The influence of illegal immigration on our country is much greater than many believe. This blogger has estimated that illegal immigration since the 1980s accounts for at least 11 percent of our nation’s current total population (see footnote 1). If we do not change certain of our immigration-related laws and continue to not enforce those laws presently in effect, our country will undergo significant changes – all without voter approval.
The majority of voters would never approve of 1) allowing unlimited illegal immigration into this country, 2) legal immigration laws which give significant legal immigration preferences to poor Hispanics, or 3) giving automatic American citizenship to children born here of parents neither of whom is legally residing here. Yet these three situations accurately describe what is happening in the U.S. today and they are contributing to increased poverty and poverty-related problems in our country. Since each of the three are big contributors to the overall impact of illegal immigration they are examined in more detail below.
As a follow-on observation it should be noted that the distribution of income in this country is made less equal by the low average incomes of our current legal and illegal immigration. Moreover, past history indicates that the offspring of our typical legal and illegal immigrants are expected to be characterized by lower than average educational achievement and income as well (more detail below). In general Democrats do not acknowledge this when they attack our current national distribution of income and conclude that government social engineering through changes in taxation and/or other means is required to make for a more level distribution of income. However, as noted on page 120 of the Economic Report of the President: 1994 (President Clinton): "...immigration has increased the relative supply of less educated labor and appears to have contributed to the increasing inequality of income within the nation." Looked at another way -- it makes no sense to devote significant amounts of energy and resources in an effort to reduce poverty in this country and import much more poverty at the same time.
Reason One – Unlimited and Understated Illegal Immigration
For many years our national government has elected to not enforce our laws which prohibit illegal immigrants from working and living in the United States. Certainly, millions of illegal crossers have been stopped at our borders. However, with no penalty for attempting an illegal crossing, those who are returned to their home countries (principally Mexicans) keep attempting to enter in this way until they get by the Border Patrol. It has been estimated that for every person caught trying an illegal border crossing, three get by.
In recent years, there have been a very small number of raids on suspected employers of illegal immigrants affecting just a few thousand illegal immigrants. These raids have been mostly for show since they have involved only a tiny percentage of the millions of illegal immigrants living here. Under President Obama, the enforcement envelope has been pushed back even further with a stated policy of no deportations of “law-abiding” illegal immigrants. (See blog of July 9 – “Kinder, Gentler Obama Immigration Policy.”)
An estimated 30 to 50 percent of our illegal immigrants do not even illegally cross our border. They enter the U.S. legally on visas and passports from all over the world for such purposes as tourism, visiting relatives, pursuing an education, or conducting business. After arriving in the United States, they overstay the time limits, find employment, and establish themselves as residents of our country. We have no system in place to determine whether visitors to the U.S. overstay the legal time limits of their visits – which reduces the ability to do anything about these violations of our law. In sum, our federal enforcement system has evolved to the point that whoever gets by the Border Patrol or enters the U.S. on passport or visa is allowed to remain here perpetually unless they are convicted of a serious crime while here.
Most of our illegal immigrants have been poor and poorly educated Hispanics. Three million were amnestied in the Immigration and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, a general amnesty in which very large numbers of immigrants fraudulently qualified for the amnesty (see footnote 2). In the 1990s another 3 million were amnestied during the Clinton presidency in a series of limited amnesties. The latter amnesties only applied to subsets of our illegal immigrant population, primarily illegals of certain Latin American countries.
Aside from our periodic amnesties, there has been an ongoing steady stream of our illegal population who have achieved legal permanent residence in other ways such as by marrying a citizen, finding employers who will declare that they cannot find an American to do a particular job (including unskilled jobs) at the "prevailing wage", joining our military, applying for asylum, or some other means. In most instances these alternative methods of becoming legal have been facilitated by being here illegally. They have added up to millions of individuals over time, and they have fattened up an influencial immigration bar.
Today our illegal immigrant population is estimated by the media and the federal government at about 12 million. This number understates illegal immigration’s dimensions because it does not include the 6 million previously given amnesty since 1986 and the many millions more of illegals who have obtained and continue to obtain legal permanent residence in ways facilitated by living here illegally. Additionally, this blogger believes the current U.S. illegal population is many millions greater than this widely quoted current estimate of an illegal population of 12 million (see footnote 2b).
The inflow of illegal immigrants has likely slowed with the current recession. Nevertheless, the illegal population is still growing since prospective illegals perceive that no matter how bad things become economically in the United States, wages, job availability, and quality of life will continue to be worse in their home countries. Those who are just entering the United States and those who have lost jobs here have many friends and relatives here with whom they can live until their situations improve. Moreover, it is widely perceived that an amnesty is coming and that deportations have stopped except for those convicted of serious crimes in the United States.
Reason Two – Legal Immigration Which Largely Mirrors Earlier Illegal Immigration
Our present legal immigration system discourages the immigration of individuals with advanced educational backgrounds and skills that would benefit our country. Instead of giving preferences to the best and brightest immigrants whose talents are in short supply here, since 1965 our legal immigration system gives most preferences to the close relatives of citizens. Since it is the recently legalized citizens, including many millions of formerly illegal immigrants legalized by amnesties and other means, who have by far the largest number of close relatives living outside the United States, the typical characteristics of our legal immigrants are now mirroring that of our illegal immigrants – poor, low-skilled, little educated, and predominately Hispanic. Moreover, the amount of permitted legal immigration, including the admission of refugees and asylum seekers who also tend to be poor and unskilled, has been trending up over time and is now running about twice the level it had been prior to the 1990s. During the 2006-2008 period, for each year there were between 1 million and 1.3 million newly designated legal permanent residents, about two-thirds of whom were classified as receiving family-sponsored preferences.
By today’s immigration laws, citizens who are at least 21 years old are entitled to sponsor parents, siblings and their families, and married children as future legal immigrants, subject to annual limitations on category totals. This can be the start of an extended chain of legal immigration with the spouses of siblings or spouses of married children having entirely different families of their own that they will be able in turn to bring into the United States, all subject to restrictive annual limitations. The annual limits on some categories of family-sponsored preferences has led to a current immigration waitlist of an estimated eight million “overseas” relatives of American citizens, many of whom are living in the U.S. illegally today rather than wait outside the country for what is likely to be many years before it will be their turn to enter legally (see Footnote 3).
It should also be noted that legal immigration has been subject to large-scale fraud as shown by DNA testing. In August 2008 a humanitarian program to allow the reuniting of thousands of African refugees with relatives living in the United States was suspended after it was discovered through DNA tests that a "large portion" of the the relatives from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea, and Ghana were not the blood relatives they claimed to be. "We had high rates of fraud everywhere, except the Ivory Coast," said a State Department official (see footnote 3b).
Who knows how much other legal immigration has been fraudulent? It is well known that many immigrants gain legal residence here through fraudulent marriages to American citizens, sometimes referred to as "green-card marriages." Some Americans participate in green-card marriages out of sympathy for the foreigner, some do it for money, and some are deceived into thinking the foreigner is in love with them. In most of the green-card marriage cases the foreigner is already living illegally in the U.S.
Reason Three – The Children of Immigrants
The American born children of illegal immigrants are automatically granted U.S. citizenship. The effect of our illegal immigration on our national population is thereby multiplied. This is especially true since our largest class of illegal immigrants, the poor from Latin America, have high birthrates. About 10 percent of all new births in this country are to illegal immigrants (see Steven A. Camarota, “Birthrates Among Immigrants in America,” Center for Immigration Studies, October 2005). Thus our large base of illegal immigrants who are permitted to live here continually adds to our legal population through childbirth.
Birthright citizenship is the term given to the automatic citizenship granted to children born in the United States. This policy has been applied to the children of illegal immigrant parents since an 1898 Supreme Court interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which was enacted shortly after the Civil War in order to make it difficult for the South to ever again deprive blacks of their citizenship rights.
As applied to the children of illegal immigrants, birthright citizenship has no logical justification – why should children born of parents who are in this country in violation of our laws be rewarded only because their parents are illegally in the country? This practice encourages illegal immigration since it offers foreigners an opportunity to obtain a very valuable life benefit for their newborn children. And under our present immigration law, the children can return the favor when they are 21 and sponsor their parents for citizenship if they have not already become citizens by amnesty or other means. Moreover, birthright citizenship rewards the poor illegal immigrant parents since it enables them to immediately obtain some welfare benefits through their American born children.
Today, few developed countries award birthright citizenship to children whose parents are both illegal immigrants. Great Britain eliminated this practice effective 1983. Australia significantly restricted it effective 1986. Ireland eliminated it effective 2005, followed by New Zealand effective 2006.
Rep. Deal (R-Ga.) with 95 co-sponsors have proposed a bill which would limit automatic citizenship to those cases where at least one parent was a citizen or a legal permanent resident. If such legislation gets enough support to become law, its validity would eventually be argued before the Supreme Court. Then the Supreme Court would either approve it or possibly rule that a new Constitutional amendment would be required to change the present practice of granting automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrant parents.
For many years illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and immigrants who became legal through amnesty or other means have all been largely Hispanic with high birth rates. Thus our immigrants are adding to our population substantially beyond their original numbers through childbirth. It should also be noted that over the years the impact of this childbirth is even greater than the high birth rates alone might lead one to expect because the Hispanic childbirths tend to occur at a relatively early age, thereby increasing the effect of generational compounding.
An estimated 80 percent of our current illegal immigrant population is Hispanic with limited education, an estimated 60 percent not having graduated high school. Calling on the work of a number of different researchers, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has gone to some lengths to document the ways in which our illegal immigrant population and their offspring are likely to impose significant future costs on our society (footnote 4).
The fact that Hispanics in the United States have had a history of high welfare use (footnote 5) contributes to the expectation that today's Hispanic immigrants and their offspring will also come to be characterized as having high welfare usage. The extent of welfare usage of Hispanics in the United States has been attributed to: persistent low incomes related to low educational attainment, high teen birthrates, high rates of births out of wedlock (footnote 6), and cultural factors (footnote 7).
Professor Borjas of Harvard found that "the longer that immigrants live in the United States, the more likely they are to use welfare...." (footnote 7b). Among his observations were that there were “large differences in welfare propensities among national origin groups.” Among the nationalities with high percentages of welfare usage after at least ten years in the United States (1998 data) were Dominican Republic (58 percent of households), Mexico (33.6 percent), Cuba (28.6 percent), and El Salvador (25.9 percent). By contrast Ireland (5.6 percent), India (5.6 percent), Poland (6.8 percent), and Germany (7.8 percent) were at the low end of the range.
Although studies of educational levels achieved by second and third generation Mexicans in the United States show improvements over the educational attainments of the immigrants, they also unfortunately show that educational deficiencies still persist with relatively high percentages dropping out of high school and relatively low percentages attaining college degrees (footnote 8). This does not auger well for the future children of our immigrants.
Rector also notes that additional societal costs will result if the newly amnestied immigrants and their offspring adopt the cited high crime rate of Hispanics in the United States (footnote 9). The fact that most of our Hispanic immigrants come from countries where corruption and lawlessness are widespread may have an influence on their U.S. crime statistics (footnote 10). Illegal immigrants themselves do not have above average crime rates – probably due to a combination of appreciation for their improved economic situation and the knowledge that criminal convictions are the one thing that will get them deported. It is an entirely different story for succeeding generations which have a much higher crime rate. There is evidence that a significant number of the descendents of poor Hispanic immigrants are slipping into the same vicious circle that has trapped too many of our poor citizens: the circle of poverty, low educational attainment, drugs, high numbers of teen births out of wedlock, broken families, gangs, crime, and prison time (footnote 11).
Footnotes
1 The present population of the U.S. recently passed the 300 million mark. The following population sources tied to illegal immigration since the 1980s together account for the author’s rough conservative estimate of 34 million people whose presence in the United States can be traced to illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants legalized by seven amnesties enacted since 1986 total more than 6 million (source: Vernon M. Briggs, “Immigration Reform and the U.S. Labor Force: the Questionable ‘Wisdom’ of S.2611,” statement before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, August 29, 2006, footnote 4). Illegal immigrant births in the United States were estimated at 380,000 for 2002 (source: Steven M. Camarota, “Birthrates Among Immigrants in America,” Center for Immigration Studies, October 2005). Extrapolating for 2000-2008, births of illegal immigrants should have added about 3.2 million in this period. With fewer illegal immigrants here in the 1990s, we estimate 2 million births for that decade, and .5 million for the 1980s. For the decade of the 1990s, the INS estimated that it granted 1.5 million illegal immigrants legal permanent residence for reasons such as marriage to a citizen or job certification. Conservatively, we used that data to estimate 1.5 million from that source for the 2000-2008 period, and .3 million for the 1980s (source: an INS source cited in Steven A. Camarota, “Immigrants at Mid-Decade,” Center for Immigration Studies, December 2005). Illegal immigrants who have awarded legal permanent residence status or been subsequently naturalized have rights to sponsor relatives for legal immigration. For the fiscal year 2006, family sponsored preferences accounted for about 800,000 new legal immigrants according to a statistical publication of the Department of Homeland Security: Annual Flow Report – U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2006. Many of these 800,000 must be relatives of former illegal immigrants who were amnestied or were awarded legal permanent residence status since few other Americans would have qualifying relatives living out of the country to sponsor. We conservatively estimate legal immigrants sponsored by individuals who were former illegal immigrants at 3 million for 2000-2008, 1.5 million for the 1990s, and .15 million for the 1980s. Lastly we must estimate the number of children which were born to the 6 million amnestied illegal immigrants, the 3.3 million who obtained legal permanent status in other ways, and the estimated 4.65 million legal immigrants sponsored by former illegal immigrants. We conservatively estimate these births at 1.6 million for the 2000-2008 period, 1 million for the 1990s and .2 million for the 1980s. To the above we add the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants here at the end of 2007, to come up with a grand total of 34.27 million of our current population that is here illegally today or attributable to immigrants that took up illegal residence here since the 1980s.
2 Our first amnesty for illegal immigrants, The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), was a general amnesty for nearly all illegal immigrants who could prove that they had lived in the United States continuously since January 1, 1982. In addition, as a concession to agricultural interests, the same Act contained an amnesty for those who had worked in perishable agriculture for at least 90 days in the year ended May 1, 1986. IRCA was the subject of massive fraud, especially the agricultural worker component which had an application total that was many times what had been expected. This fraud resulted from our federal bureaucracy being overwhelmed by the number of applicants, giving it little time and resources to determine whether an application was fraudulent or not. As a consequence, an estimated 70 percent of the approximately three million who were granted amnesty under ICRA had applications which were fraudulent in one way or another (See Otis L. Graham Jr., “Amnesty Repeats Itself,” The American Conservative, June 18, 2007). Included were three terrorists are known to have successfully used IRCA to establish legal residence in the United States under the agricultural worker provision! (See Janice L. Kephart, “Immigration and Terrorism,” Center for Immigration Studies, September 2005.)
2b) See chapter entitled "Current Estimated Illegal Immigration Population" beginning on page 34 of Illegal Immigration -- The Myths and The Reality.
3 Mark Krikorian, “Limit Relatives Rights,” USA Today, June 18, 2007 mentions the eight million estimate. This article also mentions that the failed immigration bill of May/June 2007 proposed to eliminate extended family categories of legal immigration as a tradeoff for amnesty, but only after admitting the millions on the waiting list over the next eight or ten years. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a staunch immigrant advocate, is quoted as saying of this proposal: “The day it passes, we’re going to put in legislation to try to fix it [restore extended family preferences in legal immigration].” As part of its recommendations, the Jordan Commission proposed that the level of legal immigration be reduced by eliminating some of the family preferences which can give rise to extended chains of legal immigration.
3b Miriam Jordan, "Refugee Program Halted As DNA Tests Show Fraud," The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2008.
4 Robert Rector, “Amnesty and Continued Low Skill Immigration Will Substantially Raise Welfare Costs and Poverty,” Testimony before the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, August 2, 2006.
5 Robert Rector cites Gordon H. Lester and Jan Tin, “Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Program Participation, 1996 to 1999 Who Gets Assistance?” Household Economic Studies, Current Population Reports, P70-94, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington D.C., January 2004 which shows that for 1999, Hispanics in the United States were almost three times more likely to receive welfare than non-Hispanic whites. Moreover, among families that received aid, the median aid received for Hispanic families was significantly higher than the median for non-Hispanic white families. In addition, Hispanics were more than three times as likely to be long-term welfare program participants than non-Hispanic whites.
6 Hispanic mothers born in the United States had an illegitimacy rate of 50 percent in 2003 (the most recent year of the data used) in contrast to 43 percent for Hispanic immigrant mothers and 24 percent for whites. Data from Steven A. Camarota, “Illegitimate Nation – An Examination of Out-of-Wedlock Births Among Immigrants and Natives,” Center for Immigration Studies, May 2007.
7 George J. Borjas, Heaven’s Door (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), Chapter 6.
7b) Ibid.
8 Rector cites Richard Fry and B. Lindsay Lowell, “Work or Study: Different Fortunes of U.S. Latino Generations,” Pew Hispanic Center, May 28, 2002. A different study which shows a lower high school dropout rate for Hispanics also shows that the third generation has a higher dropout rate than the second, both also being significantly higher than the non-Hispanic dropout rates: Pia Orrenius, “Is the U.S. Still a Melting Pot?” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Southwest Economy, May/June 2004.
9 From Rector: “The age specific incarceration rates in federal and state prisons (prisoners per 100,000 residents in the same age group in the general population) are two to two and a half times higher for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites. Relatively little of the higher imprisonment rate of Hispanics seems to be due to immigration violations.” Rector cites Paige M. Harrison, and Allen J. Beck, “Prisoners in 2003,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, NCJ 205335, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington D.C. November 2004, table 12. Also cited was Thomas P. Bonczar, “The Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population 1974-2001,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, NCJ197976, August 2003.
10 Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors, subtitled A Portrait of the Mexicans (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 113, states: “Mexican officials find difficulty in admitting – above all to foreigners – that corruption is essential to the operation and survival of the political system. But the system has in fact never lived without corruption and it would disintegrate or change beyond recognition if it tried to do so.” On 116: “In a sense, the fact that corruption continues to flourish in myriad forms elsewhere [in addition to that found in the upper levels of the Mexican government] confirms that the problem is cultural….”
11 See Heather Mac Donald, Victor Davis Hanson, Steven Malanga, The Immigration Solution (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007). This book extensively documents the social and economic fallout from our current illegal immigration.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
The High Unemployment Rates of Those Americans Who Most Compete With Immigrants for Jobs
As a result of job competition with legal and illegal immigrants, the little educated and younger Americans, especially those who are disadvantaged minorities, are hurt by having lower wages and benefits and fewer job opportunities than would otherwise be available to them. Our lowest paying jobs in businesses such as restaurants or motels are very appealing to immigrants who find the pay is six to ten times what they could earn in their home countries if they were able to find any employment there at all. Thus the immigrants will do whatever it takes, including doing more work for less compensation and working “off the books” in order to obtain low paying American jobs. As a consequence, in all too many cases employers choose to hire immigrants instead of native Americans. (For more advantages stemming from off the books work see blog of August 9 -- "Illegal Immigration Results in Understatement of U.S. Employment.")
Using data from the June 2009 Current Population Survey, Karen Jensenius and Steven A. Camarota have compiled unemployment and underemployment data for different subsets of native-born Americans who are most likely to be competing with immigrants for jobs(see Center for Immigration Studies piece entitled “Worse Then It Seems,” Backgrounder/Report August 2009 which can be found at their website www.cis.org).
The data show that for June 2009 the unemployment rate for all native-born Americans is 9.7 percent. By comparison, the unemployment rate for native-born Americans with less than a high school education is 20.8 percent. For native-born blacks with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate rises to 27.5 per cent.
For all young (18-29) native-born who have only a high school education, the unemployment rate is 18.5 percent. For all young native-born blacks with only a high school education the unemployment rate is 25.8 percent.
These data become much worse if one includes 1) the underemployed (those working part time who would like to work full time) and 2) those too discouraged to have sought employment in the prior four weeks (none of whom are counted as unemployed in the official statistics). Adding these two categories to the unemployment rate gives percentages of 16.3 percent for all native born and 33.2 percent for all native born with less than a high school education. Similarly, the rate rises to 42 percent for native-born blacks who did not graduate from high school. For the young (18-29) who have only a high school education, the percentage rises to 30.3 percent for all native-born and 37.4 percent for native-born blacks.
Conclusions from the Jensenius and Camarota report: “The [unemployment] situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants – legal and illegal.” “…there is no shortage of less-educated [citizen] workers in this country. If the United States were to enforce immigration laws and encourage illegal immigrants to return to their home countries over time, we have an adequate supply of less-educated natives to replace these workers.”
Using data from the June 2009 Current Population Survey, Karen Jensenius and Steven A. Camarota have compiled unemployment and underemployment data for different subsets of native-born Americans who are most likely to be competing with immigrants for jobs(see Center for Immigration Studies piece entitled “Worse Then It Seems,” Backgrounder/Report August 2009 which can be found at their website www.cis.org).
The data show that for June 2009 the unemployment rate for all native-born Americans is 9.7 percent. By comparison, the unemployment rate for native-born Americans with less than a high school education is 20.8 percent. For native-born blacks with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate rises to 27.5 per cent.
For all young (18-29) native-born who have only a high school education, the unemployment rate is 18.5 percent. For all young native-born blacks with only a high school education the unemployment rate is 25.8 percent.
These data become much worse if one includes 1) the underemployed (those working part time who would like to work full time) and 2) those too discouraged to have sought employment in the prior four weeks (none of whom are counted as unemployed in the official statistics). Adding these two categories to the unemployment rate gives percentages of 16.3 percent for all native born and 33.2 percent for all native born with less than a high school education. Similarly, the rate rises to 42 percent for native-born blacks who did not graduate from high school. For the young (18-29) who have only a high school education, the percentage rises to 30.3 percent for all native-born and 37.4 percent for native-born blacks.
Conclusions from the Jensenius and Camarota report: “The [unemployment] situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants – legal and illegal.” “…there is no shortage of less-educated [citizen] workers in this country. If the United States were to enforce immigration laws and encourage illegal immigrants to return to their home countries over time, we have an adequate supply of less-educated natives to replace these workers.”
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Political Smoke Screens
As a part of President Obama's campaign to advance the Democrat's health care legislation, he has publicly stated that illegal immigrants will not receive coverage under it. This is misleading since President Obama knows full well that whether or not a new health care bill is passed most illegal immigrants will continue to receive free health care coverage under present federal law as they have since 1986.
In addition, the Congressional Research Service, the research arm for the U.S. Congress, refutes (in a report entitled "Treatment of Noncitizens in H.R. 3200" dated August 25, 2009) the President and other Democrats who insist that House draft of the health care reform bill, America's Affordable Health Care Act of 2009, (H.R. 3200) does not cover illegal immigrants: "H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens participating in the Exchange -- whether the noncitizens are legally or illegally present or in the United States temporarily or permanently." It is true that illegal immigrants would generally not be required to participate and they would not be eligible for subsidies based on income; althugh there is no enforcement mechanism for the latter. To view a copy of this Congressional Research Report see the Center for Immigration Studies website: www.cis.org/articles/2009/CRS_Report_on_HR3200.pdf
For a detailed review of HR3200 see Steven A. Camarota, "Illegal Immigrants and HR3200: Estimate of Potential Cost to Taxpayers" Backgrounder, September 2009 at the www.cis.org website.
By the terms the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 all hospitals with emergency rooms are compelled to treat, and hospitalize if necessary, all who enter their emergency rooms irrespective of the ability to pay for services rendered and irrespective of citizenship status. In this way most of our illegal immigrants, being both poor and uninsured, have their health care paid for without limit by our public and private hospitals across the country. Hospitals receive little or no reimbursement from the federal government for providing such services to illegal immigrants who do not pay (see blog of August 19 – Martin Memorial Medical Center Case – for more detail regarding this). In some cases the financial burden from treating immigrants has contributed to hospital closures.
By his actions President Obama has consistently favored easy treatment for the illegal immigrants working and living in this country and favors amnesty for nearly all. Every now and then he talks tough on immigration in order to throw a smoke screen over his real intentions which may be found, for example, in his administration’s unilateral decision to stop taking deportation action against “law-abiding” illegal immigrants who are living and working in this country in defiance of federal law. In addition to living and working here illegally, most immigrants also commit identity fraud for such purposes as helping to obtain jobs or drivers licenses thereby causing headaches for Americans whose identity was assumed (see "Illegal, But Not Undocumented," subtitled "Identity Theft, Document Fraud, and Illegal Employment" by Ronald W. Mortensen. This piece can be found as a June 2009 Backgrounder at the Center for Immigration Studies website http://cis.org/).
This Obama immigration policy has been manifested by public statements and the newly stated policy of going after employers of illegal immigrants without any attempt to detain and deport the illegal workers of those employers. At the same time, it seems likely that few large employers of illegals will ever be prosecuted since most relied on worker-supplied documentation which demonstrated a right to work in the U.S.
Most illegal workers who lose their jobs as a result of an employer crackdown will not give up all of the advantages of living in the U.S. and voluntarily return to their home countries where jobs are hard to find and lower paying. Instead they will find other U.S. employers who will hire them, including smaller employers who may hire them off the books, or they will find work as independent contractors. An estimated 50 percent of illegal immigrants currently work off the books or as independent contractors who most likely do not report their income.
For more information related to the Obama administration’s immigration policies see the July 9 blog entitled “Kinder, Gentler Obama Immigration Policy.”
In addition, the Congressional Research Service, the research arm for the U.S. Congress, refutes (in a report entitled "Treatment of Noncitizens in H.R. 3200" dated August 25, 2009) the President and other Democrats who insist that House draft of the health care reform bill, America's Affordable Health Care Act of 2009, (H.R. 3200) does not cover illegal immigrants: "H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens participating in the Exchange -- whether the noncitizens are legally or illegally present or in the United States temporarily or permanently." It is true that illegal immigrants would generally not be required to participate and they would not be eligible for subsidies based on income; althugh there is no enforcement mechanism for the latter. To view a copy of this Congressional Research Report see the Center for Immigration Studies website: www.cis.org/articles/2009/CRS_Report_on_HR3200.pdf
For a detailed review of HR3200 see Steven A. Camarota, "Illegal Immigrants and HR3200: Estimate of Potential Cost to Taxpayers" Backgrounder, September 2009 at the www.cis.org website.
By the terms the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 all hospitals with emergency rooms are compelled to treat, and hospitalize if necessary, all who enter their emergency rooms irrespective of the ability to pay for services rendered and irrespective of citizenship status. In this way most of our illegal immigrants, being both poor and uninsured, have their health care paid for without limit by our public and private hospitals across the country. Hospitals receive little or no reimbursement from the federal government for providing such services to illegal immigrants who do not pay (see blog of August 19 – Martin Memorial Medical Center Case – for more detail regarding this). In some cases the financial burden from treating immigrants has contributed to hospital closures.
By his actions President Obama has consistently favored easy treatment for the illegal immigrants working and living in this country and favors amnesty for nearly all. Every now and then he talks tough on immigration in order to throw a smoke screen over his real intentions which may be found, for example, in his administration’s unilateral decision to stop taking deportation action against “law-abiding” illegal immigrants who are living and working in this country in defiance of federal law. In addition to living and working here illegally, most immigrants also commit identity fraud for such purposes as helping to obtain jobs or drivers licenses thereby causing headaches for Americans whose identity was assumed (see "Illegal, But Not Undocumented," subtitled "Identity Theft, Document Fraud, and Illegal Employment" by Ronald W. Mortensen. This piece can be found as a June 2009 Backgrounder at the Center for Immigration Studies website http://cis.org/).
This Obama immigration policy has been manifested by public statements and the newly stated policy of going after employers of illegal immigrants without any attempt to detain and deport the illegal workers of those employers. At the same time, it seems likely that few large employers of illegals will ever be prosecuted since most relied on worker-supplied documentation which demonstrated a right to work in the U.S.
Most illegal workers who lose their jobs as a result of an employer crackdown will not give up all of the advantages of living in the U.S. and voluntarily return to their home countries where jobs are hard to find and lower paying. Instead they will find other U.S. employers who will hire them, including smaller employers who may hire them off the books, or they will find work as independent contractors. An estimated 50 percent of illegal immigrants currently work off the books or as independent contractors who most likely do not report their income.
For more information related to the Obama administration’s immigration policies see the July 9 blog entitled “Kinder, Gentler Obama Immigration Policy.”
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Martin Memorial Medical Center Case
By the terms of a 1986 federal law, illegal immigrants (and uninsured citizens) cannot be denied hospital “emergency” medical care. In practice, this has meant that all hospitals (public and private, profit and nonprofit), fearing lawsuits, examine and treat all who enter their emergency rooms and admit them to the hospital if necessary whether or not such patients have any ability to pay for the services rendered. In some cases the required hospital care can cost millions of dollars and can go on for years. For many hospitals this is a substantial financial burden as well as a burden on the citizens of the community which the hospital serves.
In a widely watched case, on July 27, 2009 a jury in Stuart, Florida found that a local hospital, Martin Memorial Medical Center (located in Martin County, Florida), did not act unreasonably when it chartered a plane at a cost of $30,000 and sent a seriously brain-damaged illegal-immigrant Guatemalan patient to a medical facility in his home country in 2003 after treating him from 2001 to 2003 at a cost of $1.5 million. The jury reached its decision in about one day of deliberations following a three week trial in which Martin Memorial was the defendant in a civil case. This case highlights the Catch-22 problem hospitals have with those indigent patients for whom hospitals receive little or no reimbursement for medical expenses: they cannot legally discharge the patient if the patient still needs medical care and there is no rehab facility or other hospital facility in this country or in the patient’s home country who will agree to take the patient. This Martin Memorial case may be the first to test the legality of cross-border transfers without the consent of patients or their guardians.
Following the jury’s decision the hospital’s chief executive praised the decision and decried the failure of politicians to provide reimbursement to hospitals for unpaid immigrant medical care. Moreover, he noted that: “Unfortunately none of the proposed national health care reform bills currently being debated in Washington address the issue.”
Details related to this case and some general comments about similar hospital cases may be found in Deborah Sontag, “Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals,” New York Times (August 3, 2008) and Deborah Sontag, “Jury Rules for Hospital That Deported Patient,” New York Times (July 28, 2009).
The following is from the April, 2009 testimony of a representative of Martin Memorial given before a committee of the Florida legislature:
“I am Carol Plato. I am from Martin County, and I am Director of Corporate Business Services for Martin Memorial Medical Center. I just have a brief couple of stories to tell you about. In 2001 we had a Guatemalan, an illegal patient, in our hospital. He was there from 2001 until 2003. He had over $1.5 million in healthcare services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000. You ask why am I telling you about a case that happened in 2003? Because today that case is not over; we have spent and are spending up to a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country. Currently, as of today, I have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage, he has no family, no friends. His charges to date for almost 2 years is $1.5 million and we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times; we have contacted Immigration, and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We are even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient. We can’t get anyone to help us with that. . . . One of the major problems that healthcare institutions have today that you need to be aware of is ongoing care. If somebody comes into our emergency rooms, we don’t turn them away, but if somebody comes into our emergency room and they have renal failure, and they require dialysis -- right now I have six patients, illegal, undocumented patients that we are seeing every 3 days for renal dialysis. For all of this that I’ve talked to you about, we have received no reimbursement. This obviously affects all of us in this room, our healthcare costs are severely affected by this. I also would like to end with pointing out that a large percentage of the babies born in our facility are from illegal parents.”
Chairman:
“Thank you. I do have one quick question from Representative (?)”
Representative:
“Sorry, I know there are a lot of speakers. Ma’am, when you know that they are illegal and come to your hospital, do you report them to the federal authorities to come get them?”
Carol Plato:
“We have tried and we have been told on numerous occasions that they are only interested if a crime has been committed. And from what I understand it seems like they are not even interested then.”
Representative:
“So the fact that they are illegal is not enough crime.”
Carol Plato:
“Correct”
As noted in Brian Grow and Robert Berner, “Fresh Pain for the Uninsured,” BusinessWeek, December 3, 2007: “When they don’t get paid immediately, hospitals typically recover around 10 cents on the dollar owed, even when they hire collection specialists.” The underlying theme of this article as suggested by its title is that “a growing number of hospitals, working with a range of financial companies, are squeezing revenue from patients with little or no health insurance.” Thus uninsured or underinsured American citizens may have to pay hospitals something after using hospital services, depending on their ability to pay. In the cases of illegal immigrants who have no financial resources or who give hospitals fictitious names and addresses, hospitals are not likely to recover any money at all for services rendered.
Most illegal immigrants do not have health insurance and pay very little in taxes because their incomes are so low and because an estimated 50 percent work “off the books,” and therefore pay no income or social security taxes at all. Moreover, many illegals have parented children here giving rise to still more health bills as well as public education expenses which average about $8000 per pupil per year in public schools. In addition, our poor immigrants access various forms of public assistance and other public services. Most assistance or public services used by immigrants or their families are paid for by citizen taxpayers.
In the case of health care, hospitals receive little or no state or federal reimbursement for immigrant use of hospital services which means that hospitals must pass on these costs through in higher charges to paying patients, primarily users with some form of health insurance, or close their doors. Consequently, users or their employers end up paying more for health insurance policies and/or face higher deductibles and co-pays as a direct result of the unpaid medical expenses of illegal immigrants and their children. In 2007 the passthrough of unpaid hospital expenses was estimated to cost each insured Californian about $455 per year (see an op-ed written by the chief executive of Scripps Health in San Diego County, Chris Van Gorder, “Health Care – The Governor’s Plan,” San Diego Union - Tribune, March 2, 2007). In this same op-ed it is noted that financial pressures contributed to the closure of 65 emergency rooms and 70 acute care hospitals in California during the previous decade. In the words of C. Duane Dauner at the time he was president of the California Hospital Association: "Emergency rooms and hospital doctors are forced to subsidize the lack of immigration enforcement by the federal government." Quote from: Julia Preston, “Texas Hospitals’ Separate Paths Reflect the Debate on Immigration,” New York Times, July 18, 2006.
To date most of the illegal immigrant users of unreimbursed hospital medical services likely work and live in the U.S. and have low incomes and few asssets. Many are working off the books or as independent contractors without health insurance. Others work part-time or are otherwise not covered by any employer health plan.
In the future we may see increasing numbers of non-citizens with serious illnesses visit the U.S. for the primary purpose of obtaining free high quality health care unavailable to them in their own countries. Given the ease of entering the U.S. legally (for example, as tourists, to visit relatives, or for educational or business purposes) or illegally, given our existing law requiring hospitals to treat all who enter their emergency rooms, and given the desperation of seriously ill people of little means in the many countries with inadequate or non-existent health care systems for the poor, it is to be expected that over time we will become the medical salvation for increasing numbers of the world’s poor – all at the expense of American hospitals and American citizens.
Still another set of users of unpaid and unreimbursed hospital medical services are pregnant women who come to the U.S. to have their childbirth within a higher quality medical situation than is available to them in their home country. An additional attraction to these women is the knowledge that under American law any childbirth within the U.S. conveys to the newborn automatic American citizenship irrespective of the status of the parents.
In a widely watched case, on July 27, 2009 a jury in Stuart, Florida found that a local hospital, Martin Memorial Medical Center (located in Martin County, Florida), did not act unreasonably when it chartered a plane at a cost of $30,000 and sent a seriously brain-damaged illegal-immigrant Guatemalan patient to a medical facility in his home country in 2003 after treating him from 2001 to 2003 at a cost of $1.5 million. The jury reached its decision in about one day of deliberations following a three week trial in which Martin Memorial was the defendant in a civil case. This case highlights the Catch-22 problem hospitals have with those indigent patients for whom hospitals receive little or no reimbursement for medical expenses: they cannot legally discharge the patient if the patient still needs medical care and there is no rehab facility or other hospital facility in this country or in the patient’s home country who will agree to take the patient. This Martin Memorial case may be the first to test the legality of cross-border transfers without the consent of patients or their guardians.
Following the jury’s decision the hospital’s chief executive praised the decision and decried the failure of politicians to provide reimbursement to hospitals for unpaid immigrant medical care. Moreover, he noted that: “Unfortunately none of the proposed national health care reform bills currently being debated in Washington address the issue.”
Details related to this case and some general comments about similar hospital cases may be found in Deborah Sontag, “Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals,” New York Times (August 3, 2008) and Deborah Sontag, “Jury Rules for Hospital That Deported Patient,” New York Times (July 28, 2009).
The following is from the April, 2009 testimony of a representative of Martin Memorial given before a committee of the Florida legislature:
“I am Carol Plato. I am from Martin County, and I am Director of Corporate Business Services for Martin Memorial Medical Center. I just have a brief couple of stories to tell you about. In 2001 we had a Guatemalan, an illegal patient, in our hospital. He was there from 2001 until 2003. He had over $1.5 million in healthcare services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000. You ask why am I telling you about a case that happened in 2003? Because today that case is not over; we have spent and are spending up to a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country. Currently, as of today, I have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage, he has no family, no friends. His charges to date for almost 2 years is $1.5 million and we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times; we have contacted Immigration, and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We are even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient. We can’t get anyone to help us with that. . . . One of the major problems that healthcare institutions have today that you need to be aware of is ongoing care. If somebody comes into our emergency rooms, we don’t turn them away, but if somebody comes into our emergency room and they have renal failure, and they require dialysis -- right now I have six patients, illegal, undocumented patients that we are seeing every 3 days for renal dialysis. For all of this that I’ve talked to you about, we have received no reimbursement. This obviously affects all of us in this room, our healthcare costs are severely affected by this. I also would like to end with pointing out that a large percentage of the babies born in our facility are from illegal parents.”
Chairman:
“Thank you. I do have one quick question from Representative (?)”
Representative:
“Sorry, I know there are a lot of speakers. Ma’am, when you know that they are illegal and come to your hospital, do you report them to the federal authorities to come get them?”
Carol Plato:
“We have tried and we have been told on numerous occasions that they are only interested if a crime has been committed. And from what I understand it seems like they are not even interested then.”
Representative:
“So the fact that they are illegal is not enough crime.”
Carol Plato:
“Correct”
As noted in Brian Grow and Robert Berner, “Fresh Pain for the Uninsured,” BusinessWeek, December 3, 2007: “When they don’t get paid immediately, hospitals typically recover around 10 cents on the dollar owed, even when they hire collection specialists.” The underlying theme of this article as suggested by its title is that “a growing number of hospitals, working with a range of financial companies, are squeezing revenue from patients with little or no health insurance.” Thus uninsured or underinsured American citizens may have to pay hospitals something after using hospital services, depending on their ability to pay. In the cases of illegal immigrants who have no financial resources or who give hospitals fictitious names and addresses, hospitals are not likely to recover any money at all for services rendered.
Most illegal immigrants do not have health insurance and pay very little in taxes because their incomes are so low and because an estimated 50 percent work “off the books,” and therefore pay no income or social security taxes at all. Moreover, many illegals have parented children here giving rise to still more health bills as well as public education expenses which average about $8000 per pupil per year in public schools. In addition, our poor immigrants access various forms of public assistance and other public services. Most assistance or public services used by immigrants or their families are paid for by citizen taxpayers.
In the case of health care, hospitals receive little or no state or federal reimbursement for immigrant use of hospital services which means that hospitals must pass on these costs through in higher charges to paying patients, primarily users with some form of health insurance, or close their doors. Consequently, users or their employers end up paying more for health insurance policies and/or face higher deductibles and co-pays as a direct result of the unpaid medical expenses of illegal immigrants and their children. In 2007 the passthrough of unpaid hospital expenses was estimated to cost each insured Californian about $455 per year (see an op-ed written by the chief executive of Scripps Health in San Diego County, Chris Van Gorder, “Health Care – The Governor’s Plan,” San Diego Union - Tribune, March 2, 2007). In this same op-ed it is noted that financial pressures contributed to the closure of 65 emergency rooms and 70 acute care hospitals in California during the previous decade. In the words of C. Duane Dauner at the time he was president of the California Hospital Association: "Emergency rooms and hospital doctors are forced to subsidize the lack of immigration enforcement by the federal government." Quote from: Julia Preston, “Texas Hospitals’ Separate Paths Reflect the Debate on Immigration,” New York Times, July 18, 2006.
To date most of the illegal immigrant users of unreimbursed hospital medical services likely work and live in the U.S. and have low incomes and few asssets. Many are working off the books or as independent contractors without health insurance. Others work part-time or are otherwise not covered by any employer health plan.
In the future we may see increasing numbers of non-citizens with serious illnesses visit the U.S. for the primary purpose of obtaining free high quality health care unavailable to them in their own countries. Given the ease of entering the U.S. legally (for example, as tourists, to visit relatives, or for educational or business purposes) or illegally, given our existing law requiring hospitals to treat all who enter their emergency rooms, and given the desperation of seriously ill people of little means in the many countries with inadequate or non-existent health care systems for the poor, it is to be expected that over time we will become the medical salvation for increasing numbers of the world’s poor – all at the expense of American hospitals and American citizens.
Still another set of users of unpaid and unreimbursed hospital medical services are pregnant women who come to the U.S. to have their childbirth within a higher quality medical situation than is available to them in their home country. An additional attraction to these women is the knowledge that under American law any childbirth within the U.S. conveys to the newborn automatic American citizenship irrespective of the status of the parents.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Illegal Immigration Results In Understatement of U.S. Employment
In the final paragraph below is a letter to the editor of The New York Times regarding an article featuring government data indicating that the private sector of the U.S. economy showed about zero job growth over the last 10 years.
It is not widely recognized that the employment data referred to by the Times and related economic data understate the actual employment numbers due to the substantial increase in our “underground” economy which has resulted in large part from the influx of illegal immigrants in recent years. When jobs go underground they are not included in government employment data or tax rolls. The underground economy includes shadow employees or independent contractors who are doing work which generates income that is not reported to the appropriate governmental agencies.
Employers can save substantial money if they hired employees “off the books.” By hiring “off the books,” an employer can save on the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state unemployment insurance taxes as well as workers compensation insurance. The employer also saves on any employer contribution to health insurance as well as vacation, holiday, and sick pay that would otherwise be made to an “on the books” employee. The “off the books” employer may also benefit by being able to ignore laws which protect workers in different ways such as laws related to overtime, the minimum wage, the workplace environment, hiring and firing. Many employers have both “on the books” and “off the books” employees, and those who do hire “off the books” tend to be smaller businesses.
Employees also often like “off the books” working arrangements because they can thereby avoid paying social security taxes as well as any state and federal income taxes that may be due. Moreover, by working "off the books" both illegal and citizen employees can qualify for different kinds of welfare with their lower reported incomes. (For an example of billions of dollars of welfare for illegal immigrants with low reported incomes see blog of May 9, 2010 entitled "Child Tax Credits for Illegal Immigrants.") In addition, those workers who are illegal immigrants can thereby avoid having to come up with social security numbers that are not theirs or filing tax returns to claim income tax refunds against withheld amounts. Illegal immigrants, seeking to maintain a low profile, usually agree to off the books employment if it is offered, especially since in other countries such as Mexico working “off the books” is a widespread practice. An estimated 50% of current illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. are working “off the books” or as independent contractors who are not reporting income.1
The honest employers can be doubly penalized by 1) only hiring their employees “on the books,” and 2) only hiring employees who can legally work here (more expensive and perhaps less productive than illegal immigrant alternatives). For many small businesses, the choice is to violate various laws as their competitors are doing or go out of business. Thus illegal immigration is contributing to a significant growth of our “underground economy.”2 Increases in off the books work has a corrupting influence on our economy and society. Increases in off the books work undermines the basic honesty necessary for our tax system to function well and it tends to draw otherwise honest employers and otherwise honest citizen workers into its illegal workings which offer significant financial advantages to both employers and employees.
1 For obvious reasons it is difficult to obtain hard data on the percentage of illegal immigrants “working off the books.” For a discussion of how a 50 percent figure can be arrived at see Steven A. Camarota, “The High Cost of Cheap Labor,” Center for Immigration Studies, August 2004. Mexicans are very familiar with the concept of “working off the books” as that practice is the backbone of their economy’s “informal sector.” A description of the “informal sector” was given in Robert J. Samuelson, “Mexico’s Missing Prosperity,” The Washington Post, June 28, 2006: “It [the informal sector] consists of thousands of small firms – street vendors, repair shops, tiny manufacturers – that theoretically aren’t legal, because they haven’t registered with the government and often don’t pay taxes or comply with regulations on wages and hiring and firing. Almost two-thirds of Mexico’s workers may be employed in the informal sector, according to one rough estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The sector’s size might suggest great entrepreneurial vitality. The trouble is that these firms are small and inefficient. Because they’re technically illegal, they can’t easily get bank loans and can’t grow too large without being forced to pay taxes or comply with government regulations.”
2 See Robert Justich and Betty Ng, “The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface,” Bear Stearns Asset Management, January 3, 2005.
To the Editor:
Re “Job Growth Lacking In the Private Sector” (August 8):
This article of Mr. Norris does not mention negative effect on the reported employment numbers by the growth of the “underground economy.” Tax avoidance by employers and employees and the willingness of illegal immigrants to work “off the books” for small employers or as independent contractors who do not report income have no doubt distorted the statistics quoted in the article. Moreover, it should be noted that when some employers start hiring “off the books” the financial advantages are so great that it puts considerable pressure on their competitors to also do so.
It is not widely recognized that the employment data referred to by the Times and related economic data understate the actual employment numbers due to the substantial increase in our “underground” economy which has resulted in large part from the influx of illegal immigrants in recent years. When jobs go underground they are not included in government employment data or tax rolls. The underground economy includes shadow employees or independent contractors who are doing work which generates income that is not reported to the appropriate governmental agencies.
Employers can save substantial money if they hired employees “off the books.” By hiring “off the books,” an employer can save on the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state unemployment insurance taxes as well as workers compensation insurance. The employer also saves on any employer contribution to health insurance as well as vacation, holiday, and sick pay that would otherwise be made to an “on the books” employee. The “off the books” employer may also benefit by being able to ignore laws which protect workers in different ways such as laws related to overtime, the minimum wage, the workplace environment, hiring and firing. Many employers have both “on the books” and “off the books” employees, and those who do hire “off the books” tend to be smaller businesses.
Employees also often like “off the books” working arrangements because they can thereby avoid paying social security taxes as well as any state and federal income taxes that may be due. Moreover, by working "off the books" both illegal and citizen employees can qualify for different kinds of welfare with their lower reported incomes. (For an example of billions of dollars of welfare for illegal immigrants with low reported incomes see blog of May 9, 2010 entitled "Child Tax Credits for Illegal Immigrants.") In addition, those workers who are illegal immigrants can thereby avoid having to come up with social security numbers that are not theirs or filing tax returns to claim income tax refunds against withheld amounts. Illegal immigrants, seeking to maintain a low profile, usually agree to off the books employment if it is offered, especially since in other countries such as Mexico working “off the books” is a widespread practice. An estimated 50% of current illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. are working “off the books” or as independent contractors who are not reporting income.1
The honest employers can be doubly penalized by 1) only hiring their employees “on the books,” and 2) only hiring employees who can legally work here (more expensive and perhaps less productive than illegal immigrant alternatives). For many small businesses, the choice is to violate various laws as their competitors are doing or go out of business. Thus illegal immigration is contributing to a significant growth of our “underground economy.”2 Increases in off the books work has a corrupting influence on our economy and society. Increases in off the books work undermines the basic honesty necessary for our tax system to function well and it tends to draw otherwise honest employers and otherwise honest citizen workers into its illegal workings which offer significant financial advantages to both employers and employees.
1 For obvious reasons it is difficult to obtain hard data on the percentage of illegal immigrants “working off the books.” For a discussion of how a 50 percent figure can be arrived at see Steven A. Camarota, “The High Cost of Cheap Labor,” Center for Immigration Studies, August 2004. Mexicans are very familiar with the concept of “working off the books” as that practice is the backbone of their economy’s “informal sector.” A description of the “informal sector” was given in Robert J. Samuelson, “Mexico’s Missing Prosperity,” The Washington Post, June 28, 2006: “It [the informal sector] consists of thousands of small firms – street vendors, repair shops, tiny manufacturers – that theoretically aren’t legal, because they haven’t registered with the government and often don’t pay taxes or comply with regulations on wages and hiring and firing. Almost two-thirds of Mexico’s workers may be employed in the informal sector, according to one rough estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The sector’s size might suggest great entrepreneurial vitality. The trouble is that these firms are small and inefficient. Because they’re technically illegal, they can’t easily get bank loans and can’t grow too large without being forced to pay taxes or comply with government regulations.”
2 See Robert Justich and Betty Ng, “The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface,” Bear Stearns Asset Management, January 3, 2005.
To the Editor:
Re “Job Growth Lacking In the Private Sector” (August 8):
This article of Mr. Norris does not mention negative effect on the reported employment numbers by the growth of the “underground economy.” Tax avoidance by employers and employees and the willingness of illegal immigrants to work “off the books” for small employers or as independent contractors who do not report income have no doubt distorted the statistics quoted in the article. Moreover, it should be noted that when some employers start hiring “off the books” the financial advantages are so great that it puts considerable pressure on their competitors to also do so.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Dairy Farmers Demand More Cheap Labor
The paragraph after this one is a letter sent by this blogger on July 31 to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. For a more extensive discussion regarding immigrant labor in agriculture see the blog of June 22 entitled "AgJOBS bill of Senator Feinstein." In the WSJ article cited below it was mentioned that a 100 dairy farmers flew to Washington to make a case for Congressional help in obtaining more immigrant laborers, i.e. they cannot attract enough immigrants, legal and illegal, at the current wage. Moreover, some are uneasy about having many illegal immigrant laborers among their workers. The farmers would probably like to see 1) an expanded guest worker program (which would allow a specified number of foreign workers to be hired for a specified time period) for the dairy industry and 2) an amnesty for their illegal employees that would require the employees to stay in agriculture for a certain number of years as a condition for receiving amnesty (this is contained in Feinstein's proposed AgJOBS bill discussed in the June 22 blog). The article goes on to say that one dairy industry study finds that 40% of today's dairy labor force consists of immigrants, a big change from 20 years ago when there were few immigrants doing this work. What follows is the letter the editor of the WSJ:
When dairy farmers hire low-wage illegal immigrants or foreign guest workers as described in “Got Workers? Dairy Farms Run Low on Labor” (July 30, 2009), the effect is the same as that of a direct subsidy of the dairy farmers whose profits are thereby higher than if they were forced to pay market wages and benefits. It is an insidious subsidy because its cost is not explicit in the federal budget. Rather its cost is spread across the country in terms of various free or low-cost public services that the low-income immigrant workers receive, including free education for their children and free health care through hospital emergency rooms. Because their incomes are low, these workers pay little in taxes and they reduce the availability of, and money for, various public services for our poor citizens. Furthermore, at some level of wages and benefits dairy farmers would be able to attract capable American citizens to do such work. This is proven by the large number of Americans who currently do such “dirty” jobs as coal mining and garbage collection in return for decent wages and benefits. In general, agriculture is a “sacred cow” whose government subsidies have yet to be reined in by Congress.
When dairy farmers hire low-wage illegal immigrants or foreign guest workers as described in “Got Workers? Dairy Farms Run Low on Labor” (July 30, 2009), the effect is the same as that of a direct subsidy of the dairy farmers whose profits are thereby higher than if they were forced to pay market wages and benefits. It is an insidious subsidy because its cost is not explicit in the federal budget. Rather its cost is spread across the country in terms of various free or low-cost public services that the low-income immigrant workers receive, including free education for their children and free health care through hospital emergency rooms. Because their incomes are low, these workers pay little in taxes and they reduce the availability of, and money for, various public services for our poor citizens. Furthermore, at some level of wages and benefits dairy farmers would be able to attract capable American citizens to do such work. This is proven by the large number of Americans who currently do such “dirty” jobs as coal mining and garbage collection in return for decent wages and benefits. In general, agriculture is a “sacred cow” whose government subsidies have yet to be reined in by Congress.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
U.S. Immigration Law Is Unenforced and Unenforceable – A Case in Point: Obama’s Kenyan Aunt Zeituni
Attending Obama’s Senate swearing-in ceremony in 2004 was a half-sister of his father, Zeituni Onyango, whom Obama had referred to in his memoir as “Auntie Zeituni.” Onyango had sought political asylum in the United States in 2002. In April 2003, an immigration judge turned down the asylum bid and ordered Onyango deported. After a series of appeals, Oyango was again ordered to leave the country in October, 2004. The order to leave was ignored by Onyango with no consequence. This is the usual case for those denied asylum – a 2003 study found that only 3 percent of those denied asylum left the country or were deported (footnote 1).
A spokesperson for the Housing Authority in Boston said that Onyango had been screened and approved for public housing as an “eligible non-citizen” in 2003. The spokesperson went on to say that the Housing Authority receives no notice of deportation orders. Furthermore, the spokesperson noted that although Onyango entered the system under federal guidelines in a federal development, she now lives in a state funded development. State law forbids the authority from asking about immigration status. Thus, the spokesperson said that the federal deportation order has no bearing on Onyango’s eligibility for the state funded project where she was living in 2008.
On April 1, 2009, the same immigration judge that heard her earlier cases gave Onyango 10 months (of living in the United States) to prepare another appeal against the outstanding deportation order. Onyango is one of many immigrants who seek to have their cases reopened, which can occur repeatedly, according to federal immigration officials.
On February 4, 2010 Zeituni Onyango was back before an immigration judge trying to make a case for asylum. She arrived in a wheelchair and her attorney indicated that medical conditions would be part of her case. Once again President Obama through his press secretary indicated he has no involvement in the case. The closed hearing ended without a decision by the judge who can make one in the coming months or continue the case on May 25.
In May 2010 the immigration judge ruled that asylum should be granted in Onyango's case based on his judgement that a return to Kenya might put her in danger. The danger results from the public disclosure of her identity in an unauthorized leak of confidential government information regarding her case three days before the November 2008 presidential election.
After the news of Zeituni Onyango's status surfaced shortly before the presidential election in the fall of 2008, the Obama campaign issued a statement at the time which said that "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed."
Other problems that commonly occur with immigrants who are under orders to leave the country are: many of those that voluntarily agree to leave the country never do; and of those that do voluntarily leave the United States or are deported, many subsequently return to the United States as illegal immigrants. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has testified that of those illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County jails, 70 percent had been previously deported but illegally returned to the United States and were then accused of or had committed a crime. For more on the problems surrounding deportation see Michelle Malkin, "The Deportation Abyss" (subtitled: "It Ain't Over 'til the Alien Wins), Center for Immigration Studies, Backgrounder, September 2002.
References:
Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Elliot Spagat, Rodrique Ngowi, and Jay Lindsay, "Obama's Kenyan Aunt in US Ilegally," AOL News, November 1, 2008.
Judy Rakowski, “2010 Deportation Hearing Is Set for Obama’s Aunt,” Washington Post, April 2, 2009.
Devin Dwyer, "Obama's Kenyan Aunt Seeks Asylum Again, Awaits Ruling on Deportation," ABC News, February 4, 2010.
Associated Press, "Immigration judge blasts leak in Obama'a aunt's asylum case," August 18, 2010.
Footnotes
1 “The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Removal of Aliens Issued Final Orders,” Report Number I-2003-004, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, February 2003.
A spokesperson for the Housing Authority in Boston said that Onyango had been screened and approved for public housing as an “eligible non-citizen” in 2003. The spokesperson went on to say that the Housing Authority receives no notice of deportation orders. Furthermore, the spokesperson noted that although Onyango entered the system under federal guidelines in a federal development, she now lives in a state funded development. State law forbids the authority from asking about immigration status. Thus, the spokesperson said that the federal deportation order has no bearing on Onyango’s eligibility for the state funded project where she was living in 2008.
On April 1, 2009, the same immigration judge that heard her earlier cases gave Onyango 10 months (of living in the United States) to prepare another appeal against the outstanding deportation order. Onyango is one of many immigrants who seek to have their cases reopened, which can occur repeatedly, according to federal immigration officials.
On February 4, 2010 Zeituni Onyango was back before an immigration judge trying to make a case for asylum. She arrived in a wheelchair and her attorney indicated that medical conditions would be part of her case. Once again President Obama through his press secretary indicated he has no involvement in the case. The closed hearing ended without a decision by the judge who can make one in the coming months or continue the case on May 25.
In May 2010 the immigration judge ruled that asylum should be granted in Onyango's case based on his judgement that a return to Kenya might put her in danger. The danger results from the public disclosure of her identity in an unauthorized leak of confidential government information regarding her case three days before the November 2008 presidential election.
After the news of Zeituni Onyango's status surfaced shortly before the presidential election in the fall of 2008, the Obama campaign issued a statement at the time which said that "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed."
Other problems that commonly occur with immigrants who are under orders to leave the country are: many of those that voluntarily agree to leave the country never do; and of those that do voluntarily leave the United States or are deported, many subsequently return to the United States as illegal immigrants. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has testified that of those illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County jails, 70 percent had been previously deported but illegally returned to the United States and were then accused of or had committed a crime. For more on the problems surrounding deportation see Michelle Malkin, "The Deportation Abyss" (subtitled: "It Ain't Over 'til the Alien Wins), Center for Immigration Studies, Backgrounder, September 2002.
References:
Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Elliot Spagat, Rodrique Ngowi, and Jay Lindsay, "Obama's Kenyan Aunt in US Ilegally," AOL News, November 1, 2008.
Judy Rakowski, “2010 Deportation Hearing Is Set for Obama’s Aunt,” Washington Post, April 2, 2009.
Devin Dwyer, "Obama's Kenyan Aunt Seeks Asylum Again, Awaits Ruling on Deportation," ABC News, February 4, 2010.
Associated Press, "Immigration judge blasts leak in Obama'a aunt's asylum case," August 18, 2010.
Footnotes
1 “The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Removal of Aliens Issued Final Orders,” Report Number I-2003-004, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, February 2003.
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