Replies to post #653270 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[lee kramer]

Why the focus on illegal aliens Bruce? Assuming the numbers are correct, [some seem right, others seem to be wild guesses] what about the 40-80 billion spent every year for the past 40 years on the "War on Drugs?" What about the bloated defense dep't. spending year after year? What about the waste and fraud in the health care system that ZZ-tops has written about for months? There is much, much more.

Illegal aliens may be a problem, but they are not the only problem; and they are such as easy target.

[Taxmantoo]

Most of that is comparatively nickle and dime stuff (compared to War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on Economic Responsibility...)

The only thing with any size that you mention is

9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSC%20RI%20PTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML


If my boss pays me a dollar less, do we treat that as a loss to the economy, or is it simply one less dollar for me and one more dollar for him?
If high wages are some magic economic benefit, why don't we just raise the federal minimum wage to $50 an hour?

[ChrisJP]

Hi Bruce,

Like others have posted -- #9 is a red herring.

I feel like #8 is a double counting of items 1 - 7. Also -- to single out working illegals as needing food stamps, welfare, etc. when about 40M people currently need these same social services is disingenuous.

Here's a simple proposal:

Give current illegals a path to permanent residency and levy a fine of $5000 per illegal applying.

10M+ illegals times $5,000 = $50 BILLION.

That pays for a LOT of border security and social services. In fact it pays for most of it. I have no clue why Washington doesn't want to do it. And item #13 demonstrates they have the money to pay the fime.

Regards,
Chris

[Alex G]

when you get a spam email in your box do you ever fact check it first before you pass the trash?

#1 on the list says "illegal aliens"

but when you click on the link it's referring to "legal immigrants"

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.
Verify at: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecenters7fd8

and at least half the other items have bogus links

jeeeeeesh

[tinner]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=+The+illegal+aliens+in+the+United+States+have+a+crime+rate+that%27s+two+and+a+half+times+that+of+white+non-illegal+aliens.&btnG=Google+Search




Take out that hook that's stuck in your cheek.

Browse > Home / Ask FactCheck / Cost of Illegal Immigrants
Cost of Illegal Immigrants
April 6, 2009
Q: Do illegal immigrants cost $338.3 billion dollars a year? More than the Iraq war?

A: A chain e-mail that makes this claim is loaded with errors and misleading assertions. Published studies vary widely but put the cost to government at a small fraction of that total.
FULL QUESTION

I wonder if much of this is true? Is this on your radar screen?

This is astounding and infuriating. Why isn’t this in the papers? Please read and pass it on.

? Click to expand/collapse the full text ?

WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT?
Informative, and mind boggling!
You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:
Boy am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.
I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.
I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL’s for verification of all the following facts.
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12. The National Policy Institute, ‘estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.’
Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. ‘The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.’
Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR AND IF YOU’RE LIKE ME HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING THIS AMOUNT OF MONEY; IT IS $338,300,000,000.00 WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY.
Are we THAT stupid? YES, FOR LETTING THOSE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS GET AWAY WITH LETTING THIS HAPPEN YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!!!
If this doesn’t bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative in Washington, D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.


FULL ANSWER

This chain e-mail has been forwarded to us by readers many times over the past year. The most recent version adds a new angle, claiming that the amount of money taxpayers spend on illegal immigrants would be enough to "stimulate the economy." But no matter the spin, the e-mail is rife with errors.

It also contains several red flags that should tip off readers that this is more bogus than believable. For one thing, the figures given don’t add up to a "whopping $338.3 billion dollars a year" spent on illegal immigrants in the U.S., as the e-mail claims.

The e-mail lists 14 claims about illegal immigrants, all of which were included in a longer list penned by anti-immigration activist Frosty Wooldridge and published on the conservative Web site NewswithViews.com on Jan. 22, 2007. Another NewswithViews columnist, Lynn Stuter, included Wooldridge’s list, with some updated links, in an article posted on April 15, 2008.

The source cited for at least nine of the items is either the conservative Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) or the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), both of which call for more restrictive immigration laws. CIS spokesman Bryan Griffith told us that he had never seen the e-mail but that he suspected something was out there because of occasional surges in traffic that forced him to rewrite Web pages. When told about the e-mail’s contents and conclusion of a $338.3 billion yearly cost, he responded that CIS "never said anything of the like and is not going to comment on a chain e-mail that is in no way scientific."

The e-mail also continually blurs the important distinction between legal and illegal immigrants – a sign of sloppy and untrustworthy work.