And when you do they send it home. The amount of remittances has grown to $45 BILLION each year. Wow. As much as $3 billion to El Salvador (15% of their GDP), $24 billion to Mexico (its number 2 source of income!).
The World Bank is preparing a report about remittances showing that the people who work here illegally should be able to INVEST their money in their home country to further alleviate poverty.
That's very nice of us.
Couldn't we use that money here?
Here's the WaPo story.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Illegal Immigrants: "Show Me the Money!"
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12 comments:
Ms Taft:
I would encourage you to re-read the Washington Post article, because you have badly mischaracterized what it says. The article nowhere mentions illegal immigrants. It talks of immigrants, many of whom are here legally, their presence being necessary for sustaining operations like farms and factories, doing the bottom of the heap manual jobs that non-immigrants often will do only with great reluctance, if at all. The article nowhere states that the people remitting money to Latin America are here illegally.
The best solution to illegal immigration is improved economies and opportunities in the countries the people are immigrating from.
It makes me feel selfish when I think we should not let a person cross a national border to find a way to support their family.
I don't care if people immigrating here, are sending significant amounts of their earned money home.
I do care that there are large companies, who have received large tax breaks designed to give them more money to invest in US jobs; and have not increased US jobs at all, but instead have increased employment overseas.
David, haven't you noticed that within our lamestream media, it isn't in favor to refer to illegal immigrants as "illegals?"
You must ask yourself, if someone immigrates here to live and become a legal citizen, why the need to send that much money back to their original country when they could better use it here caring for themselves and their family that would assumably be here with them also seeking citizenship.
Whatever, isn't what you propose the stated goal of Clinton's NAFTA agreement? How much more should we send them and not require they rely on their own country
Mexico is a very resource laden country. Shouldn't they be able to manage those resources without sending indigents here?
Why does it matter more if a corporation operating under NAFTA sends $20 billion overseas, but possible illegals sending upwards of $45 billion overseas isn't a concern?
Ms westsidedavid, wapo will never use the word illegal re aliens because they would then be admitting that such concepts exist, causing their heads to explode. Your opinion that the presence of criminals is necessary to our economy is ludicrous. Surely, you would agree that such a construct should be tested. Let's tax the here-to-fore untaxed flow of money, eliminate social services to illegal aliens, do as Canada has done and eliminate the concept of automatic citizenship for illegal alien offspring, refuse i.d. to illegal aliens, enforce laws already on the books, and see what happens. After all, if this actually ruins our economy, then the lefties will have won a great victory, n'est ce pas?
hey, whatever, head on down to latin america and 'splain to the dictators and other third-world scum how to fix their economies. While you're there, tell them to quit sending their dregs norte. BTW, you dolt, do your homework re jobs creation.....many MILLIONS of new jobs in the last few years. Wage depression caused by an influx of cheap, under-the-table, illegal alien labor has actually held back what would have been an even better economy. Sucking up social services, evading taxes, clogging our jails....yeah, that helps......sheesh.
Lew Waters said...
"Why does it matter more if a corporation operating under NAFTA sends $20 billion overseas, but possible illegals sending upwards of $45 billion overseas isn't a concern?"
My response:
It matters to me if the corporation got a tax break which was designed to help create more US jobs, and the company either does not create more jobs, or creates low paying jobs while eliminating living wage jobs.
I do sometimes let my own self interest affect my views (maybe more than I should). I know my own job is at risk due to off-shoring of my profession (mostly to India).
I also see a lot of job listings (for my profession within the company I work for) in Mexico.
So while I want to see the economic standards in Mexico go up; I also want to be able to hang on to my own job without stressing about the potential of being work-force-reduced (something which has had a major effect on my quality of life for the last 5 years as I have seen many co-workers eliminated).
We can significantly cut down on illegal immigration by making it easier to immigrate legally. I am for making it much easier to immigrate to this country legally, if the immigrant can find a job and is not considered a security risk.
However, any time an employed person needs a subsidy (either via charity or government subsidy program) the subsidy is indirectly subsidizing the company (employer) the person works for. The subsidies often make it possible for the employee to be available and able to work for the employer.
There are certain things that we (as a society) have decided are critical services, and we provide these to people independent of their ability to pay for them.
(My personal views on what these services should be, and what people have a right to, are another subject.)
Once we (society) have determined that a service is critical (something we will provide) it is fair to require that all employers provide employees with insurance, or pay a fair amount of taxes, to cover these items.
A part time worker should receive a percentage of insurance coverage, equal to the percentage of employment (compared to fully time). Someone with two half time jobs should end up with full coverage.
It is allowing the hiring of workers, without requiring the employer to pay enough to cover these services (either via wage or benefit), that is the problem. This is as true for non immigrants, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
The socialist nonsense goes on, no matter how often it fails.....so sad, so stupid.
Why would people who claim the US as their home and are citizens send most of their money to Mexico and Central America? In fact, it's clear from additional stories that it IS the illegal alien sending this money back.
Are you suggesting that there is not a logical reason for a legal citizen to send their money to family members living outside the US; and that there is a logical reason for an illegal immigrant to send their money home to their families?
Is this is the sort of logic you are using to draw the conclusion that most of the money, being sent to Mexico and Central America, is being sent by Illegal (rather than Legal) immigrants?
Does the evidence suggest that large amounts of money are going to someone other than the immigrant's family?
Whatever:You're kidding, right? You must be new to this issue because what you said doesn't pass the laugh test. Remittances have been a huge issue for years. On one hand they help those family members buy property et al but on the other hand they send mostly untaxed money out of the country to benefit another country. I think we ought to tax the heck out of those remittances.
Victoria; you made no attempt to answer my questions.
Western Union is likely paying taxes on the profit they make, by charging huge amounts for these immigrants to send their hard earned money home. So there is some tax being paid.
Personally, I am a proponent of the Federal Reserve’s plan to extend banking services to immigrants (legal or illegal) making it cheaper and safer for them to send funds to their relatives. However, when I decided that I was in favor of this, I wasn’t even considering the tax angle of the issue.
Maybe I will have to reconsider my viewpoint.
Is it the problem of under-the-table wages, which are not taxed to start with, which concerns you? I will admit this is an issue worth addressing. This problem is not limited to immigrants. My brother-in-law collected welfare while receiving under-the-table wages from the farmer he worked for, for years. If it were easier for an illegal immigrant to get a visa to work, they would not be as exploitable by the employers who pay these under-the-table wages.
Do you think we should add a tax to money sent out of the country? If we do, we need to be fair and not limit the tax to immigrants. I have no strong feelings against such a tax, as long as it is fair and does not have a bunch of exclusions for the upper class or powerful.
As far as ideas, that come from the joking side of my personality, I once had an idea that we should start a program which involved trading dead-beat U.S. Citizens for hard working Mexican immigrants. If we did this, it would be Mexico building the wall.
If you do successfully convince me that I should care more about solving the problem related to employing illegal immigrants, my course of action is likely to involve not purchasing services or products which result from this labor. This means I will be looking to buy food and other goods which I can more easily trace the supply chain for. This could take some serious work, and I would have to have a pretty strong belief in something to go to this effort.
However, this is one thing, that any individual citizen has some power to do. I challenge you to do this.
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