Artemisia, you might want to consider changing your code tags to quote tags. I don't know about other people, but it's causing my browser to stretch.
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posted
Sorry. At that time of the night, they looked the same. I would not have used code tags intentionally,as I don't know what they are. In the future I'll refrain from posting with my night glasses on.
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posted
The OSC article represents the typical liberal world view, especially on illegal immigration, e.g.: Mexicans are no better than children, and we wiser grown-ups need to do a better job of taking care of them, because, really, they're just children and not smart enough to do it them selves.
The analogy OSC represents is not close to the current reality. In reality, the cop would take the kid to the hospital, and we'd all pay for the healthcare. Where are this kid's dead-beat parents (that would be the Mexican government)? Why did they leave the kid alone and unsupervised? (They're not so poor that they can't have a second car.) Oh that right, thinks the liberal, they're Mexicans and the parents among them really aren't much better than children anyway.
Maybe we should stretch the analogy even further, and take their other kids away from the parents by force (afterall their child-rearing has placed the kid in mortal jeapardy), and raise all the Mexicans ourselves.
Artemisia Tridentata wrote:
quote:But, all the studies I've seen. And I've seen several, agree that illegal emmigrants, as a group, pay far more taxes than the cost of the services they consume. Reason: they pay the taxes, often with assumed documents, to avoid calling attention to themselves.
Nonsense. Other than sales taxes, illegals don't pay taxes. What other taxes would they pay? They are below the poverty line and owe zero in taxes at the end of the year. Even, if you account for payrole taxes, the recent Senate study on the issue concluded that illegals consume more in education, healthcare, and law enforcment than they pay in.
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quote:The OSC article represents the typical liberal world view, especially on illegal immigration, e.g.: Mexicans are no better than children, and we wiser grown-ups need to do a better job of taking care of them, because, really, they're just children and not smart enough to do it them selves.
I didn't see this being presented in the article. Instead, I saw OSC honoring immigrant workers for their work ethics, intelligence, and personal sacrifice. Can you quote the article where you saw it being patronising?
I'm right in line with OSC on immigration-- though I think he gives too much credit to Bush for being moderate.
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quote:The OSC article represents the typical liberal world view, especially on illegal immigration, e.g.: Mexicans are no better than children, and we wiser grown-ups need to do a better job of taking care of them, because, really, they're just children and not smart enough to do it them selves.
I think you're misrepresenting his opinion. I read it as viewing illegal immigrants as adults, albeit desperate ones. Just because he made a comparison using children, hardly means he views them as children. It just means that it's easiest to imagine a child being that desperate.
quote:The analogy OSC represents is not close to the current reality. In reality, the cop would take the kid to the hospital, and we'd all pay for the healthcare. Where are this kid's dead-beat parents (that would be the Mexican government)? Why did they leave the kid alone and unsupervised? (They're not so poor that they can't have a second car.) Oh that right, thinks the liberal, they're Mexicans and the parents among them really aren't much better than children anyway.
The Mexican government is screwing up, and the majority of the Mexican populatiion is too poor to have a second car, so your points along those lines are soundly dealt with.
quote:Nonsense. Other than sales taxes, illegals don't pay taxes. What other taxes would they pay? They are below the poverty line and owe zero in taxes at the end of the year. Even, if you account for payrole taxes, the recent Senate study on the issue concluded that illegals consume more in education, healthcare, and law enforcment than they pay in.
Ummm...yes, they do pay taxes aside from sales taxes. You even go on to say so when you mention payroll taxes, so I don't know why you'd say they don't in the first place. But aside from taxes, they do pay taxes in the form of gas and property taxes, as Card mentioned and you completely ignored.
I'd be interested to see how any Senate study could possibly be conclusive given the illegal immigrants they actually have sound financial data on are by definition the illegal immigrants who are known.
You'll need to put in a lot more effort to deal with opposing this article, Mig.
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quote:Originally posted by Mig: Nonsense. Other than sales taxes, illegals don't pay taxes. What other taxes would they pay? They are below the poverty line and owe zero in taxes at the end of the year. Even, if you account for payrole taxes, the recent Senate study on the issue concluded that illegals consume more in education, healthcare, and law enforcment than they pay in.
Hey, why don't we use our brains for a second, eh?
Employers in this country are required to withhold income tax from all employee's checks. It's only at the end of the year that withholding is adjusted for the individual's actual income tax bracket.
Poorer people are typically in lower tax brackets. Almost 100% of the time, their regular withholding is too much. However, if the person never files for a refund, that money is kept by the U.S. government.
posted
This was the first World Watch article I'd so much as skimmed in a long time. I still dislike OSC's rhetorical style, to the point that even though I largely agree with him on this issue, parts of the article were uncomfortable for me to read.
Also, it's a shame to see the mythaboutthe "porous" Canada-U.S. border being spread further.
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posted
Glynn's absolutely right. The studies I've seen suggest that millions of dollars are actually being paid through withholding by illegal immigrants, money they would get back if they could claim a tax refund.
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quote:Hey, why don't we use our brains for a second, eh?
I'd ask you the same thing, but that would be rude, and I try not to respond to rudeness with rudeness. Let's try to be civil here, Primal Curve. You should know better.
So instead I'll ask you this: how many employers of illegal aliens, the aliens you rightly presume wouldn't apply for tax refunds, actually withhold income taxes? And if you're employing an illegal alien (Need we add illegally employing an illegal alien?), why would you withhold and pay in those taxes? That would seem to me to be one of the dumbest things that an employer of illegal aliens, if one doesn't want to get caught, would ever do!
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posted
I was always under the impression that most illegals were not in the kinds of positions that showed up on payroll taxes, that they were usually paid cash under the table.
posted
Not really. There are a lot of employers who unknowingly employ undocumented immigrants. There's a whole business out there that provides these potential employees with very convincing documentation. They get all kinds of low-paying jobs. They don't last very long, though, as they are usually found out and have to be fired.
Which is a shame, actually. In my experience, they are usually the hardest, most dependable workers.
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quote:Nonsense. Other than sales taxes, illegals don't pay taxes. What other taxes would they pay? They are below the poverty line and owe zero in taxes at the end of the year. Even, if you account for payrole taxes, the recent Senate study on the issue concluded that illegals consume more in education, healthcare, and law enforcment than they pay in.
Payroll taxes. Many, those who work in regular as opposed to casual employment, use false SSAN. An employee in our company recently became aware that aprox 75 persons were contributing to SS with her number. Those persons tyypically do not file for refunds, nor do they use the SS associated with the SS account. I would be intrested in seeing the "Senate Report" except for assigning fixed "we would pay them anyway" costs to education, I very much doubt that reported "finding".
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posted
I think he very unfairly portrayed the role of the "trooper" in his lead-off example.
Any police worth their uniform (and I realize there are some that aren't) would recognize the girl as bleeding and call for ambulance assistance, and not just ignore it, as he is implying.
It hurts me that OSC feels he has to make a cop look bad in order to prove his point.
It made me unwillingly to read the rest of the article.
posted
Immigration is almost completely a non-party line issue right now. Some Republicans are for programs to aid illegal immigrants (including Bush himself), some are against. Some Democrats are for them, too, but quite a few are also against. I'd say this has extremely little to do with why OSC is not in the GOP.
I do agree with most of what OSC says in that article, though .
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You know, I don't believe Card was actually suggesting American police officers are like that. I think he was saying, "If this happened, wouldn't we think it was terrible? Yet we as a nation are currently doing this terrible thing that, on a local level, we would never consider."
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quote:I think he very unfairly portrayed the role of the "trooper" in his lead-off example.
Any police worth their uniform (and I realize there are some that aren't) would recognize the girl as bleeding and call for ambulance assistance, and not just ignore it, as he is implying.
Actually, I think that's his point: If a policeman did that, we'd have his head on a platter, so why do we tolerate it when we do the analogous thing with our national policy?
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Really? You wouldn't generally characterize the draconic view Card is writing against as a Republican one?
It may not be a purely partisan issue-I don't recall suggesting it was-but the view he is criticizing is one heard much more often, both nationally and locally, by Republicans than Democrats.
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quote:It may not be a purely partisan issue-I don't recall suggesting it was-but the view he is criticizing is one heard much more often, both nationally and locally, by Republicans than Democrats.
Same here.
It's as though the Republicans can no longer appear proactive and manly through kicking butt in Afganistan or Iraq, so they've got to find somebody else to attack.
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posted
In OSC's second example, he has the thirsty fellow offer to pay for the water. Is that an accurate analogy? How many illegal aliens cross the border and offer to pay for their emergency room visits, pay to send their kids to school, etc.?
Plus the guy in the example lives in the area. A better analogy would have the guy and his family be from from outside the disaster area and had snuck into the disaster area. They's sneak intot he area, where, I must add, he had no right to be in the first place. Under that circumstance, why shouldn't the merchant save what little water he has for his regular customers, the people of his community his own friends and family. By stealing the water, how many people who had a right to be there will dies of thirst and suffer the consequence of the interloper's theft.
OSC does himself a disservice by presenting skewed analogies that don't represent the actual situation. At least, with the second example, he didn't equate the illigals to children.
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posted
No, the Republicans are just the ones feuding over it right now. Some Dems have said some very nasty things on the subject as well (not to mention the racist, protectionist attitudes many on both sides adopted over the Dubai ports deal). The Republicans are pretty solidly split on the issue, which is why no significant deal has been reached, and why things have been so noisy.
And it isn't a recent thing for Democrats to be heavily split over it, either. Democrats drawing a lot of their pull from the labor unions tend to be strongly anti-immigration, while Democrats with few labor union ties are sometimes pro-immigration.
The very most radical people are more likely to align with the Republican party, but they're just outliers (the militia fringe, for instance). There may not be Democrats ready to go out and shoot immigrants, but there are plenty who don't like them one bit and would reduce immigration to a trickle if they could.
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Because illegal immigrants do nothing but sneak in and proceed to steal resources, right.
Makes you wonder why anyone would hire them, or why so many business owners are in favor of so-called 'amnesty'. I guess those canny financiers are really just suckers after all.
Your analogy, plain and simple, doesn't hold water. In the USA, there isn't a shortage of basic human needs such as water and healthcare and education. Not anywhere near to the extent there is in Mexico, that much at least cannot be argued. Even Americans living at or below the poverty line generally have access to public education and healthcare, if (obviously) at much reduced levels.
Americans are not dying of thirst or starving to death due to the presence of illegal immigrants, whom we employ. American citizens probably spend more money on DVDs than illegal immigrants 'leech' from our economy.
I do not think Card's analogy truly means Mexicans are children at all. I've stated why, and you persist in continuing to suggest it does. Analogies can be a bit more detailed than strictly this is to this and that is to that.
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posted
I'll certainly agree with that, fugu, that many Democrats are opposed to Card's position. What I mean is that so far as this issue is concerned, Card's opinion generally is more in line with the Democratic view than the Republican.
After all, the radical fringe often serves as a weathervane.
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posted
Eh, I just don't see any strong correlation on this issue. As I said, its just the Republicans being noisy right now. As for the fringe groups, I think they're because the (fringe) Republicans tend to like guns more rather than hate immigrants more .
Mig: note that OSC favors a paternalistic government for everybody.
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quote:If we don't stop illegal immigration, they might take the southwest back.
So what? We could do worse than have a bunch of humble, hardworking, devoted, socially involved people in Arizona.
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quote:If we don't stop illegal immigration, they might take the southwest back.
So what? We could do worse than have a bunch of humble, hardworking, devoted, socially involved people in Arizona.
Yes, that explains why Mexico is such a great place to live. Let's just turn Arizona into another Mexican paradise.
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posted
And even if they managed to take it back, OSC's point was that they would be justified in doing so, since we stole it from them first.
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posted
Granted that the standard of living in the US is better than Mexico, but is it really THAT bad in mexico? I don't think anyone starves to death down there. It seems to me that OSC's analogy stretches the truth a bit with a girl whose life is in danger.
Immigrants come here for a better life, not to save their lives.
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quote:I haven't seen many native-born American citizens who work as hard as the Mexican-born people I see working in minimum-wage jobs in laundries and yard services and intermittent subcontracting projects and other semi-skilled and unskilled positions.
OSC needs to get out more. I see them every day. Most of the people in this area employed in construction work are white male US citizens and they are out hammering shingles to a roof in summer heat, digging ditches for water lines, sweating together pipe in an attic that is orders of degree hotter than the outside temp which in the 90's.
Don't think that's really true? My husband has done all those things I just listed this week in addition to working two 24 hour shifts at a fire department. A good friend of ours at church runs a paving business and employs nothing but legal citizens who are smoothing out asphalt and concrete on people's driveways in the middle of high summer.
I get really tired of the "Americans don't know what it is to work hard" argument because I know plenty of Americans who work more than 40 hours a week at hard labor. And you know what's really frustrating? When a contractor who is an American taxpayer and employs fellow American taxpayers and pays not only income tax but unemployment tax and carries workman's comp so his employees are protected and has valid business licenses that he pays for (in one year we paid out more than $11,000 in business licenses and permit fees) doesn't get a job because an unscrupulous contractor who hires illegal labor and doesn't pay taxes can underbid him by thousands of dollars.
quote:Latin American immigrants, as a group, are hard-working, family-centered, God-fearing people who contribute mightily to our economy.
So are white, middle class people who've been in this country for generations. And African-American citizens. And other groups and classes that are legal citizens. Latin American immigrants don't have a monopoly on these things.
quote:As for the other taxes, they pay them exactly as any other poor people in America pay taxes. At the store, they pay the same sales tax as the rest of us. When they buy gas, they pay gas taxes. When they pay rent to their landlords, some of that goes to paying the property taxes the landlord is required to pay -- just like every other renter.
Most of them are, in fact, paying exactly as much in taxes as they would pay if they were legal immigrants.
Not true. They may not be required to pay income tax if they were legal citizens, but their employers would have to pay taxes on them if they were legal citizens. You aren't the only person who pays your tax burden to the government, your employer pays part of that. The employers would have to pay state unemployment benefits for them, and would in most cases be required to carry worker's comp on them. Those things are not done when an employer is cheating the system by hiring illegals.
I don't have anything against people coming here to better their lives, but I do have a problem with assuming that Americans aren't as hardworking and aren't committed to their families, too. By not going after the employers who are cheating the system, we're allowing them to undercut honest employers who are doing things right. Go after the employers - make the penalties stiff for employing illegals including jail time and severe monetary penalties. At the same time, make LEGAL immigration easier and a quicker process, including a guest worker program. That way, we encourage employers to hire legal workers and pay all the appropriate taxes on them and we make it easier for people to come here and find ways to feed their families.
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posted
One of the few World Watches I have agreed with. He clearly put in enormous effort and argue convincingly. Mind you, when the opposition is waving Nazi flags, arguing rationally doesn't do much good. I have, of course, expressed my views on this issue before and been accused of saying that anti-immigration groups are xenophobic, but how else am I to read this: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Minutemen%20rally%202-709064.jpg ? It was taken from a rally by the biggest lobby of them all, the paramilitary group calling themselves the Minutemen, a group, not incidentally, which also acts on their xenophobia, http://www.aztlan.net/illegalian.gif .
And how shall I presume? I am a humanist and an internationalist, but even were I not, I could never support such people, nor their complacent allies in Congress and the White House.
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quote:By not going after the employers who are cheating the system, we're allowing them to undercut honest employers who are doing things right. Go after the employers - make the penalties stiff for employing illegals including jail time and severe monetary penalties. At the same time, make LEGAL immigration easier and a quicker process, including a guest worker program. That way, we encourage employers to hire legal workers and pay all the appropriate taxes on them and we make it easier for people to come here and find ways to feed their families.
I can agree with that, Belle.
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posted
The difference between legal an illegal immigration exists only if Congress says so. I do not believe in illegal immigration as being a valid proposition. The right to move is a human right and free migration of labor is essential to free trade. As the laws of the U.S., and, according to official American philosophy, the laws of all countries are only valid when they coïncide with those of "the laws of nature and nature's god" and do not infringe upon the unalienable rights of man which include the "pursuit of happiness." This last phrase was deemed to have legal status in Loving v. Virginia.
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quote: Employers in this country are required to withhold income tax from all employee's checks. It's only at the end of the year that withholding is adjusted for the individual's actual income tax bracket.
What about filing exempt? Do you actually have to prove something in order to put "exempt" on your W-4?
quote: And you know what's really frustrating? When a contractor who is an American taxpayer and employs fellow American taxpayers and pays not only income tax but unemployment tax and carries workman's comp so his employees are protected and has valid business licenses that he pays for (in one year we paid out more than $11,000 in business licenses and permit fees) doesn't get a job because an unscrupulous contractor who hires illegal labor and doesn't pay taxes can underbid him by thousands of dollars.
This is such a problem. Here in Tucson, where the housing market has been exploding for the last couple of years and people are moving in in flocks, where constuction is in such high demand, American construction workers can't make a living wage without working 60-hour weeks because the illegal immigrants do it for so much cheaper. Although, this is something of a self-correcting problem, since the immigrants are often undertrained and the job has to be fixed in a short amount of time. I'm not sure this is an immigrant issue though...it seems that no one in construction is being well-trained now days. The whole situation is very frustrating.
quote: Granted that the standard of living in the US is better than Mexico, but is it really THAT bad in mexico?
Considering that an American tourist doesn't usually take his car with him when he goes to Nogales, you tell me.
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quote:American construction workers can't make a living wage without working 60-hour weeks because the illegal immigrants do it for so much cheaper.
*nit pick*
"Living wage" obviously means something different to the American construction workers than the immigrant construction workers.
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posted
That's obvious, but I wonder how much of that living wage goes to things that Americans literally have to have, like car insurance.
Also, a dollar in that States is worth a lot less to an American than an American dollar in Mexico, and while an American worker might have to support a family of five in America, a Mexican one may only be supporting himself in America, and four people in Mexico. That's got to be cheaper.
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While I share your frustration with the nonsense that, "Americans don't know what hard work is," I think you're missing some of the detail in statements like Card's.
quote:I haven't seen many native-born American citizens who work as hard as the Mexican-born people I see working in minimum-wage jobs in laundries and yard services and intermittent subcontracting projects and other semi-skilled and unskilled positions.
I very much doubt your husband does that work at or near minimum wage, or that his equally experienced coworkers do either.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I strongly resent Belle's implication that U.S. citizens and those who employ only them have a monopoly on virtue. Indeed, excluding non-citizens for any job because of their origin rings more of xenophobia than any virtue I know of.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Not true. They may not be required to pay income tax if they were legal citizens, but their employers would have to pay taxes on them if they were legal citizens. You aren't the only person who pays your tax burden to the government, your employer pays part of that. The employers would have to pay state unemployment benefits for them, and would in most cases be required to carry worker's comp on them. Those things are not done when an employer is cheating the system by hiring illegals.
This is largely irrelevant becaues what both you and OSC are missing it that most illegal immigrants have payroll taxes deducted from their pay. Most of the illegal immigrants in this country work with forged papers. They provide their employers with a social security number and income taxes, FICA and all those other payroll taxes get deducted from their checks. If you go through the actuall numbers, most illegal immigrants will end up paying more in taxes than a citizen who was working for the same pay because they general can't or don't claim exemptions for their dependents and can't or don't file the income tax returns to get back the surplus that was withheld from their checks.
There are of course a minority of illegal immigrants who are paid under the table so that neither they nor their employers pay the taxes. I agree with Belle that this is unfair. There are also some US citizens who get paid under the table to avoid taxes and who don't report their income. That is equally unfair. From my point of view, the real criminals in these cases are the employers. There are laws which require employers to get a SS# for every employee and to withhold pay roll taxes. If employers aren't doing this, they should be held accountable but this problem is really a separate problem from the illegal immigration problem.
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