Economic Issues related to Illegal Immigration
Economic Issues related to Illegal Immigration:
Interesting article published by the Council on Foreign Relations:
Immigration Nation
My own stance on illegal immigration is still being formed. It changes from day to day as I read and think about more information.
How much do immigrants contribute to production?
Do they take jobs away from people born in the United States?
Do we lack enough labor to do the needed jobs without Illegal immigrants?
Does the strain on public services cost more than the benifits?
How much illegal immigration can we afford?
Other economic issues and questions related to the subject?
Right now I am just attempting to separate the economic discussion from the moral discussion.
I believe it is economics, not religion or other moral values, which shapes how most people feel about immigration. I believe some of it is even selfish (not necessarily wrong).
Interesting article published by the Council on Foreign Relations:
Immigration Nation
My own stance on illegal immigration is still being formed. It changes from day to day as I read and think about more information.
How much do immigrants contribute to production?
Do they take jobs away from people born in the United States?
Do we lack enough labor to do the needed jobs without Illegal immigrants?
Does the strain on public services cost more than the benifits?
How much illegal immigration can we afford?
Other economic issues and questions related to the subject?
Right now I am just attempting to separate the economic discussion from the moral discussion.
I believe it is economics, not religion or other moral values, which shapes how most people feel about immigration. I believe some of it is even selfish (not necessarily wrong).
posted by u∃∃l!∃ at Sunday, November 19, 2006
6 Comments:
How much do immigrants contribute to production?
This would be sort of hard to actually answer. While I think they do contribute, as “illegals,” much goes unreported, I’m sure.
Do they take jobs away from people born in the United States?
I would say they not only take jobs away, since they will work for less than minimum wage, they keep salaries lower. Why pay a decent wage to an American worker of you can get a few illegals to work under the table?
Do we lack enough labor to do the needed jobs without Illegal immigrants?
No, we lack companies willing to pay better wages. We also have able-bodied people on welfare and convicts that could perform much of the work needed to be done. We also have school children (teens) on summer break that used to pick fruit, vegetables and whatever for a small wage during summer.
Does the strain on public services cost more than the benifits?
In my estimation, yes. More is being paid outt hat is being brought in. Last I heard some 25 billion dollars was being sent back to Mexico alone. That’s 25 billion dollars less circulating in our own economy.
How much illegal immigration can we afford?
None. As long as someone is illegal, they should not be here drawing anything. Bring out a decent guest worker program, monitoring where these people are and ensuring they are treated decently and pay adequate taxes, as the rest of us do, they are no longer illegal, are they?
Other economic issues and questions related to the subject?
We also have many reports of them driving without insurance and fleeing the scene of accidents. As said before, they don’t have the health standards our country does and as such, are prone to reintroduce disease into our society that we thought was eradicated. We also have the fact that they mostly aren’t trying to assimilate into American culture, but are bringing their cutlture and expecting us to assimilate into theirs. Add to that groups like MEChA, La Raza and some others that are fighting to return nearly the entire west coast to Mexican control and that even as illegals, one party encourages them to vote and you should see that there are several reasons we need to get the Southern Border under control.
That being said, I disagree with a fence. Fences can be easily gotten around. I also spent 3 years watching the fence between East and West Germany and Czechoslovakia and even though theirs was to keep people in, the thought bothers me.
If you could talk to my wife, who is of Hispanic ancestry, she could tell you many stories about how they don’t desire American life but to force us to accept their lower standards of life.
We agree on the subject of convicts working.
I think that all prisons should be turned into farms and/or factories.
The farm or factory would have to produce the necessarily income to obtain any "extras" (such as Entertainment equipment) for the prison. Even prison construction could be done by prisoners.
Those who refuse to work do not get to eat. I believe a person has the right to make a choice to starve themselves to death.
I also think we should replace our welfare/subsidized housing system with poor farms.
It would not be a "Dicken's" era type poor farm. There would be child care, grade school, high school, and even job training, counseling and placement services.
People would only be expected to work 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week.
I would not be handing out free or subsidized food and housing except in very rare cases.
This would force employers to pay a living wage. They would not be able to count on the government to susidize workers. If a person could not earn enough to live, they would have to move to the poor farm and would no longer be available to the employer.
The 25 billion dollars being sent back to Mexico, are not necessarily via illegal aliens. I read the same article. I know Victoria drew the conclusion it was mostly via illegal immigrants, but nothing in the article (or her logic) convinced me.
Tourism sent over 95 billion dollars out of the country last year.
My guess is that large US companies sent even more money out of the country (but I don't have the figures).
The whole under-the-table wages thing can be significantly reduced by replacing income tax with sales tax (federal and state).
We could also tax money as it left the country (the same rate as a sales tax).
(more later)
Interesting article published by the Council on Foreign Relations
Immigration Nation
A bit off topic, coboble, but if the sales tax you are referring to is what is being billed as the "fair tax" under proposal now, I totally disagree. I won't go inot all the reasons why right now as this thread is about immigration. Maybe another time.
Another article; Economic Costs of Illegal Immigration
I'm not all that familiar with the "American Resistance," so I do not endorse the article, just find it interesting.
The article (the one you pointed me to) does not claim what percent of the job loss percent, based on immigration, is “illegal” and what percent is “legal”? This allows the author to group the two groups together, giving a much higher number. I realize the difficulty in separating the two groups when so many use fake papers. So these two groups are often combined in statistics, and an assumption is drawn (by many readers) that the bulk is illegal.
The article mentions that we have corporations benefiting, and common citizens picking up the bill. But if the employers can not get the labor they need here, they will move overseas. If all of their employees are illegal the movement is good. However, in many cases there are legal US citizen employees as well, who end up loosing their jobs when the company moves more of its operations overseas.
This is mentioned in this article:
newsmax.com article
The statistic related to the amount paid per citizen household, I have seen before. It is the lower of the numbers I saw in another article, and I can not remember where I found it.
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