Thread: A new study on cost to "employers" verifying emplo

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer
Fri Apr 25, 2:45 AM ET



WASHINGTON - The government's plan to crack down on illegal workers could cost employers more than $1 billion a year and legal workers billions in lost wages, a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says.

Those costs are enough to trigger a federal law that would require the Homeland Security Department to analyze more thoroughly the effect of its proposal, said Richard Belzer, a consultant hired by the chamber to do the study. It was made available to The Associated Press on Thursday.

The department's proposed "no match" rule would require employers to fire workers who can't resolve mismatches between their name and Social Security number. The chamber opposes the proposal.

Belzer's study will be among public comments submitted to the Homeland Security Department on the proposal. The department could adopt the proposal after reviewing the comments. The deadline for comments is Friday.

Social Security sends no-match letters to employers. They often occur because someone is working illegally, but a mismatch can also take place because of typos, misspellings and name changes, among other reasons.

The Homeland Security Department issued average costs for employers based on how many employees they have and what percent might be unauthorized workers. It determined there would not be a heavy cost to employers.

Belzer, a former economist with the Office of Management and Budget, looked at overall costs and multiplied the average costs by the number of employers in each category. He also used the Homeland Security's estimates that 2 percent of legal workers a year would lose their jobs because they can't resolve the Social Security mismatch.

That adds up to between 37,000 to 137,000 unable to get work. Belzer estimated their lost wages would be from $8 billion to $37 billion.

Belzer said the crackdown could cost employers who have to carry out administrative paperwork when their employees are affected. The loss of employees could also affect a company's ability to produce goods.

His cost estimates are based on the department's now -suspended plan to enforce the no-match rule after the government sent 140,000 employers no-match letters, each with about 10 or more names. A U.S. district judge blocked the plan last October after groups opposed to it sued. The department is appealing.

A law in place since 1981 requires agencies to do a comprehensive study of proposed regulations if the cost exceeds $100 million, said Belzer, an independent consultant.

"This is 10 times that," Belzer said. "They haven't done the level of analysis that for almost 30 years would be commonplace."

Russ Knocke, the department's spokesman, said while the he is "not shy to talk about the virtues of no-match, it's difficult to talk about something I have not seen."

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"If you can't do business legally, then you have no business being in business."

After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.

Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf

A partial summary of the report:

The impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.

Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.

An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.

Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.

The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 200 , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).

The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.

NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.

In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.

With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.

Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.

The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.

hahaha The Chamber of Commerce crying over this, that's a good one. The largest lobbying group in Washington....boo hoo

I'd love to see members of the Chamber hanging out around MacAurthor park in Los Angeles to see what their great policies have lead to.

Riddle me this:

That adds up to between 37,000 to 137,000 unable to get work. Belzer estimated their lost wages would be from $8 billion to $37 billion.

How much would I be making if I were one of the 37,000 making $8 million or one of the 137,000 making $37 million? Seems awfully high to me.

He also used the Homeland Security's estimates that 2 percent of legal workers a year would lose their jobs because they can't resolve the Social Security mismatch.

TWO PERCENT?? Are you kidding me?!?!??!!? A hell of a lot more than 2% of legal workers are losing jobs to illegal aliens every day! What a colossal joke!

Riddle me this:

Quote:
That adds up to between 37,000 to 137,000 unable to get work. Belzer estimated their lost wages would be from $8 billion to $37 billion.



How much would I be making if I were one of the 37,000 making $8 million or one of the 137,000 making $37 million? Seems awfully high to me.

Quote:
He also used the Homeland Security's estimates that 2 percent of legal workers a year would lose their jobs because they can't resolve the Social Security mismatch.

If my calculator is not malfunctioning that amounts to $216,000 to $270,000 a year for each person. I don't know about the rest of you but I make considerably less than that!

The premise of the story is disingenuous in the least, but is outright misleading at worst.

The 'costs' involved in the debate range much wider and deeper than just costs to IAs/workers with clerical errors/people that haven't updated the SS information/etc and businesses that employ such people. The costs involve American wages depressed in many industries (lost earning power), greater job insecurity, the affect of crimes upon local population, the huge burden of educating IA children and/or their anchor babies, add also the healthcare costs, etc, etc.

Oh sure, the USCoC can talk about 'costs', because they are not the ones carrying the burden of the REAL costs associated with the problem. The average Joe and Jane American are left to pick up that tab.... on their shrinking budget, in their more precarious job situation, etc.

Bunch of BS from openborder A**wipes, not even worth a reply