mark passerini's List: Immigration

• Unauthorized immigrants comprised roughly

  • good statistic
• (or 35,000 workers)
• 2.9% of Mississippi’s workforce
• Alabama’s HB 56 could shrink Alabama’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to $10.8 billion
• • 70,000 to 140,000 lost jobs;
   
  • $2.3 to $10.8 billion reduction in Alabama GDP, or 1.3 to 6.2 percent of the state’s $172.6 billion GDP in 2010;
   
  • $57 to $264 million loss in state income and sales tax collections; and
   
  • $20 to $93 million loss in local sales tax collections.
• • Unauthorized immigrants in Mississippi paid $52.4 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to data from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, which includes:
   
   

   
  • $8.1 million in state income taxes;
   
  • $2.6 million in property taxes; and
   
  • $41.7 million in sales taxes.

  • anther good fact
• aw in Alabama could result in a loss of between $56.7 and $264.5 million in state income and sales tax collections and up to $93.1 million lost in local sales tax collections.
• According to the Tax Foundation, Mississippi ranks as the 11^th most favorable state for low corporate taxation. The increase in public spending that would likely accompany the implementation of the law may require Mississippi to raise its corporate tax rate, making the state less attractive to entrepreneurship. 
• • If proposed laws were to pass, they would immediately be challenged on constitutional and other grounds. Defending the law in the courts can be very expensive.
   
   

   
  • In Arizona, seven lawsuits were filed to stop implementation of SB1070, and other states are likely to see numerous lawsuits against similar legislation.  At the end of February 2011, Arizona had already spent more than $1.5 million defending SB 1070.

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• • blah
    

• Typical illegal aliens come to America primarily for better jobs and in the process add value to the U.S. economy. However, they also take away value by weakening the legal and national security environment. When three out of every 100 people in America are undocumented (or, rather, documented with forged and faked papers), there is a profound security problem. Even though they pose no direct security threat, the presence of millions of undocumented migrants distorts the law, distracts resources, and effectively creates a cover for terrorists and criminals.

    

  In other words, the real problem presented by illegal immigration is security, not the supposed threat to the economy. Indeed, efforts to curtail the economic influx of migrants actually worsen the security dilemma by driving many migrant workers underground, thereby encouraging the culture of illegality. A non-citizen guest worker program is an essential component of securing the border, but only if it is the right program.
• The argument that immigrants harm the American economy should be dismissed out of hand. The population today includes a far higher percentage (12 percent) of foreign-born Americans than in recent decades, yet the economy is strong, with higher total gross domestic product (GDP), higher GDP per person, higher productivity per worker, and more Americans working than ever before.

• Since passage of HB 56, Alabama’s extreme new immigration law, many are aware of the most immediate consequences of the law—rotting tomatoes, racial profiling, and frightened school children. How
• rule of law, and
• municipal
• functioning
• These two provisions have been in effect since September 30,^, 2011, and are likely to result in an increase of exploitation of workers, erosion of fundamental legal protections, and denial of access to state and local government services and activities. In other words, these provisions will undoubtedly impact the daily lives of all Alabamians.

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• Immigration Reform

    

  McCain cosponsored the failed 2007 Senate bill that proposed a guest-worker program with a path to legalization for illegal immigrants. He wants to establish programs that will ensure all undocumented aliens either leave the country or follow a path to legal residence. His priorities are to keep families together and avoid creating a "permanent second class."
• McCain intends to prosecute "bad actor" employers and implement new employment verification systems to screen workers for hiring eligibility
• He has assured his party that in his plan, undocumented immigrants on a path to legalized residence will have to learn English, pay back taxes and fines, and pass a citizenship course.
• those that have been in the country illegally will not receive a green card before those that are already engaged in the legal process.

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• The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown to as  many as 12 million, and they now account for about one in every 20  workers, a new estimate says.
• the report's author said, those efforts are having an  unintended consequence: People who illegally enter the United States  from Mexico are staying longer because it is harder to move back and  forth across the border.
• It is difficult to accurately measure the number of illegal immigrants  in the United States, but most public agencies and private groups had  settled on a figure of about 11 million.
• The report estimates that 850,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in  United States each year since 2000.
• President Bush has called for a program that would grant temporary  worker status to illegal immigrants already here. The House rejected  the program and instead passed a border security bill last year that  leaned toward lawmakers who were calling for a crackdown.
• There are about 7.2 million undocumented workers in the U.S., or about  5 percent of the country's work force, the Pew report said.
• It estimated that illegal immigrants fill a quarter of all  agricultural jobs, 17 percent of office and house cleaning positions,  14 percent of construction jobs and 12 percent in food preparation.
• Business leaders and advocates for immigrants' rights argue that  America's economy would collapse if all the illegal workers were  deported.
• "Undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, and they do contribute to the  economic, social and cultural developments of their communities," said  Peta Ikambana of the American Friends Service Committee. The group was  organizing a rally near the Capitol on Tuesday to protest the House  bill.
• "Just building walls will not stop immigration," Ikambana said. "Those  that are here will just go underground."
• Tuesday's report by the Pew Hispanic Center said Mexicans make up 56  percent of illegal immigrants. An additional 22 percent come from  other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America. About 13  percent are from Asia, and Europe and Canada combine for 6 percent.

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• Over the past decade, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to keep unauthorized immigrants out of the United States, or trying to get them out of the country if they are already here. The end result? Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants now call the United States home, the majority have been here for more than 10 years, and many have U.S.-born children. In short, the “enforcement only” approach to unauthorized immigration has proven to be costly and ineffective.
• the enforcement-only approach has been tried and failed.

• Spending on immigration enforcement has grown dramatically in recent years.

   
   
  • The budget of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) grew from $5.9 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003—when it was created as part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—to $11.5 billion in FY 2011.  The President’s proposed budget for FY 2012 would increase that to $11.8 billion {Figure 1}.
   
   

   
  • Within CBP, the amount of money allocated to the U.S. Border Patrol grew from $1.5 billion in FY 2003 to $3 billion in FY 2010.
   

   

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• SB 1070 allows for a law enforcement official to inquire about a person’s status in the course of “any lawful stop, detention or arrest…in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.” SB 2179 allows law enforcement officers to stop any person who is stopped for violating traffic laws
• Mississippi’s SB 2179 also makes it a state crime to be caught without immigration papers and allows law enforcement to arrest, “without warrant,” a person “reasonably believed” to be in the country without papers.
• “I don’t think there’s any question that we had a tremendous number of people come in, and I have no doubt some of them weren’t here legally,”
• Mississippi is also talking about introducing other anti-immigration laws, like one that require anyone who has a state driver’s license to speak English, or a law that would mandate state documents only be available in English.

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• Income Tax: Every time you receive a paycheck, you probably notice that something is missing. That’s because your employer automatically withholds federal, state, and local income taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes.
• Immigrants —legal and illegal —all buy things, and thus pay these taxes as part of their purchase.

• The result is an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The overwhelming majority of these men and women are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Many settle in low-wage sectors of the economy; they work hard, they save, they stay out of trouble.
• • Backlogs and bureaucracy means the process can take years.  
  • While an applicant waits for approval, he or she is often forbidden from visiting the United States –- which means even husbands and wives may be forced to spend many years apart.  
  • High fees and the need for lawyers may exclude worthy applicants.  
  • And while we provide students from around the world visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities, our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States.
• Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.
• Just a few years ago, when I was a senator, we forged a bipartisan coalition in favor of comprehensive reform. Under the leadership of Senator Kennedy, who had been a longtime champion of immigration reform, and Senator John McCain, we worked across the aisle to help pass a bipartisan bill through the Senate.

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• • register,  
  • pay their taxes,  
  • pay a fine, and  
  • learn English.
• Now, stopping illegal immigration must go hand in hand with reforming our creaky system of legal immigration. We’ve begun to do that, by eliminating a backlog in background checks that at one point stretched back almost a year. That’s just for the background check. People can now track the status of their immigration applications by email or text message.
• We’ve improved accountability and safety in the detention system. And we’ve stemmed the increases in naturalization fees. But here, too, we need to do more. We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs.

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• • First, we know that government has a threshold responsibility to secure our borders and enforce the law. And that’s what Janet and all her folks are doing. That’s what they’re doing.

       

  • "Second, businesses have to be held accountable if they exploit undocumented workers.

       

  • "Third, those who are here illegally, they have a responsibility as well. So they broke the law, and that means they’ve got to pay their taxes, they’ve got to pay a fine, they’ve got to learn English. And they’ve got to undergo background checks and a lengthy process before they get in line for legalization. That’s not too much to ask.

       

  • "And fourth, stopping illegal immigration also depends on reforming our outdated system of legal immigration. We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to not only stay here, but also to start businesses and create jobs here. In recent years, a full 25 percent of high-tech startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants. That led to 200,000 jobs here in America. I’m glad those jobs are here. I want to see more of them created in this country. We need to provide them the chance.