posted on April 4, 2008 09:00:46 AM new
How Immigrants Saved Social Security
* Published: April 2, 2008
Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program’s trustees noted that growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.
One reason is that many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later. Another is that undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages. The result is a substantial increase in the number of working-age people paying taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirees who receive benefits — a double boon to Social Security’s bottom line.
We’re not talking chump change. According to the report, the taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system’s projected long-term deficit. That’s equivalent to raising the payroll tax by 0.3 percentage points, starting today.
That is not to suggest that illegal immigration is a legitimate fix to Social Security’s problems. It is another reminder, however, of the nation’s complex relationship with undocumented workers. Would the people who want to deport all undocumented workers be willing to make up the difference and pay the taxes that the undocumented are currently paying?
It is also a reminder of Social Security’s dynamism. As society and the economy evolve, so does the system, responding not only to changes in immigration and fertility, but also in wage growth and other variables. As such, it is adaptable to the 21st century, if only the political will can be found to champion the necessary changes. Those include modest tax increases and moderate benefit cuts that could be phased in over decades — provided the country gets started soon.
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posted on April 4, 2008 10:43:38 AM new
Wow. You mean when that contractor goes to the corner and picks up a dozen illegals, he pays into SS for them?? Damn, he's a swell guy.
posted on April 4, 2008 05:31:09 PM new
I'm not defending the column; I thought it was a different slant on the topic. It was an editorial in a NYC newspaper (not sure which one).
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posted on April 4, 2008 09:17:22 PM new
I'm not surprised. Many new immigrants work hard, taking the lowest paying jobs without benefits and because of their immigrant status, are not afforded the same benefits as US citizens. My heart goes out to them.
posted on April 4, 2008 10:12:11 PM new
There was an interview today on public radio about how the immigrants, legal or illegal, are finding it harder to get work. The question was, will that encourage some of them to go back to Mexico? Answer: If a day laborer gets just one day of work, for $60 or so, he's making more here than he'd make in a month in Mexico.
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posted on April 5, 2008 07:31:13 AM new
The designation of "illegal" as applied to undocumented or unauthorized immigrants is wrong. An immigrant who does not have the money, time or connections to establish himself in this country should not be called what has become a code word for racial and ethnic hatred.
posted on April 5, 2008 07:55:36 AM new
If the Hispanic worker cannot find work in this country and is spending down his savings to pay for rent and food and gas,sometimes he will just go home to conserve his cash until the job situation improves,that greenback lasts a lot longer in his own native country.
$60 dollars a day?
Make it 25 dollars a day is more like it.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on April 5, 2008 11:06:45 AM new
Is there really such a term as illegal immigrant?
Immigrant by definition should be a person who has been approved by the Immigration and Naturalisation dept,now known as Homeland Security to enter this country,anyone who is not legally approved is not an immigrant.
There are those who enter this country with a work permit or fiancee visa or tourist visa,or student visa .These are not immigrants,they are visitors who enter this country legally for a certain period of time.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on April 5, 2008 07:43:31 PM new
Squirrel - what am I to tell my son, his earliest American ancestors were either unsanctioned visitors, unable to fend for themselves without native help, having arrived on the Mayflower, or, even earlier, his native ancestors who were decimated by the diseases brought by immigrants (probably some of your relatives) they did not sanction to enter their land.
posted on April 5, 2008 08:27:08 PM new
There you go,Thyphoid Mary came to mind,whether legal or illegal,no one taught her to wash her hands after using the bathroom.
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Lets all stop whining !
posted on April 6, 2008 03:38:41 PM new
There are LAWS NOW!
If a person enters this country from another country and doesn't have the proper papers or documentation they are LAW BREAKERS...they are ILLEGAL.
Throwing the people in jail who hire them is a great detriment and should be used more often. They should be fined and stripped of any profits made off these ILLEGAL aliens.
AND, they are N O T all hardworking!!!!!!!
AND many new LEGAL immigrants get ALL the benefits and jobs OVER Americans who were born here!
posted on April 6, 2008 06:52:05 PM new
There is such a huge bias regarding the quotas and wait time afforded to different countries. If you are in Mexico, virtually forget it, even if you have family and pre-arranged employment. If you are in Europe, another story. Exclusionism at its worst. Not what the country was founded on. Edited to add, not all bonafide U.S. citizens are hardworking - what's your point?
[ edited by pixiamom on Apr 6, 2008 07:01 PM ]
posted on April 6, 2008 08:38:46 PM new
"""There is such a huge bias regarding the quotas and wait time afforded to different countries."""
GOOD! I wish there were more stringent conditions for anyone who wants to immigrate here!
From a personal point of view it seems to be quite easy to come into this country...look at the numbers!
""""Edited to add, not all bonafide U.S. citizens are hardworking - what's your point? """
The point is I'm sick to death of people automatically using the words "hard working" with the word "immigrant" , legal or otherwise.
How naive to think immigrants are all part of some Norman Rockwell painting ...all their honest, earnest faces glowing as they gaze at the flag.....for pete's sake there are gang members coming here in droves, murderers, rapist and LAZY people.
Sure, there's lazy people born in America THAT's the POINT....immigrants are people! They come in all forms and to say otherwise is racist.
AND:It is NOT racist to call law breakers illegals....they ARE.
My heart goes out to AMERICANS whose jobs they take because they're willing to work for dirt, work 24 hours a day 7 days a week...that's what America is about ??????
No, that's stupid and lowers everyone else's standards.
Do you have such negative feelings or rather prejudice against the American employers who treat those good people that you call illegals like animals, and selfishly use and abuse them in order to make a profit. Do you have any feelings against these leeching profiteers who would rather abolish the American welfare system and the health care system and the public school system and even make all roads privately owned rather than stop the flow of people who will increase their precious profit.
They would say to hell with security concerns at the border. They would say to hell with what they call the nanny state, to hell with health care and public schools or other institutions that may become impacted by too many people.
Focus your anger on those neocons who see people as if they are commodities to exploit and not on poor individuals who are trying to survive.
posted on April 7, 2008 06:42:24 AM new
The corporate leeches also recruit and abuse guest workers.
Guest workers: a worn-out labor idea
Such programs are bad for immigrants and hurt U.S. workers as well.
By John J. Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado, JOHN J. SWEENEY is president of the AFL-CIO. PABLO ALVARADO is executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
April 10, 2007
CORPORATE America has made an expanded guest worker program the cornerstone of its preferred brand of immigration reform, and no wonder: It will assure a steady flow of cheap labor from essentially indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, chiseled benefits and unsafe working conditions.
Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad experiences with such shortsighted answers to a complicated problem.
The notorious bracero program all but enslaved immigrant agricultural and railroad workers in the years after World War II. Today we have H-2A and H-2B visa programs to remind us that "temporary" immigration employment models rest on a faulty foundation.
The H-2 programs bring in agricultural and other seasonal workers to pick crops, do construction and work in the seafood industry, among other jobs. Workers typically borrow large amounts of money to pay travel expenses, fees and sometimes bribes to recruiters. That means that before they even begin to work, they are indebted. They leave their families at home, and they are essentially "bound" to employers who can send them home on a whim and who do not have to prove a need to hire them in the first place.
According to a new study published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is not unusual for a Guatemalan worker to pay more than $2,500 in fees to obtain a seasonal guest worker position, about a year's worth of income in Guatemala. And Thai workers have been known to pay as much as $10,000 for the chance to harvest crops in the orchards of the Pacific Northwest. Interest rates on the loans are sometimes as high as 20% a month. Homes and vehicles are required collateral. Handcuffed by their debt, the "guests" are forced to remain and work for employers even when their pay and working conditions are second-rate, hazardous or abusive. Hungry children inevitably checkmate protest.
Technically, these programs include some legal protections, but in reality, those protections exist mostly on paper. Government enforcement is almost nonexistent. Private attorneys refuse to take cases. And guest workers, especially the poorest, the least educated and those with the least English, end up with no choice but to put their heads down and toil, innocently undermining employment standards for all U.S. workers in the process.
This doesn't mean that there is no solution to the immigration crisis or no good way to deal with workers and families who will want to come — and who we will need to come — to the United States to work.
In 1997, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform validated our belief that a "properly regulated system of permanent admissions serves the national interest" and warned that another temporary-worker program would be a "grievous mistake." This means that everyone who is admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward permanent residency or citizenship.
Yes, employers who can prove that they tried and failed to find U.S. workers should be able to hire foreign workers. But no, they shouldn't be able to bring them in under abusive conditions that have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions of other workers.
Yes, we should have caps set to limit the number of employment-based visas issued each year. But no, they should not be determined, as the H-2 quotas are now, by political compromise or industry lobbying. The number of employment-based visas should be set each year by the Department of Labor based on macro-economic indicators that establish the needs of particular industries.
Employers should not be allowed to recruit abroad, a practice that invites bribes, exorbitant fees and potential abuse. Instead, employers should be required to hire from applications filed by workers in their home countries through a computerized job bank.
Foreign workers should enjoy the same rights and protections as U.S. workers, including freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Labor laws must protect all workers, regardless of immigration status. If we leave undocumented workers without any real way to enforce labor laws, as our laws do now, we are feeding employers' hunger for more and more exploitable workers, relegating them to second-class status. That hurts all workers.
Scholars have long recognized that the genius of U.S. immigration policy throughout our history has been the opportunity afforded to immigrants for full membership in society. That is the solid foundation on which a morally and economically sound policy can be built, and it is the foundation we are working together to build.
posted on April 7, 2008 08:19:40 AM new
Those "guest workers" should stay home so as not to be so abused. Labor is a commodity like anything else. If you allow these large numbers of illegals and do not enforce penalties against those that hire them, the earnings of legitimate workers are reduced.
Double the INS field budget and fund it with fines levied against employers.
posted on April 7, 2008 08:45:43 AM new
Helen are you referring to my post? Did you bother to read my post:
"""Throwing the people in jail who hire them is a great detriment and should be used more often. They should be fined and stripped of any profits made off these ILLEGAL aliens."""
Or are you so angry at Americans who prefer jobs go to Americans that you can't read?
You post , ""treat those "good" people that "
First, THAT is a racist statement...lumping them all together as in a "herd", they're all alike????
Second, they are N O T all G O O D! just because they come from another country you automatically think they're good????
Well , check the stats on how many gang members are here illegally but YOU MUST VIEW gang members Positively...right! YOU don't want to view them negatively???/...oh, the term "illegal" means ILLEGAL!
posted on April 7, 2008 02:33:53 PM new
Chill, Mingo. Your posts are beginning to resemble your former nemesis.
This article describes how guest workers are exploited by employers in Pascagoula, Ms.
Now that the H2B program has been cut nearly in half employers are complaining that they can't find replacement workers in the United States. The salary appears adequate until you understand that the workers who are recruited from Japan must pay 15,000 to the recruiter and either exhaust their life savings or assume a debt that they can't afford. Then their promised salary is whittled away by the requirement to live on site in crowded windowless trailers without sufficient bathroom facilities. It's not surprising that they are having difficulty finding Americans willing to work under those conditions.
posted on April 7, 2008 05:31:16 PM new
"""Chill, Mingo. Your posts are beginning to resemble your former nemesis."""
Helen's special way of saying she just can't get over linduh! Just can't forget her but wants others to think that she never had anything to with linduh, wants others to forget her marathon screaming matches that started long before I got here.
I'll mention it every time, Helen.
And, it's a good way of admittting she was wrong and has nothing to say !
posted on April 8, 2008 03:27:49 AM new
Helen,
where did you get the notion these workers are from Japan?
Japan is an expensive place,workers are scarce as population has not grown(women are fed up raising a family,married to a chauvinistic husband and serving green tea to male co workers in the office),wages are higher than USA,the last time you see Japanese immigrating into this country was back in early 1900s,did you ever see the movie 'HAWAII' starring Charleston Heston?
These days they all stay in Japan,working for Toyota,Honda,Sony ,patronising Karoki bars,public baths ,eating sushi and playing Yo-gih-oh,never figure out what that is?
BTW,young ladies used to go to bridal school to learn to be a good wife,now they prefer to stay single and enjoy life!
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Lets all stop whining !
Pixiamom, sometimes a half moon illuminates something a little bit weird.
Hwahwa... interesting comment and thanks for that correction! The country was India, not Japan. The information about the recruitment from India can be found here. "Guest Workers Exploited by Recruiters and Employers".
posted on April 8, 2008 06:05:37 PM new
You are welcome.
It is sad,but years ago when I lived in Chicago ,our building has a young Indian doorman,he told me he has 2 master degrees in engineering,one from India and one from USA.
