Eturnalshift wrote:
Right. If someone is siphoning gas out of your car at night, overall, increase expenditures on gas each month, then it's ultimately your fault if you go over your gas budget because you didn't budget enough for yourself and the person stealing from you?
If you're aware that someone is siphoning gas and you can't or don't want to stop it, then you can't just refuse to put more gas in the tank and drive around like it isn't happening - you may find yourself stranded in the middle of the highway.
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Again, it goes deeper than an Income Tax. Property Taxes, Federal Income Taxes and proper gauging of the actual population compounds the problem making illegals a drain on the system. (Illegals do receive public services like education, health care, emergency services, translators at public and government facilities, etc... and, in most cases, they're not fully paying their part.)
The context was that Texas can't afford to provide state-level services to illegal immigrants. If they're paying the same state-level taxes as a citizen living in Texas, I don't see how that can be the case.
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I already addressed that illegals can register for a Tax ID number which allows them to file Federal taxes. Less than 10% actually do so.
Ah, ok I missed that. I'm not sure where you're getting the 10% number though. However, any level of compliance with federal taxation is impressive, considering that they will never get the money they pay into Social Security back. Anyways, if this is the main problem with illegal immigration it should be easy enough to take measures to ensure more illegal immigrants do pay taxes - I assume most citizens pay their taxes, so apply the same incentives to illegals. If this means documenting and not deporting them to ensure compliance, I guess that's the logical step.
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Fair enough. Can we look at how many illegals - hell, even legals, for that matter - will send their earnings back to their native countries? I read a story in one of the Washington area publications about a man who was doing this... too bad I can't submit it as evidence for it happening since you'll dismiss it as anecdotal evidence.
Certainly this is something else you have to account for, but money sent back to other countries may also be spent on purchasing goods exported from the US - the US is the 3rd largest export economy in the world. As I said, this is a complex issue.
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What we've learned in this thread: Statistics are the most reliable thing when discussing points with Laelia... even if statistics are hand-picked, skewed, run through special equations and spit out - often not even released if it doesn't back up your point. Secondly, first-hand experience doesn't mean a damn thing. Lastly, only Laelia can use anecdotal evidence, like linking articles that mention the Mayor of a city saying, "Oh, it's not that bad." (Of course not, Mayor. Last thing you should do is drive away tourism and speak ill of your city.)
Yes, I like statistics. It's hard to have a rational discussion about a factual matter of this type without them. If you want to dismiss a given set of statistics because they're biased that's fine, but give some reason for it other than the fact that they disagree with your expectations. I linked that anecdote in response to another anecdote to show how two people's experiences of the same area might be different, and after an analysis based on FBI statistics. There's nothing wrong with anecdotes as such, just don't expect them to prove your point.