Va. Gubernatorial Candidate Backs Police Detention Of Illegal Aliens

[Predicto]

Originally posted by Sarge
I wonder how we ever got along without a few million illegals in the country?

When did we we ever get along without huge masses of immigrant labor in the US? The "illegal" part is a recent development, but the reality of the situation is the same. People from cruddy places come to America because they percieve that there is economic opportunity here. In general, they take the lousy jobs that no one else wants. They've been doing it for three hundred years. It's a huge part of our economy, especially out here in California.

[NoCalMike]

Originally posted by Predicto


When did we we ever get along without huge masses of immigrant labor in the US? The "illegal" part is a recent development, but the reality of the situation is the same. People from cruddy places come to America because they percieve that there is economic opportunity here. In general, they take the lousy jobs that no one else wants. They've been doing it for three hundred years. It's a huge part of our economy, especially out here in California.

Well said.

Part of me thinks the hostility towards illegal immigrants has more to do with parts of our country starting to look more brown in complextion as it has to do with "omg it's illegal"

[SkinsHokieFan]

I agree, I think the illegal part is horrible and that we should ship them out.

But I think Des has made great points in threads about this for a long time, we try and kick them out and you are gonna have every business associated with cheap labor clamoring to keep them in.

And I'll be honest, they are not THAT cheap. Painters now demand 15 bucks an hour, at least.

My point is, I want to see them try.

And actually, it wouldn't be bad to have centers because good god, you drive by Culmore on a week day morning?

Jeezus

[The Evil Genius]

Why kick out people who pay into Social Security and will never claim it?

[Ignatius J.]

I'll start agreeing with people who want to lock up illegal immigrants the second they agree that immigration policy in this country is a joke. the protectionists are going to be the ruin of this country economically.

If we make a serious commitment to open borders legal immigration will become the primary method of immigration. the elephant in the center of the room is that none of these illegal immigrants would have been let in legally. I think thats a joke.

These are people who want to be americans. Why not respect that and let them enter our country legally?

Until that discussion is really had, I find any discussion of sending these people packing laughable.

[Gichin13]

Originally posted by T.E.G.
Why kick out people who pay into Social Security and will never claim it?

Boy there is a nice theory. Only problem is you have hordes of people taking jobs under the table, paying zero taxes, getting free health care and welfare, and paying no social security. Then having kids born here who are automatically US citizens even where their parents are illegal.

I for one have real problems with this.

[Ignatius J.]

In practice though, many of these immigrants pay taxes and social security without enjoying the benefits of representation.

I do wonder about the stories of illegal immigrants on wellfare. That makes no sense to me at all. How does that even happen?

[Larry]

Originally posted by NoCalMike
Part of me thinks the hostility towards illegal immigrants has more to do with parts of our country starting to look more brown in complextion as it has to do with "omg it's illegal"

I do wonder if that's part of it.

Although, I think it's more of a backlash against the perception (don't know if it's true) that there are now areas of our country where English isn't welcome.

Sometimes I suspect that if the Hispanic community would just drop the Spanish-language demands, they could just walk right in and take over.

[Gichin13]

Originally posted by NoCalMike


Well said.

Part of me thinks the hostility towards illegal immigrants has more to do with parts of our country starting to look more brown in complextion as it has to do with "omg it's illegal"

That is part of it so I will agree in part.

I will also say that I honestly am starting to get completely fed up with folks coming to suck off the free boob that they see here, not wanting to bother to even learn the language, not paying taxes and getting paid under the table on everything, sending all their currency back home to their family and trashing this place while they are here.

Get sick? Show up at the emergency room and get taken care of. Disappear without paying any bills and guess who foots the ultimate bill. I think this is a hidden sunk cost that is part of what is driving our health care expenses (that plus outrageous prescription drug profits and the insurance industry trying to make back multiple years of bad investment profits).

The other part is the way a lot of folks are acting coming here. I live and work right outside DC. We have hundreds of people sitting around clogging the shopping center across the street from my work every single day. They literally trash the entire block across from my office every day (garbage on street, broken bottles everywhere). It really does not take much to put the garbage in the can.

This is not isolated: Arlington set up a "temp work shelter" down on Four Mile Run (completely pissing off WETA, one of the biggest employers in S. Arlington, in the process). Same thing is happening in Herndon to the point that a WMAL call in show got the Town of Herndon to shut down its office phones due to irate calls just last week. Same thing happens at multiple Home Depots across the No Va area.

I can only assume that when we are talking millions, yes multiple millions, of illegal immigrants every single year, that this situation is widespread and rampant across our nation. That is certainly what I read about in other places.

Naturally, these same folks hanging around create some tensions around them. There have been shootings, stabbings, and rapes in this exact area where tons of folks are just hanging around across the street from my office. And believe me, this is not a poor area -- we are talking Bailey's Cross Roads by 7 Corners Mall for those in this area.

Like it or not, there is a lot of cultural baggage getting dragged along here and I for one understand why people are getting fed up with it.

You really think any of those hundreds of people scrounging for work are paid in any other form than cash? This type of situation is widespread and rampant, especially in the construction industry. Same thing in the agricultural industry.

I am fine with folks coming here. I also do not have a huge cultural divide to cross being white. My wife is Puerto Rican and if anything she thinks the same thing on this but a whole lot stronger.

Please note I do not begrudge folks trying to get by and doing what they can to provide for their families. I think we need a more sensible immigration policy as there clearly is demand for these folks to some extent, but the numbers are straining our system and there will be hell to pay unless it gets dealt with appropriately.

Whichever party actually grabs this issue instead of pandering may steal a march on the other for the next election cycle in my view.

[ntotoro]

Originally posted by T.E.G.
Why kick out people who pay into Social Security and will never claim it?

They don't pay into Social Security, though. Your average guy goes to the 7-11 parking lot (now aka "el siete & once," I suppose), picks up a few illegal Salvadorians, pays them in peanuts or Confederate dollars, then drops them back off at the end of the day.

Not only is he getting cheap labor, but he isn't paying taxes on them, Social Security, benefits, etcetera. It's not only illegal, but he fails to pass on the savings to the consumer...

The people are here illegally to begin with and the contractors aren't paying taxes on what they pay them. Both are dire situations that need to be handled.

Not to mention living 18 to a home, still with much better conditions than they left, facilitates easy-to-hide MS-13 members. They'd cry racism if you suspect them, though, even if they have gang tattoos, clothing, stickers on tier cars, etcetera. I digress, though.

[The Evil Genius]

First off - my comment was tongue in cheek - thus the smiley face.

Seriously though - I have seen many comments on how illegals pay billions of dollars in payroll taxes and never reap the reward of the taxes (no social security is claimed).


I did a google search and found this article - not agreeing with it - just letting y'all know my quote isn't that farfetched.





Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security with Billions
By Eduardo Porter
The New York Times

Tuesday 05 April 2005

Stockton, Calif. - Since illegally crossing the Mexican border into the United States six years ago, Ángel Martínez has done backbreaking work, harvesting asparagus, pruning grapevines and picking the ripe fruit. More recently, he has also washed trucks, often working as much as 70 hours a week, earning $8.50 to $12.75 an hour.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Martínez, 28, has not given much thought to Social Security's long-term financial problems. But Mr. Martínez - who comes from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico and hiked for two days through the desert to enter the United States near Tecate, some 20 miles east of Tijuana - contributes more than most Americans to the solvency of the nation's public retirement system.

Last year, Mr. Martínez paid about $2,000 toward Social Security and $450 for Medicare through payroll taxes withheld from his wages. Yet unlike most Americans, who will receive some form of a public pension in retirement and will be eligible for Medicare as soon as they turn 65, Mr. Martínez is not entitled to benefits.

He belongs to a big club. As the debate over Social Security heats up, the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year.

While it has been evident for years that illegal immigrants pay a variety of taxes, the extent of their contributions to Social Security is striking: the money added up to about 10 percent of last year's surplus - the difference between what the system currently receives in payroll taxes and what it doles out in pension benefits. Moreover, the money paid by illegal workers and their employers is factored into all the Social Security Administration's projections.

Illegal immigration, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, co-director of immigration studies at New York University, noted sardonically, could provide "the fastest way to shore up the long-term finances of Social Security."

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrant workers pay taxes. But according to specialists, most of them do. Since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, most such workers have been forced to buy fake ID's to get a job.

Currently available for about $150 on street corners in just about any immigrant neighborhood in California, a typical fake ID package includes a green card and a Social Security card. It provides cover for employers, who, if asked, can plausibly assert that they believe all their workers are legal. It also means that workers must be paid by the book - with payroll tax deductions.

IRCA, as the immigration act is known, did little to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants or to discourage them from working. But for Social Security's finances, it was a great piece of legislation.

Starting in the late 1980's, the Social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with incorrect - sometimes simply fictitious - Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the "earnings suspense file" in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.

The file has been mushrooming ever since: $189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's, two and a half times the amount of the 1980's.

In the current decade, the file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year, generating $6 billion to $7 billion in Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes.

In 2002 alone, the last year with figures released by the Social Security Administration, nine million W-2's with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, accounting for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages.

Social Security officials do not know what fraction of the suspense file corresponds to the earnings of illegal immigrants. But they suspect that the portion is significant.

"Our assumption is that about three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen C. Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, using the agency's term for illegal immigration.

Other researchers say illegal immigrants are the main contributors to the suspense file. "Illegal immigrants account for the vast majority of the suspense file," said Nick Theodore, the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Especially its growth over the 1990's, as more and more undocumented immigrants entered the work force."

Using data from the Census Bureau's current population survey, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, estimated that 3.8 million households headed by illegal immigrants generated $6.4 billion in Social Security taxes in 2002.

A comparative handful of former illegal immigrant workers who have obtained legal residence have been able to accredit their previous earnings to their new legal Social Security numbers. Mr. Camarota is among those opposed to granting a broad amnesty to illegal immigrants, arguing that, among other things, they might claim Social Security benefits and put further financial stress on the system.

The mismatched W-2's fit like a glove on illegal immigrants' known geographic distribution and the patchwork of jobs they typically hold. An audit found that more than half of the 100 employers filing the most earnings reports with false Social Security numbers from 1997 through 2001 came from just three states: California, Texas and Illinois. According to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office, about 17 percent of the businesses with inaccurate W-2's were restaurants, 10 percent were construction companies and 7 percent were farm operations.

Most immigration helps Social Security's finances, because new immigrants tend to be of working age and contribute more than they take from the system. A simulation by Social Security's actuaries found that if net immigration ran at 1.3 million a year instead of the 900,000 in their central assumption, the system's 75-year funding gap would narrow to 1.67 percent of total payroll, from 1.92 percent - savings that come out to half a trillion dollars, valued in today's money.

Illegal immigrants help even more because they will never collect benefits. According to Mr. Goss, without the flow of payroll taxes from wages in the suspense file, the system's long-term funding hole over 75 years would be 10 percent deeper.

Yet to immigrants, the lack of retirement benefits is just part of the package of hardship they took on when they decided to make the trek north. Tying vines in a vineyard some 30 miles north of Stockton, Florencio Tapia, 20, from Guerrero, along Mexico's Pacific coast, has no idea what the money being withheld from his paycheck is for. "I haven't asked," Mr. Tapia said.

For illegal immigrants, Social Security numbers are simply a tool needed to work on this side of the border. Retirement does not enter the picture.

"There will be a moment when I won't be able to continue working," Mr. Martínez acknowledges. "But that's many years off."

Mario Avalos, a naturalized Nicaraguan immigrant who prepares income tax returns for many workers in the area, including immigrants without legal papers, observes that many older workers return home to Mexico. "Among my clients," he said, "I can't recall anybody over 60 without papers."

No doubt most illegal immigrants would prefer to avoid Social Security altogether. As part of its efforts to properly assign the growing pile of unassigned wages, Social Security sends about 130,000 letters a year to employers with large numbers of mismatched pay statements.

Though not an intended consequence of these so-called no-match letters, in many cases employers who get them dismiss the workers affected. Or the workers - fearing that immigration authorities might be on their trail - just leave.

Last February, for instance, discrepancies in Social Security numbers put an end to the job of Minerva Ortega, 25, from Zacatecas, in northern Mexico, who worked in the cheese department at a warehouse for Mike Campbell & Associates, a distributor for Trader Joe's, a popular discount food retailer with a large operation in California.

The company asked dozens of workers to prove that they had cleared up or were in the process of clearing up the "discrepancy between the information on our payroll related to your employment and the S.S.A.'s records." Most could not.

Ms. Ortega said about 150 workers lost their jobs. In a statement, Mike Campbell said that it did not fire any of the workers, but Robert Camarena, a company official, acknowledged that many left.

Ms. Ortega is now looking for work again. She does not want to go back to the fields, so she is holding out for a better-paid factory job. Whatever work she finds, though, she intends to go on the payroll with the same Social Security number she has now, a number that will not jibe with federal records.

With this number, she will continue paying taxes. Last year she paid about $1,200 in Social Security taxes, matched by her employer, on an income of $19,000.

She will never see the money again, she realizes, but at least she will have a job in the United States.

"I don't pay much attention," Ms. Ortega said. "I know I don't get any benefit."

[The Evil Genius]

So does anyone want to retract what they said about illegals not paying into social security?

[ntotoro]

How can they actually be paying into Social Security if they are here illegally, thus do not have valid SSN's? The only thing I can think is they are using a fake or someone else's. That's their tough t1tties for not getting in legally and getting a proper SSN in order to claim benefits, then.

Still, 1000% chance the people who employ day workers aren't paying into the system, either in the form of taxes or Social Security.

[Kilmer17]

What a few of them may pay in SS pales in comparison to the drain on our Govt Services. HealthCare, Schools, etc.

Im all for Legal Immigration. The more the merrier. But if you are here illegally, you are a criminal and deserve to be treated as such.

[The Evil Genius]

Originally posted by ntotoro
How can they actually be paying into Social Security if they are here illegally, thus do not have valid SSN's? The only thing I can think is they are using a fake or someone else's. That's their tough t1tties for not getting in legally and getting a proper SSN in order to claim benefits, then.

Still, 1000% chance the people who employ day workers aren't paying into the system, either in the form of taxes or Social Security.

Correct - fake ss cards. And no one is pitying them for not being able to collect what they pay into social security.

All I am saying is that its a dirty (not so anymore) little secret that illegals are helping to keep social security afloat. If we lock down the borders and wipe out all the illegals - as some here suggest -I suspect that their will be hurtful financial ramifications (as well as some positive ones like lower health care costs).

But will they +'s and -'s equal out - or sway to one side?