On Mon, 5 Nov 2007 10:29:22 -0700, "Seth Hammond"
mumbled:


"sonic okies" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 5 Nov 2007 09:04:10 -0700, "Seth Hammond"
mumbled:

Does anyone who knows have any comment?


(nasty racist drivel snipped)

No, no nasty racist cocksucker.

Shut the **** up you homo-obsessed festering pile of traitorous dog
****!

I made reference to no such chickenfeed. I
asked about 365 BILLION plus dollars paid illegally to IRS


CITE!

PROVE IT!!!!!

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

The High Cost of Cheap Labor
Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget

Executive Summary


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This study is one of the first to estimate the total impact of illegal
immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused
on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax
payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds
that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are
considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the
federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that,
if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit
would grow to nearly $29 billion.

Among the findings:

Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in
costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in
taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or
$2,700 per illegal household.


Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the
uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food
stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal
prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools
($1.4 billion).


With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree,
the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education
levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal
status or heavy use of most social services.


On average, the costs that illegal households impose on federal
coffers are less than half that of other households, but their tax
payments are only one-fourth that of other households.


Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their
American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth.
Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will
not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access
them.


If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use
services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same
education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would
increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net
cost of $29 billion.


Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal
status -- what most illegal aliens would become -- can access
government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.


Although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77
percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.


The fact that legal immigrants with few years of schooling are a large
fiscal drain does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a net
drain -- many legal immigrants are highly skilled.


The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they
create for the federal government is not the result of an
unwillingness to work.


The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the
National Research Council, which also found that immigrants' education
level is a key determinant of their fiscal impact.

A Complex Fiscal Picture
Welfare use. Our findings show that many of the preconceived notions
about the fiscal impact of illegal households turn out to be
inaccurate. In terms of welfare use, receipt of cash assistance
programs tends to be very low, while Medicaid use, though significant,
is still less than for other households. Only use of food assistance
programs is significantly higher than that of the rest of the
population. Also, contrary to the perceptions that illegal aliens
don't pay payroll taxes, we estimate that more than half of illegals
work "on the books." On average, illegal households pay more than
$4,200 a year in all forms of federal taxes. Unfortunately, they
impose costs of $6,950 per household.



Social Security and Medicare. Although we find that the net effect of
illegal households is negative at the federal level, the same is not
true for Social Security and Medicare. We estimate that illegal
households create a combined net benefit for these two programs in
excess of $7 billion a year, accounting for about 4 percent of the
total annual surplus in these two programs. However, they create a net
deficit of $17.4 billion in the rest of the budget, for a total net
loss of $10.4 billion. Nonetheless, their impact on Social Security
and Medicare is unambiguously positive. Of course, if the Social
Security totalization agreement with Mexico signed in June goes into
effect, allowing illegals to collect Social Security, these
calculations would change.

The Impact of Amnesty. Finally, our estimates show that amnesty would
significantly increase tax revenue. Because both their income and tax
compliance would rise, we estimate that under the most likely scenario
the average illegal alien household would pay 77 percent ($3,200) more
a year in federal taxes once legalized. While not enough to offset the
118 percent ($8,200) per household increase in costs that would come
with legalization, amnesty would significantly increase both the
average income and tax payments of illegal aliens.

What's Different About Today's Immigration. Many native-born Americans
observe that their ancestors came to America and did not place great
demands on government services. Perhaps this is true, but the size and
scope of government were dramatically smaller during the last great
wave of immigration. Not just means-tested programs, but expenditures
on everything from public schools to roads were only a fraction of
what they are today. Thus, the arrival of unskilled immigrants in the
past did not have the negative fiscal implications that it does today.
Moreover, the American economy has changed profoundly since the last
great wave of immigration, with education now the key determinant of
economic success. The costs that unskilled immigrants impose simply
reflect the nature of the modern American economy and welfare state.
It is doubtful that the fiscal costs can be avoided if our immigration
policies remain unchanged.

Policy Implications
The negative impact on the federal budget need not be the only or even
the primary consideration when deciding what to do about illegal
immigration. But assuming that the fiscal status quo is unacceptable,
there are three main changes in policy that might reduce or eliminate
the fiscal costs of illegal immigration. One set of options is to
allow illegal aliens to remain in the country, but attempt to reduce
the costs they impose. A second set of options would be to grant them
legal status as a way of increasing the taxes they pay. A third option
would be to enforce the law and reduce the size of the illegal
population and with it the costs of illegal immigration.

Reducing the Cost Side of the Equation. Reducing the costs illegals
impose would probably be the most difficult of the three options
because illegal households already impose only about 46 percent as
much in costs on the federal government as other households. Thus, the
amount of money that can be saved by curtailing their use of public
services even further is probably quite limited. Moreover, the fact
that benefits are often received on behalf of their U.S.-citizen
children means that it is very difficult to prevent illegal households
from accessing the programs they do. And many of the programs illegals
use most extensively are likely to be politically very difficult to
cut, such as the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program.
Other costs, such as incarcerating illegals who have been convicted of
crimes are unavoidable. It seems almost certain that if illegals are
allowed to remain in the country, the fiscal deficit will persist.

Increasing Tax Revenue by Granting Amnesty. As discussed above, our
research shows that granting illegal aliens amnesty would dramatically
increase tax revenue. Unfortunately, we find that costs would increase
even more. Costs would rise dramatically because illegals would be
able to access many programs that are currently off limits to them.
Moreover, even if legalized illegal aliens continued to be barred from
using some means-tested programs, they would still be much more likely
to sign their U.S.-citizen children up for them because they would
lose whatever fear they had of the government. We know this because
immigrants with legal status, who have the same education levels and
resulting low incomes as illegal aliens, sign their U.S.-citizen
children up for programs like Medicaid at higher rates than illegal
aliens with U.S.-citizen children. In addition, direct costs for
programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit would also grow
dramatically with legalization. Right now, illegals need a Social
Security number and have to file a tax return to get the credit. As a
result, relatively few actually get it. We estimate that once
legalized, payments to illegals under this program would grow more
than ten-fold.

From a purely fiscal point of view, the main problem with legalization
is that illegals would, for the most part, become unskilled legal
immigrants. And unskilled legal immigrants create much larger fiscal
costs than unskilled illegal aliens. Legalization will not change the
low education levels of illegal aliens or the fact that the American
labor market offers very limited opportunities to such workers,
whatever their legal status. Nor will it change the basic fact that
the United States, like all industrialized democracies, has a
well-developed welfare state that provides assistance to low-income
workers. Large fiscal costs are simply an unavoidable outcome of
unskilled immigration given the economic and fiscal realities of
America today.

Enforcing Immigration Laws. If we are serious about avoiding the
fiscal costs of illegal immigration, the only real option is to
enforce the law and reduce the number of illegal aliens in the
country. First, this would entail much greater efforts to police the
nation's land and sea borders. At present, less than 2,000 agents are
on duty at any one time on the Mexican and Canadian borders. Second,
much greater effort must be made to ensure that those allowed into the
country on a temporary basis, such as tourists and guest workers, are
not likely to stay in the country permanently. Third, the centerpiece
of any enforcement effort would be to enforce the ban on hiring
illegal aliens. At present, the law is completely unenforced.
Enforcement would require using existing databases to ensure that all
new hires are authorized to work in the United States and levying
heavy fines on businesses that knowingly employ illegal aliens.
Finally, a clear message from policymakers, especially senior members
of the administration, that enforcement of the law is valued and
vitally important to the nation, would dramatically increase the
extremely low morale of those who enforce immigration laws.

Policing the border, enforcing the ban on hiring illegal aliens,
denying temporary visas to those likely to remain permanently, and all
the other things necessary to reduce illegal immigration will take
time and cost money. However, since the cost of illegal immigration to
the federal government alone is estimated at over $10 billion a year,
significant resources could be devoted to enforcement efforts and
still leave taxpayers with significant net savings. Enforcement not
only has the advantage of reducing the costs of illegal immigration,
it also is very popular with the general public. Nonetheless,
policymakers can expect strong opposition from special interest
groups, especially ethnic advocacy groups and those elements of the
business community that do not want to invest in labor-saving devices
and techniques or pay better salaries, but instead want access to
large numbers of cheap, unskilled workers. If we choose to continue to
not enforce the law or to grant illegals amnesty, both the public and
policymakers have to understand that there will be significant
long-term costs for taxpayers.

Summary Methodology
Overall Approach. To estimate the impact of households headed by
illegal aliens, we rely heavily on the National Research Council's
(NRC) 1997 study, "The New Americans." Like that study, we use the
March Current Population Survey (CPS) and the decennial Census, both
collected by the Census Bureau. We use the March 2003 CPS, which asks
questions about income, household structure, and use of public
services in the calendar year prior to the survey. We control total
federal expenditures and tax receipts by category to reflect actual
expenditures and tax payments. Like the NRC, we assume that immigrants
have no impact on defense-related expenditures and therefore assign
those costs only to native-headed households. Like the NRC, we define
a household as persons living together who are related. Individuals
living alone or with persons to whom they are unrelated are treated as
their own households. As the NRC study points out, a "household is the
primary unit through which public services are consumed and taxes
paid." Following the NRC's example of using households, many of which
include U.S.-citizen children, as the unit of analysis makes sense
because the presence of these children and the costs they create are a
direct result of their parents having been allowed to enter and remain
in country. Thus, counting services used by these children allows for
a full accounting of the costs of illegal immigration.

Identifying Illegal Aliens in Census Bureau Data. While the CPS does
not ask respondents if they are illegal aliens, the Urban Institute,
the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the
Census Bureau have used socio-demographic characteristics in the data
to estimate the size and characteristics of the illegal population. To
identify illegal aliens in the survey, we used citizenship status,
year of arrival in the United States, age, country of birth,
educational attainment, sex, receipt of welfare programs, receipt of
Social Security, veteran status, and marital status. This method is
based on some very well-established facts about the characteristics of
the illegal population. In some cases, we assume that individuals have
zero chance of being an illegal alien, such as naturalized citizens,
veterans, and individuals who report that they personally receive
Social Security benefits or cash assistance from a welfare program or
those who are enrolled in Medicaid. However, other members of a
household, mainly the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, can and do
receive these programs. We estimate that there were 8.7 million
illegal aliens included in the March 2003 CPS. By design, our
estimates for the size and characteristics of the illegal population
are very similar to those prepared by the Census Bureau, the INS, and
the Urban Institute.

Estimating the Impact of Amnesty. We assume that any amnesty that
passes Congress will have Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) as a
component. Even though the President's amnesty proposal in January
seems to envision "temporary" worker status, every major legalization
bill in Congress, including those sponsored by Republican legislators,
provides illegal aliens with LPR status at some point in the process.
Moreover, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has indicated his
strong desire to give LPR status to illegal aliens.

To estimate the likely impact of legalization, we run two different
simulations. In our first simulation, we assume that legalized illegal
aliens would use services and pay taxes like all households headed by
legal immigrants with the same characteristics. In this simulation, we
control for the education level of the household head and whether the
head is from Mexico. The first simulation shows that the net fiscal
deficit grows from about $2,700 to more than $6,000 per household. In
the second simulation, we again control for education and whether the
household head is Mexican and also assume that illegals would become
like post-1986 legal immigrants, excluding refugees. Because illegals
are much more like recently arrived non-refugees than legal immigrants
in general, the second simulation is the more plausible. The second
simulation shows that the net fiscal deficit per household would climb
to $7,700.

Results Similar to Other Studies. Our overall conclusion that
education level is the primary determinant of tax payments made and
services used is very similar to the conclusion of the 1997 National
Research Council report, "The New Americans." The results of our study
also closely match the findings of a 1998 Urban Institute study, which
examined tax payments by illegal aliens in New York State. In order to
test our results we ran separate estimates for federal taxes and found
that, when adjusted for inflation, our estimated federal taxes are
almost identical to those of the Urban Institute. The results of this
study are also buttressed by an analysis of illegal alien tax returns
done by the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Treasury
in 2004, which found that about half of illegals had no federal income
tax liability, very similar to our finding of 45 percent.