Author Topic: Illegal Alien kids in schools  (Read 17416 times)

KD5NRH

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #25 on: May 08, 2010, 02:57:37 AM »
Every day it seems I see something new that likens the US to Rome.

What makes you say that?

mtnbkr

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #26 on: May 08, 2010, 03:19:03 AM »
Most non-college-graduates are unable to break the $50k threshold.

I know several and least 3 of which make 6 figures.  Two of those making 6 figures have GEDs.

These days, I seriously question the *need* for a college degree.

Chris

erictank

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #27 on: May 08, 2010, 06:04:17 AM »
I know several and least 3 of which make 6 figures.  Two of those making 6 figures have GEDs.

These days, I seriously question the *need* for a college degree.

Chris

Both jobs I've held in the past 14 years have been >$50K/year.  No college degree, although I did get technical training in the Navy and on the job.  Those jobs are (current) water plant operator and (previous) nuclear power plant operator.  If I'd stayed at the power plant and gotten my license, I'd have averaged around $85+K/year.  Pay's not quite as good at the water plant, but I've cleared $50K/year each year since I started, back in May '06.

Granted, prior to that, I was making about $20K/year in the Navy...

roo_ster

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #28 on: May 08, 2010, 07:34:43 AM »
I am on board with CSD that half the folks in college are wasting their time, which would be better spent in one of ay number of training regimen.

IMO, public higher ed ought to be yet another filter to shake out illegals, just as ANY contact with ANY gov't entity ought to.
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roo_ster

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MillCreek

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #29 on: May 08, 2010, 09:11:24 AM »
Not what I said.  But it does sit a little rough with me when our tax dollars are being spent to educate imprison young people that dislike this country.

Fixed it for you.  I would rather spend the tax dollars on education rather than the prison system.  I think the return on investment tends to be greater. 
_____________
Regards,
MillCreek
Snohomish County, WA  USA


Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
You are one lousy risk manager.

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #30 on: May 08, 2010, 12:46:58 PM »
smaller investment too
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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KD5NRH

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #31 on: May 08, 2010, 01:09:14 PM »
smaller investment too

Even cheaper, just point a few of these south;

RocketMan

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #32 on: May 08, 2010, 03:46:19 PM »
Fixed it for you.  I would rather spend the tax dollars on education rather than the prison system.  I think the return on investment tends to be greater. 

You have a point.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

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My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

Tallpine

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #33 on: May 08, 2010, 07:15:33 PM »
Quote
I would rather spend the tax dollars on education rather than the prison system. 

There's a difference between the two  ???

 ;)

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it.  - Ursula Le Guin

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #34 on: May 08, 2010, 07:38:29 PM »
Quote
I would rather spend the tax dollars on education rather than the prison system.

Yessiree.  A college education is such a good deterrent to others thinking about crossing the border.  :facepalm:

DD
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MillCreek

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #35 on: May 08, 2010, 09:41:28 PM »
Yessiree.  A college education is such a good deterrent to others thinking about crossing the border.  :facepalm:

DD

So you must think that for an illegal alien, a college education has the same degree of certainty as prison? Hmmm.  Last time I checked, the deterrent effect of prison didn't seem to be slowing down the flow that much. 
_____________
Regards,
MillCreek
Snohomish County, WA  USA


Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
You are one lousy risk manager.

roo_ster

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #36 on: May 08, 2010, 10:24:17 PM »
So you must think that for an illegal alien, a college education has the same degree of certainty as prison? Hmmm.  Last time I checked, the deterrent effect of prison didn't seem to be slowing down the flow that much. 

Well, it is just one more of many carrots rather than a stick.

We got enough carrots, I'd say break out a stick or two.
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

taurusowner

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #37 on: May 08, 2010, 10:46:24 PM »
So you must think that for an illegal alien, a college education has the same degree of certainty as prison? Hmmm.  Last time I checked, the deterrent effect of prison didn't seem to be slowing down the flow that much. 

Do you think there should be less illegal immigrants in the US?

Do you think we should reward criminal behavior?

Do you think it would be in our best interest to make illegal entry into the US less attractive?

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #38 on: May 08, 2010, 10:54:50 PM »
if they pay for their school why not?  i'm hearing they can't make enough as unskilled labor to be worth it to us. if they can elevate themselves and make that cut what is the problem?
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


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MillCreek

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #39 on: May 08, 2010, 11:03:28 PM »
Do you think there should be less illegal immigrants in the US?

Do you think we should reward criminal behavior?

Do you think it would be in our best interest to make illegal entry into the US less attractive?

Do you think that an illegal alien faces the certainty of imprisonment?  And that certainty deters illegal entry?
_____________
Regards,
MillCreek
Snohomish County, WA  USA


Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
You are one lousy risk manager.

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #40 on: May 08, 2010, 11:28:47 PM »
Quote
Last time I checked, the deterrent effect of prison didn't seem to be slowing down the flow that much.

So it's your contention that .gov is actually enforcing its laws?  Really??

DD
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a walk-on part in a war
for a lead role in a cage?
-P.F.

MillCreek

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #41 on: May 08, 2010, 11:39:38 PM »
So it's your contention that .gov is actually enforcing its laws?  Really??

DD

Do you think that an illegal alien faces the certainty of imprisonment?  And that certainty deters illegal entry?
_____________
Regards,
MillCreek
Snohomish County, WA  USA


Quote from: Angel Eyes on August 09, 2018, 01:56:15 AM
You are one lousy risk manager.

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #42 on: May 08, 2010, 11:44:16 PM »
Answer to question #1 is "no", which makes question #2 irrelevant.

DD
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a walk-on part in a war
for a lead role in a cage?
-P.F.

Perd Hapley

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #43 on: May 08, 2010, 11:48:14 PM »
I know several and least 3 of which make 6 figures.  Two of those making 6 figures have GEDs.


A friend of mine dropped out of high school.  That was about fifteen years ago, and he's spent most of that time as co-founder/owner of a business that provides IT support for several schools, churches and businesses, including my current employer.

A couple of my other friends quit college, or just never went.  They also have done pretty well for themselves in IT.



 
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cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #44 on: May 08, 2010, 11:55:43 PM »
you fans of mr dobbs are gonna hate this
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/cost-of-illegal-immigrants/
see the lil blue boxes in the beginning that has cis actually debunking some of the more popular manure  imagine that  cis



Cost of Illegal Immigrants

April 6, 2009
Bookmark and Share

Q: Do illegal immigrants cost $338.3 billion dollars a year? More than the Iraq war?

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

FULL QUESTION

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

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

    ⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏
    WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT?

    Informative, and mind boggling!

    You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

    Boy am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.

    I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

    I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL’s for verification of all the following facts.

    1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
    Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

    2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
    Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

    3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
    Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

    4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

    5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
    Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

    6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

    7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

    8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
    Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

    9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

    10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
    Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

    11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
    Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

    12. The National Policy Institute, ‘estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.’
    Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

    13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
    Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

    14. ‘The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.’
    Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

    The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR AND IF YOU’RE LIKE ME HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING THIS AMOUNT OF MONEY; IT IS $338,300,000,000.00 WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY.

    Are we THAT stupid? YES, FOR LETTING THOSE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS GET AWAY WITH LETTING THIS HAPPEN YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!!!

    If this doesn’t bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative in Washington, D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.

FULL ANSWER

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

Because we’re gluttons for punishment, we’ve gone through each claim in turn and report on each in detail farther down. But here are a few highlights (or lowlights) of what we found:

    * The e-mail includes a link to a CIS report that contradicts some of the e-mail’s own claims. The report found that illegal immigrant welfare use "tends to be very low." It also estimates the total federal net cost of households headed by illegal immigrants at under $10.4 billion, a small fraction of what this message claims.

    * One "paper" that is cited is a non-peer-reviewed, non-scientific study that essentially fabricates a number for illegal immigrant criminals.
      

    * Five of the links lead to transcripts of Lou Dobbs’ cable television show, which fulminates regularly against illegal immigration and is hardly a neutral source. Furthermore, in all instances, the e-mail then takes the original Dobbs reporting out of context.

So, how much do illegal immigrants cost federal, state and local governments in the U.S.? Estimates vary widely, and no consensus exists. The Urban Institute put the net national cost at $1.9 billion in 1992; a Rice University professor, whose work the Urban Institute criticized, said it was $19.3 billion in 1993. More recently, a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office examined 29 reports on state and local costs published over 15 years in an attempt to answer this question. CBO concluded that most of the estimates determined that illegal immigrants impose a net cost to state and local governments but "that impact is most likely modest." CBO said "no agreement exists as to the size of, or even the best way of measuring, that cost on a national level."

It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #45 on: May 08, 2010, 11:56:09 PM »
The Details

For those who want more, we take on each of the e-mail’s claims in order:

1. "$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year."

This item is completely false. The link given to "verify" the claim actually leads to an issue brief by the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform. But the FAIR brief says nothing of the sort. It says: "Each year, state governments spend an estimated $11 billion to $22 billion to provide welfare to immigrants." That’s welfare payments in 2001 to all immigrants – both legal and illegal – plus households including U.S. citizens if they are headed by a person who was born outside the United States.

The site says the FAIR report was last updated in October 2002, but a footnote credits this statistic to a March 2003 report from the Center for Immigration Studies. CIS began as an off-shoot of FAIR. But the CIS report doesn’t actually say anything about $11 billion or $22 billion. And it explains that its references to "immigrant households" include persons here legally and persons born outside the U.S.

    CIS report: Like the Census Bureau, and other academic work that has examined this question, this report looks at welfare use by immigrant and native households. Households are defined as immigrant or native based on the nativity of the household head. As already indicated, this report uses the terms immigrant and foreign-born synonymously.

CIS estimated that welfare payments to illegal immigrant households averaged $1,040 per household in 2001, mainly Medicaid "on behalf of their U.S.-born children." But the report did not attempt to come up with a total for all such households.

2. "$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens."

3. "$2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens."

These figures supposedly come from a 2004 report by CIS that estimated the costs to the federal government of households headed by illegal immigrants in 2002. But the CIS report actually put the costs of food stamp, WIC and free school lunch programs to "illegal alien households" at $1.9 billion, not the $2.2 billion claimed in the e-mail. The $2.5 billion figure for Medicaid to such households is quoted accurately, but again, much of this was in benefits for U.S.-born children, who are citizens.

Most interesting is that the CIS report includes a total net cost estimate to the federal government for illegal immigrants of just under $10.4 billion for the year, after accounting for the taxes these immigrants paid. That doesn’t include any potential costs to state or local governments, but it’s a far cry from this e-mail’s cost claim of $338.3 billion.

    CIS report: Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.

Even CIS’ figures have been questioned by other researchers. The Urban Institute reviewed a related 2003 CIS paper and concluded that its "methods overstate the percentage of the population receiving Medicaid and the share of immigrants on Medicaid, resulting in misleading conclusions about welfare use among immigrants."

Even so, the CIS report actually rebuts claims repeated by this chain e-mail:

    CIS: Our findings show that many of the preconceived notions about the fiscal impact of illegal households turn out to be inaccurate. In terms of welfare use, receipt of cash assistance programs tends to be very low, while Medicaid use, though significant, is still less than for other households. Only use of food assistance programs is significantly higher than that of the rest of the population. Also, contrary to the perceptions that illegal aliens don’t pay payroll taxes, we estimate that more than half of illegals work “on the books.”

4. "$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!"

5."$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies."

Both links given to "verify" these claims lead to an April 1, 2006, episode of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN. During the show, correspondent Christine Romans cited both of these stats and attributed them to FAIR. A FAIR research paper from 2005 does include these cost projections, but a closer look shows that the underlying assumptions are inflated or unsupported.

The FAIR report starts with the presumption that there are "1.5 million school-aged illegal immigrants residing in the United States." That figure is attributed to an Urban Institute presentation that doesn’t actually say that. Instead, the Urban Institute said: "We estimate that there are about 1.4 million undocumented children under 18 with about 1.1 million of school age (5 -19)."

The FAIR report also assumes there are 2 million "U.S.-born siblings" of illegal immigrant families. However, the Urban Institute makes no estimates of U.S.-born siblings and FAIR gives no citation for its figure. And in any case, again, those U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are themselves U.S. citizens and not "illegal aliens."

6. "$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens."

7. "30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens."

Both of these claims can be traced back to that same April 1, 2006, episode of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN, in the same segment, with the same correspondent, Christine Romans. But the e-mail misrepresents what Romans said. She gave figures for people who are "not U.S. citizens," a category that would include legal residents as well as "illegal aliens."

Romans said that "according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 30 percent of federal prisoners are not U.S. citizens," adding that "most are thought to be illegal aliens." Actually, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not keep figures on illegal immigrants. What solid numbers we can find point to a much smaller figure. A Department of Justice report from 2003 found that only 1.6 percent of the state and federal prison populations was under Immigration and Customs Enforcement jurisdiction, and thus known to be illegal immigrants. Half of these prisoners were detained only because they were here illegally, not for other crimes.

The Bureau of Prisons does track prisoners by offense when information is available. By that metric, 10.7 percent of prisoners in federal jails were incarcerated for immigration offenses in 2009. In 2006, when Romans gave her report, the figure was 10.2 percent.

The "$3 million dollar a day" figure is based on the false assumption that  30 percent of all inmates are illegal immigrants, and thus is greatly inflated.

8. "$90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers."

The link to "verify" this claim is dead. However, we found a transcript of a Lou Dobbs episode on Oct. 29, 2006, in which Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation made the following statement:

    Robert Rector, Oct. 29, 2006: Well, assuming that we have about 11 million immigrants in the U.S., the net cost or the total cost of services and benefits provided to them, education, welfare, general social services would be about $90 billion a year, and they would pay very little in taxes. It’s important to remember that at least half of illegal immigrants are high school dropouts.

We checked with Rector, who said he was referring to both legal and illegal low-skill immigrant households (those headed by someone who doesn’t have a high school diploma). His research also looked at many forms of government spending per household, including money spent on parks and transportation.

9. "$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens."

Again, this is from that same April 1, 2006, Lou Dobbs episode. On the show, Dobbs said that "estimates by the most authoritative and recent study put the suppressed wages at $200 billion a year, as a result of immigration, both legal and illegal." The e-mail continues its practice of ignoring any distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

We couldn’t find any study that supported Dobb’s figure.

10. "The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US"

This is false. The "verify" link leads to yet another transcript of Lou Dobbs speaking with Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. This one is dated June 12, 2006, and Rector says, "Hispanics in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-Hispanics."

Rector said Hispanics, not illegal immigrants, as the e-mail alleges. Considering there are 45.4 million Hispanics in the country, and an estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants, the distinction is notable. Rector’s statistic for all Hispanics is correct, according to a 2003 report from the Justice Department.

11. " During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. "

The link goes to a 2006 report written by the Republican staff of the House Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security. To start, the "19,500" number of "illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries" is nowhere to be found in this report. In fact, the report estimates the number of illegal immigrants coming over the southern border from countries known to harbor terrorists to be in the "hundreds." We’ve seen a similar scare tactic used previously in ads advocating for a border fence.

And the 4 million to 10 million statistic is extrapolated using some imprecise reasoning. The committee report figures that since "Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.2 million illegal aliens" in 2005 and since "Federal law enforcement estimates that 10 percent to 30 percent of illegal aliens are actually apprehended," that "therefore, in 2005, as many as 10 to 4 million [sic] illegal aliens crossed into the United States." That simplistic math produces a figure starkly different from more widely accepted estimates. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that in 2005 there were 11.1 million illegal immigrants total, living in the United States. The center also estimated that about 500,000 illegal immigrants a year came to the U.S. from 2005 to 2008.

12. "The National Policy Institute, ‘estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.’ "

No, it didn’t. The National Policy Institute, a group that says it promotes the rights of "white Americans," ironically was citing figures from the liberal Center for American Progress in a report that argued against mass deportation of undocumented workers. CAP said such deportation would cost more per year than the entire Department of Homeland Security budget, illustrating "the false allure of deportation as a response to our broken immigration system."

13. "In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin."

This is another bogus figure. The email’s link leads to the original Frosty Wooldridge article, which in turn cites as its source for this figure a link to a Contra-Costa Times article, which is no longer working. Nevertheless, we were able to find a news release from the Inter-American Development Bank stating Latin American immigrants sent $45 billion in remittances in 2006. But that figure applies to all immigrants, including legal residents.

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."

Once again, the "verify" link is dead. But a little Internet research found the article cited. An independently published, non-peer-reviewed study did estimate that nearly a million sex crimes have been committed by illegal immigrants over a seven-year period, but it employs some highly creative math and interesting assumptions to get there. The "study" is actually a pretty good case study in bad research.

The author assumes that 2 percent of illegal immigrants are sex offenders after "examining ICE reports and public records," but does not say how that figure was calculated. A bibliography cites miscellaneous Immigration and Customs Enforcement press releases and media accounts of instances of apprehending illegal immigrants who were sex offenders (seemingly manufacturing a "rate" based on anecdotal evidence). The author then makes no distinction between male and female illegal immigrants when estimating the number that are "sex offenders."

As we’ve said before, anonymous chain e-mails making dramatic claims are quite likely to be false. And that goes even for those that may seem to cite legitimate sources. This one is yet another good candidate for the "delete" key.

– Justin Bank
Sources

Steven A. Camarota, “Back Where We Started: An Examination of Trends in Immigrant Welfare Use Since Welfare Reform,” Center for Immigration Studies, March 2003.

Camarota, Steven A., "The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget," Center for Immigration Studies, August 2004.

Immigration and Welfare," Federation for American Immigration Reform, Oct 2002.

A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border," prepared by the Majority Staff of House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Investigations, Nov 2006.

Goyle, Rajeev, "Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment," Center for American Progress. 26 July 2005.

Sending Money Home: Leveraging the Development Impact of Remittances," Inter-American Development Bank.  18 Oct 2006.

Schurman-Kauflin, Dr. Deborah, "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States," Violent Crimes Institute, 2006.

Martin, Jack, "Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools Into the Red," Federation for American Immigration Reform. June 2005.

Fix, Michael and Passel, Jeffrey, "U.S. Immigration—Trends and Implications for Schools," Immigration Studies Program, The Urban Institute, 2003.

"Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: 1990-2000," Office of Policy Planning, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, January 2003.

"Table 169, Current Expenditure Per Pupil in Fall Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, by State: 1969-70 to 1999-00," Digest of Education Statistics 2002, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #46 on: May 08, 2010, 11:57:59 PM »

Social Security for Immigrants and Refugees

April 17, 2009
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Q: Do immigrants and refugees get more in benefits than a retired U.S. citizen gets in Social Security?

A: This is nonsense. The claims propagated by a viral e-mail are not even close to the truth.

FULL QUESTION

Is this true?

    This is an insult and a kick in the butt to all of us…

    ⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

    Get mad and pass it on - I don’t know how, but maybe some good will come of this travesty. If the immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid and get more than a woman on Social Security, who worked from 1944 until 2004. She is only getting $791 per month because she was born in 1924 and there’s a ‘catch 22′. It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890. Each can also obtain an additional $580 in social assistance, for a total of $2,470 a month. This compares to a single pensioner, who after contributing to the growth and development of America for 40 to 50 years, can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees! Consider sending this to all your American friends, so we can all be ticked off and maybe get the refugees cut back to $1,012 and the pensioners up to $2,470. Then we can enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years. Please forward to every American to expose what our elected politicians have been doing over the past 11 years - to the over-taxed American. SEND THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW

FULL ANSWER

We’ll start with the most comical error. There is no monthly payment to refugees.

Refugee Re-do

The wrongheaded idea that refugees in the U.S. get "a monthly allowance of $1,890" actually started as a mistaken claim about refugees in Canada. In 2004 an irate Canadian misread a story in the Toronto Star and sent off an error-filled e-mail, which was so widely forwarded it prompted an official debunking by the Canadian government. Somewhere along the way a malicious prankster copied the falsehood almost verbatim and applied it to the U.S. We explained all this in an "Ask FactCheck" item in 2007.

Maximum Mistake

Also wrong – and by a wide margin – is the claim that a Social Security pensioner can get "a monthly maximum of $1,012 in old age pension." The true figure is more than double that. A person retiring this year at the full retirement age of 66 could qualify for a monthly check of up to $2,323, depending on how much she earned and paid into the system over her working life, according to the Social Security Administration.

Notch Baby Nonsense

The example of the woman who retired in 2004 after 60 years of work is also absurd. For one thing, somebody born in 1924 normally would have retired no later than full retirement age – which then was 65 years and four months – rather than continuing to work until age 80.

It’s remotely possible that a relatively low-income worker would have received a monthly pension check of only $791 per month as claimed, but depending on her earnings over her working life she could have received up to $1,825 per month – which was the maximum pension benefit for persons retiring in 2004 at full retirement age. The average monthly benefit paid to all retirees in January 2004, including those who retired in earlier years, was $903. That was adjusted upward to $922 by the annual cost of living adjustment that year.

The reference to a "catch 22" may be a garbled allusion to the "notch baby" controversy from an earlier decade. Some persons born between 1916 and 1921 felt unfairly treated by an adjustment Congress made in 1977, and they lobbied Congress for years to increase their benefits. Financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn called their grievance "a distortion" in a 1999 article explaining the background. But whatever side one takes in the dispute, it’s a simple fact that  somebody born in 1924 would not have been affected.

Bashing Immigrants

The message seeks to generate outrage about over-generous treatment of "immigrants," but misleads the reader in several ways – mainly by failing to distinguish between illegal immigrants (who generally don’t qualify for any benefits) and naturalized U.S. citizens.

It begins by saying "If the immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid." Note that SSI, the acronym for Supplemental Security Income, is a welfare system separate from Social Security retirement benefits. Medicaid is a state-federal program providing medical insurance for low-income persons and is separate from the federal Medicare system for any American who reaches age 65.

Generally, legal immigrants – those who have become citizens and some who have legal permission to be in the U.S – can qualify for these programs on the same basis as anybody else. (The rules allowing some non-citizens to get SSI are complicated, and explained here.) Many people see the word "immigrants" and automatically think "illegal," and the plain fact is that illegal immigrants don’t qualify for either SSI or Social Security.

Illegal immigrants also don’t qualify for Medicaid, except in certain emergency conditions, and that amounts to relatively little. A 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 48,391 individuals who received services reimbursed under Emergency Medicaid during a 4-year period in North Carolina, a state with a rapidly growing immigrant population. The study found that nearly all the patients were in the U.S. illegally, but that spending for their emergency care (mostly childbirth and treating complications of pregancy) amounted to less than 1 percent of the state’s total Medicaid spending.

To sum up: This email’s claim that immigrants and refugees get more generous Social Security, SSI and Medicaid benefits than ordinary citizens is completely wrong.

-Brooks Jackson
Sources

Sellar, Don. "Can we dispel this urban myth?" Toronto Star. 27 Nov 2004.

Roseman, Ellen. "The government and your money." 50Plus Magazine. Feb 2005.

"Just the Facts: Financial Assistance for Refugees." Citizenship and Immigration Canada. 22 Nov. 2006, accessed 17 Apr 2009.

Walters, Meridith et al. "TANF Cash Benefits as of January 1, 2004." Congressional Research Service. 12 Sep 2005.

State of California Department of Social Services. All County Letter No. 07-34E. 17 Oct. 2007.

Social Security Administration. "2009 Social Security Changes." Oct 2008.

Social Security Administration. "2004 Social Security Changes." Oct 2003.
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #47 on: May 09, 2010, 12:11:45 AM »
I do not understand the rationale behind defending those who enter the country illegally.   ???

DD
Would you exchange
a walk-on part in a war
for a lead role in a cage?
-P.F.

taurusowner

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #48 on: May 09, 2010, 12:41:08 AM »
I do not understand the rationale behind defending those who enter the country illegally.   ???

DD

There is only one true rationale behind it.  Once given amnesty and made dependent on government social programs by the Democrats, those millions of illegals are expected to vote for said Democrats.  It's a play at gaining a massive dependable voting block, plain and simple.

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Illegal Alien kids in schools
« Reply #49 on: May 09, 2010, 12:42:55 AM »
Oh, I'm aware of that plot.

The ones that baffle me are the ones with no political gain to be had... There are some on this board.

DD
Would you exchange
a walk-on part in a war
for a lead role in a cage?
-P.F.