Thread: Excellent Letter To The Editor - Cost of Illegal Immigration

From Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR)

OFIR members and supporters:

Below is an excellent letter to the editor that appeared in the Capital Press Friday. The Capital Press is an agricultural newspaper.

We encourage everyone to write letters to the editor drawing attention to the cost of illegal immigration and its impact on the wages and working conditions of American workers. The Coalition for a Working Oregon is composed of companies that want to continue to be able to hire illegal aliens and thereby keep wages low.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Capital Press

Costs of illegal migrants not cited

Lyneil Vandermolen

You should be more balanced in your reports about illegal immigrants and corporate claims that they're somehow propping up our state economy.

The Coalition for a Working Oregon is a group of businesses devoted to maintaining a steady flow of illegal aliens for cheap labor, while they transfer the real costs of this invasion to the rest of us, a fact professor (William) Jaeger conveniently omitted from his study (reported in "'No-match' rule could cost billions" published July 18 ). But how can we expect honesty or intellectual integrity from a study funded by businesses who advocate law breaking and undercutting honest businesses?

Jaeger's study left out the costs of illegal immigration to Oregon taxpayers that would easily offset any loss of income claimed by employers of illegal aliens.

Taxpayers could save themselves a billion dollars per year in bi-lingual education, which dwarfs the millions that the CWO claims we will lose. Additionally, we would save taxpayers the cost of free medical care at special Hispanic clinics, and ICE holds in every county at the cost of $40-$70 per inmate per day.

We'd save on WIC, bilingual social services and the human costs of depressed wages and crime that always accompany illegal aliens.

Law-abiding Oregon taxpayers subsidize thousands of illegal aliens while the businesses who hire them unfairly undercut honest businesses and displace American labor.

These supposedly irreplaceable lawbreakers can settle for very low wages because we taxpayers have to supply what they can't afford, but we can't afford to carry the expense forever. I didn't see that admission in Jaeger's article, but he was paid to dispense propaganda, not represent taxpayers.

Lyneil Vandermolen, Tualatin, Oregon

I didn't see that admission in Jaeger's article, but he was paid to dispense propaganda, not represent taxpayers

Whoo Boy...slam dunk!!!

Very well written.

This is the article that was being responded to by the Letter to the Editor above. What a crock! Notice the author's last name is Lies and boy does he!

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?S ... M=33598.25

'No-match' rule may hit jobs, cost billions

Oregon projected to lose half-billion dollars in revenue

Mitch Lies
Capital Press

PORTLAND - Strict implementation of the federal "no-match" rule would result in an immediate loss of 173,500 jobs, reduce state and local tax revenue by half a billion dollars and cut the economic value of Oregon's annual production by $17.7 billion, according to an Oregon State University economist's report.

The report by William Jaeger was released in a July 9 press conference sponsored by the Coalition for a Working Oregon, which commissioned the study.

The "no-match" rule is a federal regulation that calls for employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers don't match records kept by the Social Security Administration. Employers in violation of the rule could be subject to criminal penalties.

Jaeger based his study on the premise that implementation of the rule would trigger the departure of Oregon's estimated 150,000 undocumented immigrants - about two-thirds of which are believed to be part of Oregon's work force.

The immigrants' departure would ripple through Oregon's economy: Not only would the state lose jobs and production, business revenue generated by undocumented immigrants would decline sharply.

The report also showed the state's unemployment rate would not significantly decline: Jobs vacated by the immigrants would largely go unfilled, given that most of the state's unemployed are transitioning between jobs and wouldn't take the manual labor positions. Also, many of the vacated jobs would be in rural areas, while most of the state's unemployed reside in urban areas.

"There is a mismatch in skills, education and location between undocumented workers and Oregon's unemployed, making it extremely difficult to expect Oregon's unemployed to fill positions vacated by undocumented workers," Jaeger wrote.

Jaeger concludes that on some industries, such as agriculture, the impact would be much larger than on others.

Staff writer Mitch Lies is based in Salem.

E-mail: mlies@capitalpress.com.

My letter to Dear Editor Mitch:
Please get a grip on reality. After being in the emergency room half the night with my elderly mom, I would occasionally take a walk outside as I don't sit still for long. Those sitting in the waiting room, none of the conversations were carried out in English as I passed. Luckily, she had Medicare and great supp. insurance. Looking around that waiting room, all I could see was that if I ever got seriously injured or ill, I would probably be charged double what they would for anyone with insurance (whereas, with me, one of the millions uninsured, they may not be sure they will get paid.) I just wonder how many of those in that emergency room were here legally, but that doesn't matter as there is a wonderful poster (only in English, thank goodness) that says all have a right to be treated to the best the staff can, whether they have insurance or not.
I will see if I can find statistics of hospital and clinic charges of things like fixing a broken for someone with insurance, vs. someone without.

Originally Posted by vortex

My letter to Dear Editor Mitch:
Please get a grip on reality. After being in the emergency room half the night with my elderly mom, I would occasionally take a walk outside as I don't sit still for long. Those sitting in the waiting room, none of the conversations were carried out in English as I passed. Luckily, she had Medicare and great supp. insurance. Looking around that waiting room, all I could see was that if I ever got seriously injured or ill, I would probably be charged double what they would for anyone with insurance (whereas, with me, one of the millions uninsured, they may not be sure they will get paid.) I just wonder how many of those in that emergency room were here legally, but that doesn't matter as there is a wonderful poster (only in English, thank goodness) that says all have a right to be treated to the best the staff can, whether they have insurance or not.
I will see if I can find statistics of hospital and clinic charges of things like fixing a broken for someone with insurance, vs. someone without.

Keep an eye on that hospital. See how long it takes for them to be in the red and how long it takes for them to close.

Thanks, Gogo. It isn't only this hospital, but our entire healthcare system I am starting to worry about. How many are going to go belly up or rather turn to some sovereign wealth fund to be either bought or funded with strings attached.

Originally Posted by vortex

My letter to Dear Editor Mitch:
Please get a grip on reality. After being in the emergency room half the night with my elderly mom, I would occasionally take a walk outside as I don't sit still for long. Those sitting in the waiting room, none of the conversations were carried out in English as I passed. Luckily, she had Medicare and great supp. insurance. Looking around that waiting room, all I could see was that if I ever got seriously injured or ill, I would probably be charged double what they would for anyone with insurance (whereas, with me, one of the millions uninsured, they may not be sure they will get paid.) I just wonder how many of those in that emergency room were here legally, but that doesn't matter as there is a wonderful poster (only in English, thank goodness) that says all have a right to be treated to the best the staff can, whether they have insurance or not.
I will see if I can find statistics of hospital and clinic charges of things like fixing a broken for someone with insurance, vs. someone without.

Perhaps I can help with this a little bit. When my leg had to be pieced back together like a puzzle, I got 2 bills. The $17,000 one was lowered to $14,000 due to non-insurance. The $21,000 one was lowered to roughly $17,000 due to non-insurance.

However, because this was a car accident, my auto insurance kicked in. Sadly, I didn't have enough coverage (never had an accident before, so didn't know to raise those full coverage limits). The medical coverage in PA is set at base $5,000. So they paid $5,000, and I'm left sitting on the other $40,000 or so in bills, for an accident that was not my fault.
My point is, once the hospital realized I had car insurance, they reinstated the original bill values. They said that discount is only for UNINSURED persons. I argued, saying I have no MEDICAL insurance. They wouldn't budge.

Later on, when discussing the bill issues with the hospital (in Hazleton, I might add), my husband got very perturbed and said "but if she was an illegal alien she'd get everything handed to her and the state would pay for it all, right?"
The collections manager said "yeah, probably, but there's nothing we can do."

Nice eh?

I work, my husband works, we take care of our kids, we're opening a business up, I have a small side retail business, but we're just not good enough to get help the one time wee needed it most.

The Coalition for a Working Oregon wants us to believe that the state will collapse if we give the illegal alien theives the boot. The created a 43 page book of fiction and claim it's factual. Here are the links that are on their site and we're supposed to believe their propoganda?

http://www.oregoncanwork.org/

Click on Economic Study to see the virtual toilet paper they paid a professor to "create"!

Links:

Immigration Works USA

Essential Workers Immigration Coalition

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Immigration Policy Center

National Immigration Law Center

Migration Policy Institute

National Immigration Forum

Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform (AZEIR)

Arkansas Friendship Coalition

Colorado Employers for Immigration Reform (COEIR)

Federation of Employers and Workers of America (FEWA)

Florida Employers for Immigration and Visa Reform (FEIVR)

Nevada Employers for Immigration Reform (NVEIR)

Tennessee Jobs Coalition

Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy (TxSIP)

Texas Employers for Immigration Reform (TEIR)