Boredalt wrote:
Laelia, I was sure you were trolling. I guess not. It is never my intent to make anyone angry during these spirited debates. As I've previously stated, I love this kind of point/counterpoint, and if I offended you, let me publicly apologize. You guys can carry on, but I'll just follow along. Also, sorry to anyone else I may have offended. My bad.
I may or may not be trolling, depending on how you define it. I'm not saying anything I don't believe is true, but I also don't particularly care about this issue and I am posting solely for the sake of arguing. Take that however you want.
Quote:
Where do you get off thinking illegal immigrants are entitled to services paid for by others? There isn't an issue with allocation. There is an issue with allowing illegals to roam freely.
Although there isn't an Income tax, many locales have local taxes. Also, illegals like to pack themselves into a single property. When you have one property paying taxes, yet you have multiple families living out of that one property, it does tend to throw things off. Furthermore, the states get Federal money based on population, education, etc. Some sources say less than ten percent of illegals actually file for a Tax ID to pay their Federal taxes; that means 90% are cheating the system. (I'm pretty sure they don't help raise the state education rankings, either, killing Federal funding.)
Still, when you look at all the services provided by a state - any state - to the illegal population, coupled with the handouts provided by the Federal government, factoring in lost revenues from Income, Property and other Federal Taxes... I'd guess the legal American population is paying billions each year to keep that population afloat.
Where did I state that I think illegal immigrants are entitled to services they don't pay for? Budgeting to provide services for fewer people than you will actually be providing for is clearly an issue with how you're budgeting.
Again, Texas doesn't have an income tax, and there don't seem to be local income taxes there either. It seems in this case the only potential problem for that state would be that illegal immigrants might be willing to live in higher densities than the average citizen. I really don't see that as something terribly harmful, but perhaps you think it's worth spending billions to crack down on illegal immigrants due to their tolerance for high occupancy densities.
If you really want illegal immigrants to pay federal taxes, perhaps the government should find a way to issue them Social Security numbers so they can actually file tax returns. My understanding is that they currently have to use fraudulent numbers if they want to pay taxes. Addressing the larger point, you can't just look at costs and direct tax revenues for comparison - illegal immigrants, like everyone else in the country, are part of the broader economy. By working and spending money, they increase the size of the economy, and so indirectly increase both government and private revenues. This effect is obviously very hard to measure, but just hand-waving to say they have a strong negative impact isn't very convincing.
