Thread: Fact or Fiction on Illegal Immigration, you be the judge.

Surveys of immigrants show that they actually come with the expectation that welfare and social service benefits will not be available to them. What's more, per capita, they actually use welfare benefits less than the native population. Studies show that only 2% of Mexican immigrants have ever used welfare or social security and only 3% have ever used food stamps. In comparison, 84% pay income tax and none of them file a return. Because so many of them pay into the tax and social security and Medicaid systems without being able to retrieve any of that money or benefits, the government actually makes a substantial profit on each illegal who comes here. This has resulted in a surplus in social security funds of more than $50 billion a year just from payments applied to fictional social security numbers. After factoring in services provided, on average during his time in the US, an illegal immigrant will contribute $80,000 more to the government than he consumes in services. The one negative tax impact is that they act to transfer money from the states who pay most of the services, especially education, to the federal government which gets most of the tax benefits.

The vast majority of undocumented immigrants return to their home countries after spending a limited time in the US and most (64.7%) come to the US for a year or less to work and then go home. What's more, they don't breed like rabbits as many have suggested. Mexicans have 2.3 children per mother, only slightly higher than the birth rate in the US. Mexico has only a 2% annual growth in population, slightly higher than the US, but low compared to many other nations. All of this argues very strongly for the effectiveness of a guest worker type program, suggesting that most workers would use it if it was available rather than accepting 'amnesty' if offered.

Mexico is hardly an impoverished nation overall. They have a higher GDP per capita and higher wages than most nations and a relatively low cost of living. The average wage is higher than anywhere else in South and Central America, including fairly prosperous nations like Brazil. Real poor people can't afford to travel to another country to earn better wages - they're too downtrodden. Mexicans can come here because they have the resources and skills to make it practical and worthwhile. What's more, Mexicans like the life they have in Mexico. A peculiar survey conducted in 2004 determined that Mexico is the second 'happiest' country in the world in terms of how satisfied their population is with the life they have. The US ranked 15th.

Despite some highly publicized groups who have come into the U.S. from other countries and gone into organized crime - mostly legal immigrants from countries like El Salvador - immigrants as a whole are no more inclined to commit crimes than our native population. When compared by age, the crime and incarceration rates for Mexican immigrants are roughly equal to the general population and much better than most other legal and illegal immigrant groups. Perhaps if we could get past the issue of illegal Mexican immigration, we could crack down on the Cubans, Dominicans, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and Salvadorans who commit most of the immigrant crime.

While the presence of immigrant workers does reduce the cost of goods and services for consumers, this is not because they lower wages, but, because without their presence, those jobs would go unfilled. According to one analysis, we would end up with 2.5 million jobs which could not be filled, leading to business closures and inflation. It might even ultimately lead to more unemployment among native workers. The skills of natives who are out of work and the skills of undocumented immigrants are different, so natives would not take the jobs which would become available if the illegals were deported. 84% of unemployed natives have at least a high-school education, while most illegal immigrants from Mexico have less than a high-school degree. However, undocumented workers are not necessarily low paid. They may have skills and family connections which can get them well-paid, reliable employment at well above minimum wage. Even for day laborers, the median hourly wage is still around $10. On average, undocumented workers earn about $2 less per hour than documented workers in the same jobs, a difference which accurately represents the added risk and expense of hiring them. They are good at economizing and most send substantial amounts of money home to Mexico to the point where they contribute $20 billion a year to the Mexican economy which is about 3% of the Mexican GDP. Workers used to a third-world lifestyle and earning $10 a day can do very well earning that much an hour in the US.

What all this tells us is that while working here benefits illegals and Mexico, it also benefits the United States and our population in a number of ways. Immigrants are doing jobs which might go unfilled without them, keeping inflation down and contributing disproportionately to our tax and social program revenues. What's more, most of the negatives applied to them by those who'd like to close the borders appear not to be true. They don't want to flood the country and take over. They don't even want to stay here in most cases. They aren't taking jobs that Americans are willing or qualified to do. They aren't committing lots of crimes. They aren't living off of welfare or sucking up social services. They just come here to work and make their lives better.

What's also clear from the evidence is that a straightforward guest worker program would solve most of the problems currently associated with illegal immigration. It's likely that 80% of the currently undocumented workers would be perfectly satisfied with temporary worker status, leaving only a small portion of the population who would need to either be deported or put into the regular channels for immigration, perhaps with a somewhat expanded quota for immigrants from Mexico. Implementing a guest worker program and a somewhat higher immigration quota for Mexico would end the problem of illegal immigration without filling our country with huge numbers of low-skill immigrants or the vast expense of mass deportation and radically increased border security. The lower cost and practicality of this approach to the issue would free up valuable resources for much more serious border concerns like protecting the nation from those who are taking advantage of the current border chaos to enter the country with the intent to do harm.

Find a way to accommodate the illegals who just want to work, and we can focus on the criminal gangs and potential terrorists. Those who think this problem can be solved by building walls, laying minefields, and deploying troops on the border are either ill-informed and bigoted, or they are political opportunists serving some agenda other than actually solving the problem.

For a good overview of this subject see Five Myths About Immigration at the American Immigration Law Foundation.
For an analysis of taxes paid by illegal immigrants see the Reason Foundation.
For a rather slanted look at immigration with useful information on crime rates seeeRiposte.com
For details on illegal immigrant employment see Dollars and Sense.
For international economic comparisons see the InfoPlease Almanac.
For details on employment and wages for undocumented workers see American Progress.
For Information on immigration and the Mexican economy see The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

That's full of so much crap.

Take "Mexican immigrants are not criminals". The vast majority of Mexican gang members are here illegally. But I'm sure they're not really criminals.

And those fuckers aren't "Mexican immigrants", they're illegal aliens. Their very presence is a crime.

"Mexican immigrants are responsible for a $50 BILLION surplus in the Social Security Program per year"? Where the hell does he get THAT bullshit from?

immigrants and illegals are different and i don't think this data encompasses both. you can't convince a smart person bears are harmless by telling them a nice story about squirrels.

Originally Posted by ALBOB

"Mexican immigrants are responsible for a $50 BILLION surplus in the Social Security Program per year"? Where the hell does he get THAT bullshit from?

Many Illegals are paid like you and me. The employer pays the payroll tax before the worker collects so the money goes into the system.

But the illegals cannot collect SS until they become citizens. So the money paid in does not come out.