Every day, foreign mothers cross the U.S. border to have their children born on American soil, safe in the knowledge that their baby will be granted automatic citizenship. The foreign mother is then granted the right to stay and work in the United States, all the while free from taxation. Her "American" child is granted numerous government benefits and goes to public school. This doesn’t seem like a crime until you look at the facts. It costs approximately $370 per student to pay for public education, a cost that is covered by the government through money from taxpayers. While hardworking Americans are struggling to pay municipal taxes that will ultimately fund their child’s education, the illegal mother, whose child benefits from the same public institution, gets by without paying the government more than a sales tax on certain goods and services. From her financial perspective, the illegal mother is giving her child a free education. In actuality, however, legal taxpayers are paying for an illegal alien to live in the United States and get a free education.
The Urban Institute estimated that the cost of educating illegal aliens was $3.1 billion in 1993. Factor in the tremendous surge in the population of illegal aliens since then, and a more accurate cost would be upwards of $5 billion. This estimate does not take into account the additional costs of bilingual education or other special educational needs, or states with a lower concentration of illegal immigrants. It has been estimated that there are 287,000 to 363,000 children born to illegal aliens each year in the U.S.
What does this mean for the common American taxpayer: higher taxes? The federal government has control over immigration law for the United States. By failing to address this issue, the funds that our government provides to these illegal alien children amounts to a virtual tax on U.S. citizens. Ultimately, Congress is rewarding illegal aliens and taxing citizens who choose to follow the rules and immigrate legally.
Congress should pass a law according to the Constitution Amendment XIV, Section 5, which excludes children born of illegal aliens from birth-right citizenship.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Or...
We can eliminate the idea of "illegal immigration" altogether. Then, these immigrants will have to pay taxes like everyone else living in America.
Either way, alot of the money spent on 'education' doesn't go to education at all, but rather to fund the Department of Education (which we really don't need, considering education isn't supposed to work on the federal level anyway).
--Mike
Check out the ProgU News Feed:
http://www.progressiveu.org/news
Keep an eye out for the new FAQ and Topic of the Week, coming this fall!
umm, i don't know the laws on the books fully, but if the mother is granted amnesty in order to stay here and take care of her child, i think that that very fact actually changes her status, since theoretically she would be given a work visa by the government...
also i don't know how close to the situation you are personally but from what i know, a lot of illegal immigrants actually do want to be come a part of this country and have better lives for themselves, so they do in fact pay taxes (although a lot of them work very low-paying jobs so chances are they'd be exempt from income tax anyway).
--stacie
Low wage earners are still required to file tax returns even if they do not owe taxes.
Many low wage earners qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). I think for a married couple with two children they qualify up to about $31,000 in earnings. The EITC is a subsidy designed to supplement the income of low wage earners. Its purpose is to encourage work rather than welfare. The EITC gives them a tax refund larger than the amount that was withheld from their paychecks. They get back more than they payed in. It is essentially reverse taxes and could also be described as welfare disguised as a tax refund. It also could be described as a cheap labor subsidy to employers because without these EITC transfer payments many of the working poor would refuse to work for low wages.
When we give amnesty to mothers of anchor babies or to any other low wage earning illegal immigrant we are essentially importing welfare recipients because most will qualify for the EITC.
Despite their minimal contributions to the treasury via things like sales taxes and all the other little surcharges the government imposes, poor people are net consumers of tax dollars not net contributors. The more poor people we import and turn into citizens the more taxes will need to be collected from the rest of us to transfer to them.
Importing poverty is a bad deal for everybody except the immigrant who gets a better life and the employer who gets cheap taxpayer subsidized labor. Everybody else pays.
No, you don't have to file income taxes if you earn less than a certain amount in a given year. Can't remember off the top of my head what that amount is... That's why high school students who work summer jobs generally don't HAVE to file income taxes (though if they do, they generally get money back, instead of having to pay more).
However, our system is set up so taxes are automatically taken out of paychecks. So anyone who works legally is paying income taxes.
That being said, schools aren't funded by income taxes. They're funded by property taxes. That's why you have to have an address in order to go to a public school... some places make you pay if your address is outside their zone, because they don't get the money from people outside their zone. So the elderly couple that never had any children are paying for other people's children to be educated. The system isn't much different when we're talking about an illegal immigrant and their child.
~C
Read the news
Nominate a featured blogger!
I think it's if you earn less than $500 in a month.
I'm not sure, I just know that when I was working in radio, whenever we gave out prizes I had to stay on top of what we gave away and how much the value was. Anytime a listener won any combination of prizes that totaled more than $500 in a given month I had to send them a 1099 so they could claim it as added income (not that any of them did it; I can't count the number of times my station got audited because we claimed to give them away and no one claimed receiving them).
But anyone who one a combination of prizes that did not total a value of $500 or more within a month did not have to claim that income.
I also remember hearing that if your total taxes taken out, as shown on your W-2 form, was less than a certain amount, you did not have to file.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
Fanaile Essence,
A-Team Member
Nominate your Favorite Blog to become a Featured Blogger!
Illegal immigrant parents of U.S. Citizen children are usually deported. Judges sometimes make exceptions if the citizen child has serious health issues and needs a parent. In that case one parent is allowed to stay temporarily and even then their status is reviewed periodically. When the child no longer has a serious health issue the parent is deported.
The only benefit to illegal immigrant parents is that once a citizen reaches 21 years of age they can petition for their parents to immigrate to the U.S. legally.
My hometown was a city full with lots of illegal immigrants and i know their struggles and faced what they have face...i don't think you have your facts right and amendments are for the people not THE LAW and there is a law that guarentees a child born in america to become a legalize american yeah...but those mothers did that to give their child a better future...so why did you say $5 billion was to pay for them when their legalize not "illegal"...and the cost for a student to go to school has risen since last year...it's more like $100 per student everyday...that's why they are enforcing laws to sue the parents if their child does not show up for public school ~so no ditching~...and for the kids, it's so hard on them because their mothers are illegal, so they're going to get deported, and when they do, the government leaves the kids in foster care, and foster care is tough...how would i know, I KNOW MANY STUDENTS WHO HAD THIS DONE TO THEM...how do i know about the facts above...i was in a debate team that made it to nationals in high school called "we the people" ~and i forgot what the 14th amendment was ^-^ i think it was Equal Protection to everyone of race and color as it says in section 1 wait section 5 does say over rulling stuff...~...please be opinionated...but don't point blame with wrong facts...
The facts in the post are incorrect. The illegal immigrant parents of children born in the U.S. do not receive any protection from deportation. At their discretion, sometimes judges will allow one parent to stay in the U.S. temporarily if the citizen child has some type of health problem that needs constant care. That was the case with Elvira Arellano in Chicago, until her case was reviewed again and the judge decided she should be deported.
I view the U.S. citizen children of illegal immigrants as fellow citizens who deserve our respect and support. They aren't responsible for their parents' decisions, and educating them along with every other U.S. child citizen benefits our society. In the future, they will work, pay taxes, and make a contribution like everyone else.
Most illegal immigrants pay taxes. If they work for an employer, the employer is required to withhold social security, medicare, and income taxes. Illegal immigrants receive no credit for social security and medicare taxes because they are using an invalid social security number (or someone else's SSN). Moreover, many don't file tax returns to claim income taxes withheld. Illegal immigrants are eligible for few government services, essentially emergency medical care and schooling for their children, many of whom are citizens anyway.
If U.S. citizens filled these jobs and displaced illegal immigrants, they'd generally be eligible for quite a range of government welfare benefits. Overall, I suspect illegal immigrants about the same government services as they pay in taxes.
"If U.S. citizens filled these jobs and displaced illegal immigrants, they'd generally be eligible for quite a range of government welfare benefits. Overall, I suspect illegal immigrants about the same government services as they pay in taxes."
Here is a good study that looks at the money payed in and money consumed at the Federal level:
The High Cost of Cheap Labor
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscal.html
It says that because they are illegal and are therefore ineligible for many services that at the Federal Level illegal immigrants only cost us about $10 billion annually. If they were made legal and could tap the full buffet of social welfare benefits the cost would climb to $30 billion annually. Both the $10 billion and $30 billion numbers are net of the taxes they pay. While income taxes are deducted from paychecks, they can be entirely avoided by claiming a high number of deductions on the W-2 form. So illegals essentially pay zero income tax and only FICA taxes which amount to about 8% of their gross pay.
That study ignores costs at the State Level which are higher because most educational, healthcare and legal system costs land at that level. Each child of an illegal immigrant costs about $8000 per year to educate. Assuming an 8% State sales tax on $20,000 of annual income you will have a hard time convincing me that an illegal alien family comes even close to paying enough annually to cover the cost of educating even one child and three children is closer to the average for their families. And then when they show up at the emergency room for free healthcare at $800 a pop to the taxpayers ....
Here is another study that was done in the run-up to the Comprehensive Shamnesty debate a few months ago by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. It looks more comprehensively at costs at the Local, State and Federal level and comes up with a much higher number. It was taken very seriously by Congress and played a key role in killing that bill.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/sr14.cfm
It is a complex read but it generally pegs the average cost of each low-skilled household (most illegal immigrants fall in this category) at about $20,000 dollars annually at the Local, State, Federal levels. That is the family contributes about $10,000 in taxes and gets about $30,000 in services meaning that each such family results in a drain on the treasury and a cost imposition on taxpayers to the tune of $20,000. There are almost 3 million of these illegal immigrant families and that adds up to a cost of about $60 billion annually which is a fair chunck of our 3.75 trillion budget.
Our social welfare and tax systems are socialistic and designed to transfer money from the rich to the poor. It defies common sense to argue that illegal immigrants working at the bottom or our economy pay in as much as they receive. If we import low skilled immigrants we are essentially importing poverty and taxpayers will be taxed to provide additional social welfare benefits to address the poverty.
The Center for Immigration Studies was created to give the appearance of legitimacy to the radical anti-immigrant movement led by FAIR. They are one of about 13 groups founded by Richard Tanton, who has been exposed as a first class bigot. Also, FAIR received millions in funding from the Pioneer Fund, which sponsers research to prove whites are superior to others!
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=93
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=72
One myth about immigrants that has been with us for decades is that immigrants come here to collect government welfare benefits. All illegal immigrants and most legal immigrants have been barred from federally funded welfare benefits since 1996, except for emergency medicaid. Before the 1996 bar, financially needed LEGAL immigrants were less than half as likely to applied for welfare benefits of any type.