Thread: Debunking the Myths Surrounding Illegal Immigration

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Debunking the Myths Surrounding Illegal Immigration
by Joe Dunn
Staff Writer

On May 1st, Stanford students and employees rallied to support immigrant rights in the face of Senate Bill H.R. 4437, legislation aimed at cracking down on the United States’ 12 million illegal aliens. On this “Day Without Immigrants,” the supposition that xenophobia is at the root of anti-illegal-immigration legislation mutated bill H.R. 4437 into an attack on basic human rights of immigrants everywhere. Cries of “no human is illegal” smothered the truth: that the fiscal consequences of a massive undocumented population necessitate an immediate response to illegal immigration in the United States.

The notion that the “Day Without Immigrants” was a defense of human rights is founded upon a false presumption that xenophobia is the only possible explanation for anti-illegal-immigration sentiment in the United States. Protestors justified the “Day Without Immigrants” as a human rights initiative by asserting that the native-born American population is incapable of drawing the line between illegal and legal immigration, but rather views each with equal animosity. This is simply wrong. According to a national poll conducted in March by The Pew Research Center, only 22% of Americans say that legal and illegal immigration are equally problematic, while 60% say that illegal immigration is a bigger problem than legal immigration. A whopping 80% of Americans believe immigrants from Latin America work very hard, and 80% believe immigrants from Latin America have strong family values. These figures are up from 63% and 75%, respectively, in 1997. It would be an understatement to say that the United States is tolerant of its immigrant population. Anti-illegal-immigration opinion is rooted in legitimate fiscal considerations, not xenophobia.

The United States government simply cannot afford a population of 12 million illegal aliens. The IRS’s Individual Tax Identification Number program does allow some undocumented residents to pay some taxes. However, this limited tax collection does not nearly cover education, healthcare, and welfare services. In August 2004, the Center for Immigration Studies released a landmark study on the tax behavior of illegal immigrants. The study revealed that, in 2002, households headed by illegal aliens received $26.3 billion in government services, while paying a total of $16 billion in taxes. It doesn’t take a budget analyst to comprehend the significance of a $10 billion loss over one year. And with the rate of illegal immigration increasing from 2002 to 2005 to virtually no change in government policy, federal losses are inflating rapidly.

Fiscal disaster deriving from the inherence of tax evasion to illegal immigration is not confined to the federal level. In 2004, the Washington Times reported that California’s 3 million illegal immigrants sap the state government of $10.5 billion annually. The largest contributor to this sum is the $7.7 billion cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants, who make up 15% of California’s total student population. Undocumented aliens pose a greater budgetary threat to state governments, which do not employ expansive methods of illegitimate resident tax collection such as the Individual Tax Identification Number system.

It is clear that the burden of providing education, healthcare, and welfare services to undocumented aliens is a serious impediment to our state and federal governments. To this, the pro-illegal-immigrant bloc would retort that the tax burden is easily outweighed by the strength that undocumented aliens grant to our overall economy. The bloc would probably employ the old standby, “Illegal immigrants do the jobs that we are not willing to do.” This ubiquitous catch phrase, the illegal immigration debate’s most popular fall-back, is also its most blatant fallacy.

The fact is that “we,” America’s legal immigrants and native-born workers, are indeed willing to do the jobs that illegal immigrants do. Proof of this requires looking no further than the simplest of economic statistics, unemployment. According to analysis the Center for Immigration Studies released in March, in 2005 there were an average of 4,568,000 unemployed legal residents with a high school degree or less, including 723,000 legal immigrants. This statistic doesn’t jibe with the superstition that the illegal alien population has single-handedly adopted the burden of unskilled labor in the United States. Four and a half million legitimate residents of the United States, including many legal immigrants who joined in the May 1 protest, are competing with illegal immigrants for work, and losing. In short, illegal immigrants are doing the jobs we are willing to do.

At this point, the only way to claim an economic boon due to illegal immigrant labor is to contend that illegal immigrants, because they are undocumented, are not necessarily subject to the minimum wage and can therefore work for less than legitimate residents. However, this is an impossible outlet for defenders of illegal immigration with a human rights credo. It is preposterously self-contradictory to promote illegal immigrant rights because the lack of illegal immigrant labor rights fuels the economy.

Undocumented resident labor can offer no significant economic compensation for the disastrous toll illegal immigration wreaks on federal and state budgets each year. Given this conclusion, debating legislation such as H.R. 4437 as a matter of human rights is unsatisfying. Regardless of whether a human can be illegal, undocumented immigrants cost American taxpayers billions of dollars annually. Holding illegal immigrants accountable for this deficit is a matter of fiscal responsibility, not human rights.

They don't pay taxes!!!!!!!!!!

They file tax returns to suck more money out of us!!!!!! If they have 2 kids, they get the Erned Income Credit(EIC) and they get a refund plus a "share the wealth" bonus on their return. Also their earnings and taxable income is reduced by the number of dependents, therefore their tax obligation is also significanly reduced.
They do not pay taxes.