Tag Archives: Pew Hispanic Center

The Economic Consequences Of Legal And Illegal Immigration

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On January 23rd, PEW Research posted an article about the flow of money worldwide. The article noted that in 2016,  $28,126,000,000 was sent from America to Mexico by Mexicans living in the United States.

An article posted at the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform explains how this impacts America.

The article reports:

$60 billion dollars are earned by illegal aliens in the U.S. each year. One of Mexico’s largest revenue streams (after exports and oil sales) consists of money sent home by legal immigrants and illegal aliens working in the U.S. Economists say this will help Mexico reduce its $17.8 billion defecit and may bolster the peso. $10 billion dollars (as of 2003) are sent back to Mexico annually, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, reported in an Associated Press article, up $800 million from the previous year. ($9 billion dollars were previously sent back annually, according to a September 25, 2002 NPR report). That figure equals what Mexico earns annually from tourism. This is a massive transfer of wealth from America – essentially from America’s displaced working poor – to Mexico.

A May 28, 2004 study by Bendixen & Associates6 found that legal and illegal immigrants send a total of $30 billion to their home countries on an annual basis. Mexico receives $13.3 billion a year. The largest amount in remittances ($9.6 billion) is sent from California, followed by New York ($3.6 billion), Texas ($3.2 billion) and Florida ($2.5 billion). Of those surveyed by the study, 24% were Latin American-born U.S. citizens, 39% were legal residents, and 32% were illegal aliens. Sixty-one per cent of those surveyed send remittances overseas at least once a month. A typical remittance is between $150 and $250.

This is money earned in the United States, but not added to the United States economy–it is money added to the Mexican economy. It should be noted that these remittances include money earned by both legal and illegal immigrants. In the case of the illegal immigrants, they are not paying taxes to America and often are taking advantage of federal assistance programs (I know illegal aliens are not supposed to be able to take advantage of federal assistance programs, but I personally know of instances where they have been able to do so easily).

It is time to take control of our borders. We need to return to a merit-based immigration system and return to the idea of allowing people to come to America who want to be part of America. Our Constitution is the foundation of our law. If you want to live under something other than the U.S. Constitution,  please go elsewhere. It is time that we brought people in who will add to the general well being of America. That is the only way to ensure the future of our country for our children.

 

 

Exactly What Did The Stimulus Do?

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The American Thinker posted an article today about what happened to the Middle Class under President Obama. Basically the value of the American dollar shrank and the Middle Class shrank.

The article reports:

A December 2015 study of the American middle class done by the Pew Research center found that for the first time in over forty years the middle class no longer includes the majority of Americans.  The plain fact is, after the largest so-called stimulus government spending program in world history, conducted by President Obama and his Democratic Party, both the number of persons in the middle class and the proportion of the population shrank.

The Pew Hispanic Center May 2016 Study found that at the end of President Obama’s second term, the middle class had been shrinking in the vast majority of metropolitan areas of the US.  The important of the metropolitan areas is that 1) 76% of all Americans live in metro areas, 2) metro areas are the areas where most jobs are located, and 3) illegal immigration is promoted in metro areas all across the nation.

While the shrinking middle class proves that government cannot raise the incomes of middle class persons in the US through stimulus spending, at the same time it shows that the increasing tax burden on the middle class eats away at their disposable income and their lack of spending hurts the local economies.

The article concludes:

The Tax Foundation also looked at the sources of state and local taxes and published a study in June 2017.  While property taxes remain the single greatest source of tax revenues, the idea that the property tax goes solely to fund public services such as police, water and sewer maintenance, street lighting, etc. is now a lie in many areas.   The Illinois Policy Institute audited all the cities of Illinois and found that in 10 of the cities including Chicago, all of the property taxes collected go only to pay public sector pensions.  This leaves a huge gap in the funding of local public services, which is why Chicago has the highest sales tax, some of the highest taxes on tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, etc.

OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.  This can be interpreted as proof that stimulus programs don’t work or, as I have argued, that the spending was never intended to stimulate the economy: only to bolster the equities values of public sector union pension plans, since they are the largest contributors to the Democratic Party’s national machine in all fifty states.  We are losing our incomes because we’ve been forced to subsidize Obama’s political party.   The debt, Fed balance sheet, and financial instability indicate there’s no end in sight. 

There are a number of conclusions we can draw from this. First of all, when workers in local municipalities formed unions, bad things happened. Unions donate to political candidates. Therefore people elected to municipal offices have an incentive to be nice to unions. How do you be nice to unions and also nice to taxpayers? When negotiating contracts, you provide benefits that will not immediately show up in the budget. You create unfunded liabilities such as permanent health care for retirees or wonderful pensions that employees don’t have to pay into.  Unfunded liabilities are the burden that is poised to sink many of our towns and cities in America.

In actuality, if the federal government had simply given every taxpaying American $40,000, the stimulus would have been cheaper and actually made a difference in the average American’s life. Instead, the President who claimed to represent the little people simply paid off the wealthy donors who paid to elect him.