Thread: S.C.: 10 big questions on immigration

10 big questions on immigration
By Noah Haglund
The Post and Courier
Saturday, March 15, 2008

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

In the coming weeks, The Post and Courier will explore the potential consequences of illegal immigration on people in business, law enforcement, health and education.

South Carolina is like many states grappling with the issue of illegal immigration from both an economic and legal perspective. It's important to know the basics before decisions are made. The Post and Courier researched answers for ten basic questions about immigrants living and working in the United States.


Q: Are illegal immigrants driving down wages?

A: If you work in construction, food service or landscaping, the answer is yes. Wages in these three industries declined from 2000 to 2005, despite an economic boom that should have pushed them higher. Still, undocumented workers earn higher wages than many people assume. In the fall, while the local construction industry was still strong, many reported earning $8 to $10 an hour, well above the $5.85 minimum wage.

Source: University of South Carolina Consortium for Latino Studies,

interviews with day laborers

"It's not just wages. Employers value this labor force, too, because of low absenteeism, high productivity." — Doug Woodward, economics professor at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina


Q. Are today's immigrants different from 100 years ago?

A: Yes and no. The U.S. did not restrict immigration before 1880. As laws passed setting limits, the number of unauthorized immigrants grew. After strict restrictions were passed in the 1960s, illegal immigration jumped. The foreign-born population is now 12.4 percent. That is higher than any time during the past 50 years, but it is comparable to 1860 to 1930. The highest was 14.8 percent in the 1890s. Immigrants have always come for similar reasons: jobs and a desire to reunite with family. Fewer immigrants today are European; most come from Asia and Latin America. In the past, most immigrants were poor and unskilled, while a third of immigrants today are highly educated professionals.

Sources: Pew Hispanic Center; U.S. Census Bureau; Donna R. Gabaccia, director of Immigration History Research Center at University of Minnesota


Q: Why don't immigrants come here legally?

A: Nearly half of all immigrants now living in the U.S. entered legally with border crossing cards and on visitor and student visas, then overstayed their allowed time. The U.S. does not allow people from many countries a legal pathway to enter and stay permanently unless they have an immediate family member or employer to sponsor them. Mexico is one of those restricted countries. Temporary work visas exist, but they are complicated and require a petition from an employer.

Sources: Pew Hispanic Center, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Q: Why don't immigrants want to learn English?

A: Many do, but they don't have time. Also, acquiring a new language becomes more difficult with age. Immigrants pack local English classes several nights a week. A national study, while not differentiating legal status, found that Latinos born outside the U.S. were more likely to value learning English than U.S.-born Latinos. Ninety-six percent of foreign-born respondents said teaching English to immigrants' children was "very important," compared with 88 percent of U.S.-born Latinos.

Sources: Trident Literacy Association, Pew Hispanic Center

"These people desperately want to learn English and are willing to come to class at night even after a long day's work." — Eileen Chepenik, executive director of the Trident Literacy Association.


Q: Are illegal immigrants taking American jobs?

A: It depends on whom you ask. Landscaping, construction and service-industry employers have long complained about a shortage of reliable workers. At the same time, research shows that the immigrant labor pool, legal and illegal, has been displacing younger U.S.-born workers. Also, farm worker earnings have been rising more slowly than wages as a whole, the opposite of what economists would expect amid a worker shortage.

Sources: University of South Carolina Consortium for Latino Studies, Center for Immigration Studies

Q: Why doesn't the federal government arrest day-laborers waiting for work on the street, because so many of them are in the U.S. illegally?

A: Immigration and Customs Enforcement prioritizes public safety and national security threats, such as gangs, drugs and human smuggling. Agents can't just pick up people on the street who appear to be from another country. They must follow investigative leads with limited resources, having only 26 agents for all of South Carolina.

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

"ICE does not randomly enforce immigration law. [...] Additionally, ICE does not engage in racial profiling of any type." — Richard Rocha, of the ICE in Washington


Q: Do illegal immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime, apart from the act of living in the U.S. illegally?

A: There is little reliable data. The Charleston County Detention Center, like most other local jails, does not track immigration status. Nor does the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which houses federal inmates, track whether people are in the U.S. legally. But the bureau does record citizenship. Of 200,000-plus inmates, 147,843 were U.S. citizens, and 41,927 were citizens of Latin American countries — nearly 21 percent. Another 10,893 prisoners hail from other countries or are of unknown citizenship. Federal prisons have a greater share of foreign citizens since the federal government prosecutes immigration violations.

Sources: Federal Bureau of Prisons, S.C. Department of Corrections, Charleston County Sheriff's Office

"From my perspective, illegal immigrants have not, in the past, committed a disproportionate amount of our crime. I have noticed, however, that they are becoming more involved in criminal behaviors each year." — North Charleston Police Chief Jon Zumalt


Q: Do illegal immigrants collect public benefits?

A: Yes and no. The Post and Courier called more than a dozen federal, state and local agencies and found that nearly all check immigration status and deny benefits to undocumented people. They are ineligible for food stamps, and from November 2006 to November 2007, 5,731 people in South Carolina were denied Medicaid because they could not prove citizenship. Federal food assistance programs, however, such as Women, Infants, and Children and the National School Lunch Program, can benefit undocumented people. The exact cost is impossible to determine, although a national think tank that advocates reducing immigration estimates food assistance costs the U.S. nearly $2 billion. By federal law, children attend public schools regardless of citizenship. South Carolina spends $4.2 million to provide language instruction. That amount rose $1.7 million in the past two years.

Sources: S.C. Department of Health and Human Services, S.C. Department of Education, Center for Immigration Studies


Q: Are illegal immigrants contributing to the health care crisis?

A: Since health care professionals do not record immigration status, the cost of illegal immigrants is unknown. In 2005, Latinos in South Carolina comprised 1.6 percent of hospital discharges. Also in 2005, about 2 percent of patient visits at the Medical University of South Carolina were people whose primary language was Spanish. The numbers are rising. The number of Spanish speakers treated in 1995 was 85; in 2005, Hispanics made 19,604 visits. In cases of noncatastrophic care, many immigrants agree to payment plans.

Sources: University of South Carolina Consortium for Latino Studies and Moore School of Business, MUSC, S.C. Department of Health and Human Services, immigrant interviews

"The first question they ask is 'Where do I pay?' " — Jason Roberson, coordinator of interpreter services at MUSC


Q: Do illegal immigrants pay taxes?

A: Yes. They pay sales taxes. Many also pay into Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes, unless they're paid under the table by employers, but do not receive much in return. Their impact is debatable. The Social Security Administration says it collected about $11.5 billion from about 10.3 million W-2s where the name and the Social Security number did not match. Some mismatches resulted from typos or name changes, while some forms have invalid numbers. Just how many, the administration cannot say. Some say this is keeping Social Security afloat; other studies say it has a minimal impact. When illegal immigrants have children, the cost to put them through school might outweigh the taxes their parents contribute.

Sources: U.S. Government Accountability Office, U.S. Social Security Administration, University of South Carolina, Center for Immigration Studies

www.charleston.net

The once-"conquered" scourge of tuberculosis has made a terrifying comeback, especially in America's inner cities (the American Lung Association has called TB "out of control"), and drug-resistant TB accounts for more and more new cases. The reason? Record legal and illegal immigration levels. Indeed, the highest numbers of multi-drug-resistant TB cases are in New York, California, Texas and Florida – states with the highest populations of new immigrants.

Leprosy, the contagious skin disease evoking thoughts of biblical and medieval times, is now making its mark in the United States, and many believe the influx of illegal aliens is the main factor.

Avian influenza – or "bird flu" – has caused such concern at the highest level of the U.S. government that in 2005, the Congressional Budget Office reported that a severe pandemic of avian flu hitting the U.S. would kill 2 million Americans and throw the country into a major recession.

Other diseases once virtually unknown in America, like Chagas disease and Dengue fever, are cropping up in southern border areas, while old and much-feared plagues like polio and malaria are also on the upswing.

Compounding all of this, the astronomical number of illegal aliens swarming into the United States is forcing the closure of dozens of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and threatening to destroy America's prized health-care system.

These ILLEGALS are much different from past Legal Immigrants’, they do not want to be Part of the United States they want to take over the United States for a Foreign Power(Third World Country) under that Government's direction and assisted by United States Citizens and other ILLEGALS of the same heritage(sp.) as this Third World Country not to mention our elitist politicians and their elitist contributors.