Patterico's Pontifications

4/5/2007

Study Shows Low-Skilled Workers Are a Drain on Taxpayer Money

Filed under: Immigration — Patterico @ 8:49 pm



The Washington Times reports:

Immigration reforms that increase the number of low-skilled workers entering the United States threaten to impose a high cost on taxpayers, says a study being released today.

The Heritage Foundation report calculates that for every $1 unskilled workers pay in taxes they receive about $3 in government benefits, including Medicaid, food stamps, public housing and other welfare programs.

. . . .

The report on low-skilled workers, who are defined as those without a high school diploma, did not focus on immigrants, but its authors say 25 percent of legal immigrants and 50 percent of illegal aliens fall into the category.

Like the news that a illegal immigrant driving under the influence of alcohol killed the director of the movie “Christmas Story,” this report sheds light on the negative aspects of illegal immigration. If we are going to discuss this topic intelligently, we need to be aware of the drawbacks of an open borders policy, not just the benefits, such as cheaper fruit and vegetables.

One wonders whether a fully informed citizenry would pay more for produce, nannies, gardeners, and housecleaners if we could unclog our freeways, reduce the terrific strain on emergency rooms, reduce the crime rate, and lessen the strain on our budget caused by the net outlay in tax money that illegal immigrants cause.

It would be fascinating to see whether the L.A. Times has reported or will report the results of this study. However, because they have blocked most of their web site from mobile phone users, I can’t check. Any guest bloggers want to follow up on this? Justin? See Dubya?

44 Responses to “Study Shows Low-Skilled Workers Are a Drain on Taxpayer Money”

  1. A fully misinformed citzenry is what the HF is doing here……

    Here’s where the Heritage Foundation is DEAD wrong. Just the other day the number 900 billion was quoted as the spending power of illegal immigrants along with hispanics (that certainly qualify as low income) here in America.

    Use the Heritage foundations magic 3 dollars per every dollar of wages

    Then its the entire federal budget

    In just North Carolina hispanics had an estimated 8.35 billion in spending power the Heritage foundation claims of 25 billion being spent in NC is simply not true nor even worthy of discussion

    http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:w1n7pnI0PZYJ:www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/assets/documents/2006_KenanInstitute_HispanicStudy.pdf+economic+impact+of+hispanics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=qa

    I can link reports all day until the Heritage Foundation is shown to be the long winded buffoons that making a claim like this is certainly to impart.

    This is not a pro illegal immigration thing, this is an anti propaganda in the disguise of research kind of thing

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  2. This is a “Good God, make sense, man!” thing.

    What are you talking about?

    Are you equating tax revenue with “spending power”?

    Are you comparing time periods properly — dollars per day to dollars per day?

    If you claim to debunk a study, you’ll have to be do so more coherently than this.

    Patterico (557a3b)

  3. It will be interesting to see what the LA Times does with this study, especially in light of this article that says the US may soon be begging more immigrants to come.

    DRJ (d57665)

  4. The Heritage Foundation report calculates that for every $1 unskilled workers pay in taxes they receive about $3 in government benefits

    It appears the study does not include the additional costs to society to educate their children, law enforcement, or to provide extra infrastructure such as sewage, water, roads, etc.

    Where is this growswell of popular support for turning the USA into a Northern province of Mexico?

    Perfect Sense (b6ec8c)

  5. First the Heritage report was actually based upon spending power not taxes because hispanics do not pay taxes for the most part as they are a predominately cash society. Even if you change the ratio to 7 to one to cover taxes its still nearly 1/3 of the entire federal budget.

    Also, we could make an even bigger correlation about single white mothers with kids. Governor Wrestler had a report that unwed mothers had a 37 to 1 ratio when he tried to end the WIC programs.

    37 to one.

    Hey, how about the elderly with minimum income?

    bet thats greater than three to one last I checked we were spending about 40% of our entire Federal revenues on those 11% retired that makes it much much greater than three to one.

    Also left out the economic impact of hispanic and illegal labor as a function of GDP.

    Like I said its a stupid insipid report.

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  6. The article in Qatars newspaper today showed that legal immigration to the US was filled in one day for certain categories

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/us-reaches-visa-cap-high-tech-workers-out-of-luck/2007/04/05/1175366394725.html

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  7. I guess what I get upset about is this

    Several conservative websites say that 90% of all taxes are generated and/or paid by the top 15% of Americans.

    Argumentative but lets go there. about 1.6 trillion is generated by payroll taxes and corporate taxes.

    1.4 trillion of this is paid by 45 million people 200 billion or 0.2 trillion is paid by 245 million people.

    Of the 1.4 to 1.6 trillion paid out to entitlements less than 5% goes to the top 45 million between 70 and 80 billion.

    Naturally the rest goes to the small payers a huge amount.

    So in summary, if you make less more than 100,000 dollars per year you pay 200 dollars in taxes for every dollar you get spent on you personally

    If you make less than 100,000 dollars a year you get on average 7 dollars per every dollar you pay in taxes.

    Thats based upon the Federal Budget

    Heck say I’m 100 percent off then its still 100 to one and 3.5 to 4 to one.

    Everyone making below 100,000 dollars a year is a drag on the economy – IF YOU USE THIS HERITAGE FOUNDATION LOGIC

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  8. Hey Eric:

    Let’s grant for the sake of arguement that your $900 billion number is true. First of all, if the illegal aliens weren’t making and spending that money, American citizens would be. It’s just recycled money. Or are you trying to make the nonsensical arguement that this money is being added to the American economy? Because illegal immigrants and legal immigrants send between $80 billion and $100 billion a year out of our economy and into Mexico’s. Remittances from the U.S. is Mexico’s #2 source of foriegn income, behind only the oil industry. Add in the money being sent to other countries, and we are talking a huge drain on our economy. Secondly, much of that money is based on/in the underground economy and taxes aren’t being paid on it.

    Everyone making below 100,000 dollars a year is a drag on the economy – IF YOU USE THIS HERITAGE FOUNDATION LOGIC

    So what? There’s a difference between supporting American citizens with American tax dollars, and supporting illegal aliens with American tax dollars. What part of illegal alien is so hard for you to understand?

    Also left out the economic impact of hispanic and illegal labor as a function of GDP.

    Is this the return of the whole “jobs Americans won’t do” arguement? Because guess what happened when they raided those meat processing plants recently? Wages went up, and suddenly Americans were willing to do those jobs again.

    gahrie (de5a83)

  9. “Everyone making below 100,000 dollars a year is a drag on the economy – IF YOU USE THIS HERITAGE FOUNDATION LOGIC”

    One of the things I studied in college was city planning. I can tell you that although the number of 100,000 may be high, there is definitely a point at which a persons income does not cover the states expenses to support him. Allowing millions of poor to flood into a country hurts lots of of people. Thanks for writing about this. Almost evert time I complain to Fienstein, Boxer or Sanchez about the negative effect illegal immigration has in my city they act like I am some kind of racist. The fact that these negative changes are due to illegal activity doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

    tyree (837a75)

  10. Patterico,

    Think-tank studies are a pet peeve of mine. They should not be taken at face value. Most think tanks are political advocates with an agenda. Pick the right think tank and you can prove anything. Global warming is man-caused; no, it’s not man-caused. Income inequality is getting greater; no, it’s decreasing. Tax cuts bring more revenue to the government; no, they reduce government revenue.

    Maybe this particular study is valid. If so, it can stand a critical look. That isn’t evident in the story. There’s no link to the study, or to any independent sources of the underlying data. On such a controversial topic, you’d think that kind of fact-checking would be routine.

    This doesn’t have to be complicated. All that was needed was to call an independent expert, or even a think tank with an opposing ideology, to see if they can spot any flaws in the report. The story would have been much stronger for it.

    As it stands, the WashTimes gave the Heritage Foundation gets free publicity in what amounted to a press release. As a wise old editor of mine likes to say, that’s not reporting, that’s stenography.

    Bradley J. Fikes (1c6fc4)

  11. Well Bradley, since ‘studies’ published by the Urban Institute or immigration enthusiast academics or libertarian ideologues like Cato are routinely published by the LA Times with just a token counter-response, this seems to provide ‘Balance’.

    The best source, bar none, on immigration is the Center for Immigration Stuides. They are restrictionist, but they publish honest data. They don’t leave out obvious costs of immigration such as educating the children born here of immigrants. They make an effort to include infrastructure costs. They root out the costs that public officials hide. You will never, ever see their studies highlighted in the LA Times

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  12. Here is an excerpt from the study that Eric Johnson linked to

    Hispanics annually contribute about $756 million in taxes
    (direct and indirect),while costing the state budget about
    $817 million annually for K-12 education ($467 million),
    health care ($299 million),and corrections ($51 million)
    for a net cost to the state of about $61 million

    Now, the rest of the study, put out by a business school, goes on and on about ‘potential’ , predicted costs without Hispanic labor, increased output because of a growing hispanic population, yadda yadda. But there it is, they cost North Carolina. And since they are a new population in that State, ‘Hispanic’ is a good proxy of immigrant or immigrant child.

    Would the overall output of North Carolina be less without the hispanic population — yes. But just as in a company, you don’t want to increase overall profit, you want to increase profit per share. As they are costing taxpayers, the Hispanics in north Carolina are not increasing the welfare of the natives, they are decreasing it.

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  13. Mitchell Young,

    Honest data, regardless of the source’s ideology, is always welcome.

    I appreciate your point about the WashTimes story providing balance to the stuff in the LA Times. It would be even better to get that balance in the same paper. I can dream.

    Bradley J. Fikes (1c6fc4)

  14. Thanks Bradley,

    Not to suck up but I think local papers like your NC Times often do a good job on the news-side of the immigration issue. The UT (San Diego) isn’t bad either. They haven’t internalized the pc to the same extent as the ‘prestige papers’

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  15. I suppose we could get doctors, lawyers, investment brokers and other “high-income taxpayers” to pick their own vegetables, milk their own cows, pluck their own chickens, change the oil on their own cars, babysit their own kids, clean their own offices and do all the other things that low-income people do. They might find, however, that were they to do that they might stop being high income. This thing is not complicated. Even slaves need a certain level of support in terms of food, shelter and clothing if they are to be useful and productive. You can pay them directly with a decent wage or you can pay them indirectly with government benefits. Or you can try the rugged individualism lifestyle you want to impose on them yourself.

    nk (37b8ef)

  16. change the oil on their own cars, babysit their own kids, clean their own offices

    In the Navy, we did in fact clean our own offices every Friday — and I would say it cut productivity about 0% , nobody in any office gets work done on Friday afternoon. It was a welcome break and a chance to see others outside our own immediate division.

    Nor is mowing your own lawn or washing your own car exactly rugged individualism. My 77 year old dad and his age peer neighbor both still do their own yards. (I don’t have one). Somehow the 40 year old guys in the neighborhood need to hire illegals to do it.

    Why should I pay taxes to ‘educate’ the kids of some stock broker’s nanny, why should I deal with more traffic so some doctor can have an elaborate landscape tended by 5 imported ‘workers’? This growth reliance on a servant class strikes me as profoundly un-American.

    As to the vegtables, two words. Mechanization and imports.

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  17. “In the Navy, we did in fact clean our own offices every Friday — and I would say it cut productivity about 0% , nobody in any office gets work done on Friday afternoon. It was a welcome break and a chance to see others outside our own immediate division.”

    And who was paying you, clothing you and feeding you? I suppose you built your own ship too. Mined the ore and smelted it into steel. Drilled for the oil and distilled it into fuel to run it. And your own guns and ammunition. Wove your own uniforms. Made your own shoes. Heck butchered the cow and tanned the hide so you could get the leather to make your own shoes. Oh wait, you also birthed the calf and tended it while it grew into a cow that you skinned and tanned the hide so you could make your own shoes. I admire you immensely. You are a great pioneering American.

    nk (37b8ef)

  18. And who was paying you, clothing you and feeding you?

    Whether right or wrong, the government has decided to spend on the ‘common defense’ — it is a classic ‘public good’ in economics. Contrast that with Dr. Doolittle’s nanny — I am paying for her kids’ ‘education’ (she likely has two or three) while Dr. Doolittle get the exclusive benefit of her services.

    Obviously we all can’t do everything. Some things can be better mechanized, but aren’t because of cheap labor. Some things can be imported rather than importing labor (an imported strawberry doesn’t send kids to school or drive drunk on my freeways, a strawberry picker often does), and with some things, wages will go higher (construction workers, slaughterhouse workers) and that is a good thing.

    You might want to look up ‘reductio ad absurdam’ , nk

    And Mow Your Own Lawn — its good for the health!

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  19. Mitchell,

    This country was not built by “taxpayers”. It was built by working men who gave and continue to give their sweat and blood. You were one of them as I understand by the mention of your Navy service. The Heritage Foundation study is bovine fecal matter because a person’s real contribution to society is not taxes. It is goods and services in times of peace and sacrifice in time of war.

    I will even go further and say that the Heritage Foundation is disingenuous and hypocritical because it understands full well that low-paid, unskilled labor is the base of the economic pyramid and without that base the whole pyramid would collapse.

    And if some dollar an hour worker in China had not assembled my computer we would not be having this exchange.

    nk (37b8ef)

  20. And if some dollar an hour worker in China had not assembled my computer we would not be having this exchange.

    I mentioned my Navy service only because I thought the institution of ‘field day’ , as communal cleaning of offices is called, is a pretty good idea (one of the few in the Navy). It was no great sacrifice for me, I had a good time and my motives for enlisting were decidedly mixed .

    I don’t really have a problem with the dollar an hour worker in China. I do have a problem with crowding more and more people into southern california so that lawyers can have nannies and gardeners and car washers and cheap construction labor. It affects the quality of life adversely here. We have the right to decide how many people we want in, and I think that number should be drastically lower.

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  21. NK,

    Many Texas counties have been overwhelmed by illegal immigrants and have had to curtail or eliminate vital services to all residents as a result. For instance, it’s not uncommon in South Texas or far West Texas for 80% or more of a hospital’s patients to be non-paying illegal immigrants, especially in obstetrics.

    Hospitals in smaller communities have had to close because they could not afford to keep their doors open and pay basic operating expenses, let alone provide high quality care with modern equipment. Citizens in these counties often have to travel up to 200 miles to get to the nearest hospital. Once a hospital closes, communities also lose the specialist doctors and skilled health care professionals.

    There are similar adverse effects on education, police and fire services, and utility infrastructure. Some communities struggle just to provide clean water to colonias that seem to pop up overnight. As a result, the standard of living in those counties is falling – it’s like living in a third world country.

    DRJ (d57665)

  22. …unskilled labor is the base of the economic pyramid and without that base the whole pyramid would collapse.

    So why isn’t Mexico a rich country with a great big economic pyramid? …or Africa, etc?

    Perfect Sense (b6ec8c)

  23. Perfect Sense,

    I wonder if I could trouble you to open a dictionary and look up the meanings of “necessary” and “sufficient”.

    nk (37b8ef)

  24. NK,

    Here’s a snapshot of some of what illegal immigrants cost Texas, especially Texas counties.

    DRJ (d57665)

  25. Tyree,

    So when the industrial revolution came and we let millions of illegal and still today illegal Irish, Italians, Swedes, Germans, Finns, Poles to fill up the mines and factories and they died by the thousands in both world wars and koreanams just like the hispanics legal and illegal have died along with them

    What?

    You got nothing,

    Mitchell Young

    the point was it was a wash, wasn’t it. Try other demographic groups the point was the Heritage foundation didn’t compare all demographic groups, including Canadian single moms who are flocking to Minnesota for the welfare benies. Gov Wrestler put an end to that as well.

    Look, several demographic groups use most of the Benefits the many live off the few – posting that hispanics are a drain on society is a bunch of crap big time – been disproven time and time again.

    And again here.

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  26. One solution is to spread the costs among users (regardless of citizenship) by eliminating property taxes and going to a state or national sales tax.

    DRJ (d57665)

  27. DRJ

    I agree with your point on the elimination of property taxes let me throw in income taxes as well. (I’m sure you would approve!)

    But the Dallas article just proved my point the Hispanics are paying more in state taxes by 420 million but less in local taxes by 1 billion. Being that the state sends most of its money to the local government that 420 million number it could be argued that 300 million goes to offset the 1 billion shortfall.

    So given that they pay 2 billion a year in taxes we are not spending at the state level and Texas gets very very little federal spending the Hertitage report has holes in it a mile wide. First local taxes are collected at a higher rate than state taxes so I sincerely doubt the 513 million number, Austin estimates that hispanics locally pay more sales tax than most people as they are predominately a cash society. so given the more acurate state data, I consider them a wash.

    I wish I could say the same about these demographic groups

    Single white moms with kids

    Single black moms with kids

    Any family of four earning below 35,000 a year

    these are huge drains on society in Texas

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  28. DRJ,

    Finally! A person I can feel comfortable talking to. But how are you feeling? How is the collarbone coming along?

    I hope nothing I said previously made you think that I am anything but venomously opposed to illegal immigration. If I did not care about the security of our borders, as I indeed do, I would still oppose illegal immigration because it increases the “slave labor” pool. I took umbrage with the Heritage Foundation’s implication that a person’s value is the amount of taxes he pays.

    And as someone who has filled more burlap sacks with manure than most people have had double skim latte grandes I was stung by the “low-paid unskilled labor” thing too. 😉

    nk (37b8ef)

  29. Tyree,

    Sorry I meant that for the commentator in front of you Gahrie

    sorry again, getting old, late over here

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  30. nk

    amen,

    look, had they done a report about our rights as a sovreign nation to determine whos a citizen or immigration policy or written about other country’s strict immigration policies that would have been interesting, but saying poor people are a drain on America is soo much crap.

    EricPWJohnson (695c44)

  31. …unskilled labor is the base of the economic pyramid and without that base the whole pyramid would collapse.

    So NK, where is this economic Nirvana pyramid based on unskilled labor?

    In the 1950s and 1960s a single income could support a family. After decades of illegal immigration it now takes a working husband and working wife to support their family. One reason it takes two incomes is that families now pay a much larger share of their income in state, local and federal taxes. Where do the taxes go? – to support the unskilled, and many of these are illegal aliens.

    Perfect Sense (b6ec8c)

  32. Perfect Sense,

    Where are we not connecting? I did not say that the plower, tiller, manure spreader and lettuce picker is the whole economic pyramid. Just that he is the base. Without him there is no lettuce to sell, so no truck driver, grocer, investment banker or commodities trader can make money off the lettuce. And no sales or income tax for the government either.

    But I do agree with you that illegal immigration brings down wages. I do not remember the ’50s but I remember that in the ’60s police departments could not recruit police officers because the factories paid more. But I suspect that legal immigration also brings down wages. As long as there is a bigger labor pool than available jobs, employers will squeeze their unskilled and PC “low-skilled” workers for all they’re worth.

    nk (37b8ef)

  33. NK,

    You aren’t the type of commenter who has an agenda that is so compelling you ignore facts and I didn’t impute an agenda to your prior comments. I think most of the people who comment here want good facts so we can make good decisions. However, I don’t read the DMN article the way you do if your conclusion is that the costs of illegal immigration balance out.

    Excluding the costs of education and health care, the report shows there is a net shortfall of at least $500 million a year between what illegal immigrants add to the Texas economy and what they cost. If you add in the excluded categories, the shortfall would probably double or triple. That’s a heavy burden on Texas taxpayers.

    What is interesting to me is that the DMN article (and the Comptroller’s report it is based on) suggest an explanation for why illegal immigration can seem like a financial windfall in some studies and a detriment in others. It depends on what level of government and society you focus on. In addition, not all Texans benefit from low-cost labor but virtually all Texans pay for illegal immigration due to diluted educational, infrastructure, police/fire, and health care services – because these services are almost always provided at the local level and that’s where the shortfalls occur.

    Thanks for asking about my collarbone, which is surprisingly one of the few parts of my body that doesn’t hurt. Reading Patterico and posting a comment or two takes my mind off things when the pain medicine wears off and I can’t take another dose. Please keep that in mind and forgive me if I say something really stupid.

    DRJ (d57665)

  34. Eric Johnson,

    No, 61 million bucks isn’t a wash. It’s probably not much per household, pay NC natives are paying for the privilege of having the state’s demography tranformed. Plus the costs in the report did not take in extra infrastructure needed to support the increased population with is due to immigration.

    You seem to have a thing about single Moms. Maybe you ought to take a look at Heather MacDonald’s work on this issue:


    Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country—over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women. Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births. Only the percentage of black out-of-wedlock births—68 percent—exceeds the Hispanic rate

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_4_hispanic_family_values.html

    Mitchell Young (8d425f)

  35. DRJ #32,

    I am not arguing that the costs of illegal immigration balance out. I am arguing that unskilled amd “low-skilled” workers contribute more to society than they get back. That their contribution is their labor. And their blood “when the band begins to play “. That the taxes they pay or don’t pay is a red herring. That the “tertiaries” who pay the highest taxes should be paying them because they make nothing, produce nothing and would have no wealth if not for the “primaries” who do actually farm the ground, fish the oceans and mine the mines.

    nk (37b8ef)

  36. Is it plausible that the lower and middle classes bear a disproportionate share of the costs of illegal immigration? That seems like the point to me.

    DRJ (d57665)

  37. Yes, definitely. If, for nothing else, that illegal immigrants cheapen the job market. I agreed with that earlier.

    nk (37b8ef)

  38. EricPWJohnson says to Tyree, “You got nothing,…”
    Actually, you are quite wrong. Eric. Your response is off target and weak at that.
    Illegal immigration has driven down the standard of living in my home town. The crime, the overcrowded schools, hospitals and roads hurt everyone except the illegal immigrants, who came from much worse environments. Decades ago my niece was born in a hospital at a cost of $5000 to her parents. In the next bed was an illegal immigrant who paid $50 for her delivery. Why was my niece’s bill so expensive? Ask an honest hospital administrator.

    The fact that others in the past broke the law is no defense against prosecution. Try that on the judge if you ever wind up in court.

    Illegal immigration hurts some people very deeply. The last family that I know in the neighborhood just put their house up for sale.

    tyree (837a75)

  39. Perfect Sense, what you say in comment 31 is nonsense–in the nineteen fifties, we were living in a society formed by more than two centuries of immigration. But it still took some doing. My grandfather–one of those immigrants–routinely walked the entire breadth of Boston to work and back because he felt he couldn’t afford the dime it would cost to take the street car. I was raised by a divorced mother, who started with a salary of twenty five dollars a week, and less than munificent child support from my father, in the ‘seventies. She made it work because our apartment had a rent of about a hundred dollars a month, and not the rent of four hundred fifty dollars a month it cost me when I first went out on my own fifteen years later (for a smaller apartment, yet). She made it work because the grocery bill was fifteen dollars a week, not fifty dollars like it is now. She made it work because she refused to buy fancy electronics (meaning, we had a black and white TV and a stereo set she won in a company raffle), read books she borrowed at the public library instead of buying them at a store, bought clothes for me only at Sears, and a hundred other money saving things she learned as a kid born at the start of the Depression. And postage stamps were five or seven cents, not thirty nine. Yet no one challenged our status as middle class.

    IOW, the damn dollar buys a whole lot less than it did back then. Taxes as a percentage of expenses were actually more back then they are now.

    kishnevi (5c0e2a)

  40. “virtually all Texans pay for illegal immigration due to diluted educational, infrastructure, police/fire, and health care services”

    Right DRJ, the same is true in here California.
    My youngest sons biology teacher once told me,”I wish I could be allowed to teach the class at your son’s level”. All of my children had less educational opportunities because of illegal immigration. A few months ago the largest heroin bust in California’s history took place a few miles from my house. A friend had to wait one hour to get his wife into an emergency room after she suffered a stroke. These are all examples of the hidden cost of illegal immmigration. We will never know exactly how much additional money will be needed to treat the stroke victim because of the delay in her treatment. I do know that the Mexican government is not sending the family a check.
    I hope you make a full recovery DRJ. Take care.

    tyree (837a75)

  41. EricPWJohnson said, “Tyree,
    Sorry I meant that for the commentator in front of you, Gahrie”

    No wonder your response seemed to miss what I was saying. That is why I never write bad things about people I disagree with in these posts. No harm done. Go in peace, but keep your arrows ready.

    tyree (837a75)

  42. What we never consider in discussions about illegal immigration is the joy of having fresh, inexpensive produce available everywhere throughout the country.

    I love not having to pay $5 for a head of lettuce. Eliminate the beaners and you’re paying $20 for an order of grilled chicken Caesar salad. Nos gustan mucho las vegetales frescas!

    The Liberal Avenger (b8c7e2)

  43. Wow. The low paid pay less in taxes. What a shocker. Of course, one solution would be to pay them more. Organize em!

    marc (4fe3dc)

  44. Let me just be a vote for paying the real cost of lettuce. I’d rather pay $5 a head for lettuce than have cheap lettuce and have to pay for all the hidden costs of illegal immigration. Those costs aren’t all financial.

    Teri (afca91)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0898 secs.