Thread: Misconceptions cause unfounded fear of illegal immigrants am

Misconceptions cause unfounded fear of illegal immigrants among U.S. citizens
Javier Puerto opinions@kykernel.com.
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: Opinions

http://media.www.kykernel.com


In the ongoing local and national discussion on whether illegal immigrants should be issued driver's licenses, I would like to address several issues regarding illegal immigration.

First, I often hear people say "illegal immigrants have no rights." That is a misconception at best and an intentionally biased opinion at worst. The truth is, illegal immigrants also have rights that are protected by the law.

In the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court established that "whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a 'person' in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as 'persons' guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."

People who are against issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants argue that it does not make our roads safer. The argument that illegal immigrants are "the same drivers as the day before they were granted a license," as Carl Ross wrote in his letter to the editor in Tuesday's Kernel, lacks any notion of logic.

To obtain a driver's license, an individual must pass the written test, vision test and road test so that they can be certified as a valid driver. Issuing illegal immigrants licenses doesn't mean lowering the standard requirements for them. Instead, they have to practice and become competent drivers before they are issued a driver's license.

Driver's licenses are often used in the United States for identification purposes, but they do not give illegal immigrants rights to which they are not entitled, as some people assume falsely. Such photo IDs are not used in the U.S. in order to grant rights but to ensure that an individual's civil identity corresponds with only one physical person.

I am a legal alien who has a valid driver's license in spite of not being an American citizen. I am also aware that under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the executive branch has the power to detain indefinitely legal aliens like myself on U.S. soil without a writ of habeas corpus. My having a driver's license does not grant me any right to revise my status and demand from a court that I be treated as a citizen in the event that I am put in prison indefinitely. The same applies to other rights that I lack, such as the right to vote.

I often hear the argument that illegal immigrants steal hardworking American taxpayers' money since these immigrants benefit from social services. If one looks into this issue in depth, they will find that facts tell a whole different story.

For starters, as a legal alien, my tax contribution is no different from that of a citizen, and I do not feel robbed when a poor immigrant or an American citizen without health insurance (there were 46 million people in this country without health insurance in 2004) uses my tax dollars to receive assistance in critical situations.

"About three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen Goss, social security chief actuary, in a 2005 article in The New York Times. Furthermore, the Social Security Administration reported in 2003 that illegal immigrants add an estimated $7 billion each year to Social Security and Medicare, the article reported.

A small group of people still holds the opinion that illegal immigrants in this country should be identified and deported. Never mind the potentially disastrous consequences if this plan were carried out, just the cost of such an operation makes it impractical. A 2005 National Policy Institute report estimated that it would cost $206 billion over five years to deport all 10 million-plus illegal immigrants in the U.S. In comparison, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal 2006 was $40.3 billion. Feasible option? I think not.

Despite what some people believe, opinions about illegal immigration in this country are rather diverse and complex.

A May 2007 poll by CBS found that 69 percent of American adults believe illegal immigrants should "be prosecuted and deported for being in the U.S. illegally," although 62 percent also said that aliens who have been in the United States at least two years should be "given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status."

People do, indeed, lack familiarity with the economic reality of illegal immigration in the United States. This state of confusion is reflected on poll results, which vary depending on how the issue is approached and who the respondents are.

It is evident that the more people educate themselves about immigration and its related economic issues, the more they realize how complex the problem is and how much more scrupulous our discussion of it should become.

Javier Puerto is a part-time instructor in the UK Hispanic Studies Department. E-mail

BLAH BLAH BLAH....BLAH.

THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS TO DEMAND CITIZENSHIP IN THIS COUNTRY...WHICH IS WHAT THEY ARE DOING. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE OR DEMAND TO BE HERE. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISPLACE AMERICAN WORKERS OR AMERICAN STUDENTS.

MISCONCEPTIONS? YAH RIGHT....ITS ALL IN OUR IMAGINATION.

Originally Posted by redpony353

BLAH BLAH BLAH....BLAH.

THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS TO DEMAND CITIZENSHIP IN THIS COUNTRY...WHICH IS WHAT THEY ARE DOING. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE HERE OR DEMAND TO BE HERE. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISPLACE AMERICAN WORKERS OR AMERICAN STUDENTS.

MISCONCEPTIONS? YAH RIGHT....ITS ALL IN OUR IMAGINATION.

LOL
my thoughts exactly

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

It's 6AM and I'm trying to wake up, but this article is putting me to sleep!! I didn't even bother finishing it.

Blah, blah, blah is right!

zzzzzzzzzzzz

Yes, they have a right to a trip back to their country of origin.

Or at least a flinging across which ever border point they crossed at.

No more or no less than if cattle had of wandered across.

So, they are guaranteed due process? Fine. Let them sit in jail until they go to court and the judge orders them deported.

Misconception my foot.

Regardless of the deportation cost, it is still far less than the annual burden currently being forced upon American taxpayers. It's similar to paying cash for expensive furniture, rather than buying it on credit. By the time you pay the interest over the years, you will have paid for the furniture 5 times.

Lets pay to have them deported, and be done with it. And yes, we CAN deport them all.

"A small group of people still holds the opinion that illegal immigrants in this country should be identified and deported. Never mind the potentially disastrous consequences if this plan were carried out, just the cost of such an operation makes it impractical. A 2005 National Policy Institute report estimated that it would cost $206 billion over five years to deport all 10 million-plus illegal immigrants in the U.S. In comparison, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal 2006 was $40.3 billion. Feasible option? I think not."

I left my opinion on his article. Minus the $206 billion he states it would cost for deporting illegal aliens, over a five year period we would SAVE about $1.5 TRILLION!!!


$338.3 BILLION EACH YEAR



It is hoped that these 14 reasons will be forwarded over and over again until they are read by the majority of Americans. Then they will have the dollars and "sense" to yell at their U.S. Congress members.


1. $11 Billion to $22 Billion are spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.




2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year are spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year are spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for non-English speaking children who are here illegally.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year are spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html

6. $3 Million dollars a day are spent to

incarcerate illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html


7. $90 Billion dollars a year are spent on illegal aliens for welfare and social services by the American taxpayers.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0 ... dt.01.html

And they say they can't locate them?????

8. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html



9. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

10. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."
http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html

11. 30% percent of all federal prison inmates are illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html


12. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... dt.01.html



13. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our southern border. As many as 19,500 of these illegal aliens were from terrorist countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine and marijuana, crossed into the U. S. from the southern border along with them.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ ... ersion.pdf



14. The National Policy Institute "estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 Billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 Billion annually over a five year period."
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/ ... hp?b=splc1


Using the lowest estimates, the annual cost of ILLEGAL ALIENS is $338.3 BILLION

1. Close all Check Cashing, Banks open to Illegals, and Postal Facilities that allowed money to be sent out of the country.

2. Start shutting down businesses hiring illegals or caught with illegals on their premises.

3. Deny access of any illegal children to schools.


Make an hourly radio, and television anouncement on all Networks for 24 hours, that all illegals need to be making their way back to their on country. Allow them exactly 14 days to get out of Dodge. If they don't, their money and cars will be confiscated for back taxes.

Make them aware, that anyone caught after 14 days will not get a trial, they will go to jail, no questions asked.

I wonder what the Mass Exodus would be like. I bet they would start going for the border within 24 hours.

Then you could take the ones that were rounded up and make them clean up the mess in Dwellings the illegals destroyed. Make them build the border fence for 6 months. Offer them minimum wage work on the fence or start busing them back to the Border on School Buses.

I bet it would not take a month to get 75% of them out of here. Once some saw that we mean business........Vamos!

After 30 days, declare borders are closed, and anyone entering will be shot on sight.

Declare absolute standstill on any immigration for 5 years until new policies can be implemented.