I guess those fences really do work

Smugglers' SUV gets stuck atop Calif. border fence - Houston Chronicle


KTK

 

Now we must sue the manufacturer of that fence, for disrupting this poor individual's attempts at free enterprise and damaged property essential to building his entrepreneurial spirit! And then we need to talk to the Border Patrol guys...why didn't they plant enough land mines to take out the SUV before it even got to the fence? Claymores are easy to make! I know...I've played Fallout3(tm).

/sarcasm

 

we got one of those in darwin (although not as big) that cant even stay up, falls down if the wind blows hard enough

 

Trying to keep the rabbits out?

KTK

 

or the cane toads?

 

As we all laugh at the breach attempt....I remind us all here on the forum, this is a border between WWII Allies. I don't laugh or find humor that 30,000 have been killed in Syria, or when realizing 60,000 have been killed across our own border.

 

Don't get me wrong, I will embrace any man, woman or child who wants to come here and live ACCORDING TO OUR LAWS. But I draw the line at being polite to someone who sneaks over, flaunting our rules and regulations, and subsequently becomes a drain on our already crappy economy. Most of these folks get free health care as "undocumented Americans", health care that's coming out of my taxes, and therefore directly out of my paycheck. I'm not gonna make this a long political rant (deleted several lines already). Suffice it to say that if anyone wants to come here legally, I'm all for that. If they want to come here illegally, then that makes them a criminal, no matter where they come from. And criminals need to be dealt with.

 

My only point was......we debate heavily about going to war in the mid east again with war mongers wanting to engage in Syria over the same issues we have inconclusively fought two wars about..........yet across the border next door twice as many have been killed with little concern on our part.

 

The people who have been killed trying to sneak into the US were breaking the law.

Illegal immigrants screw over every honest immigrant trying to follow the laws of the country they wish to immigrate to.

It is hard to feel sorry for an illegal immigrant who is knowingly breaking the laws and trying to cheat the system.

It is easy to feel sorry for someone who is just trying to make a better life for themselves or there family.

I learned a long time ago this world isn't fair and it is impossible to help everyone. Sad as that statement might be it is also true.

I am very lucky to have been born where I was. I wasn't born here because I was smart, or good looking or well mannered, just lucky.

KTK

 

big Mama will embrace you too

 

While I don’t disagree with your original premise, i.e. follow the rules and come to the US legally, many simply cannot do so as the system is now designed, especially the children who have no choice but to come with their parents. However, our own economic woes have not only reduced the number of undocumented workers coming over the border and staying by nearly an estimated 1 million since 2010, the loss of them in our system is oddly disadvantageous to America. America’s attitude toward needed workers, who then do the labor others will not needs to change. Leaving billions of dollars of crops to rot in the field because undocumented workers are unavailable is unacceptable, especially when no “real American” would take those wages for that back-breaking labor.

But I digress. First off, undocumented peoples are NOT eligible for medical care through the Medicaid system by law and cannot get a card, so out of necessity they use the ER option (Romney’s health care answer) at about the same level/percentage as American citizens without health insurance. Their costs and those of the uninsured citizens are added to the costs of running the hospital ER, whether it is for profit or a non-profit institution. They are also excluded from the new Affordable Care Act for coverage, so put that to rest.

These ER costs are passed onto those who have health insurance through higher premiums, not taxes. So these costs aren’t coming out of your paycheck as “taxes”, they may be coming out of your paycheck as higher health insurance premiums (if you are lucky enough to have health insurance) but, not as taxes. The Republican Congress of 2005, and President Bush signed a bill authorizing the extension of $1 billion dollars over four years ($250 million per year) to help physicians and hospitals cover costs of ER care to undocumented workers.

For both legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, as well as American citizens the “tax man” always collects his due. In the case of the undocumented, it is with little likelihood of them ever collecting a cent for themselves while contributing to the American economy. They pay sales taxes, gas taxes, and other local taxes just because they cannot avoid them. Illegal immigrants are paying taxes to Uncle Sam and the states in which they live, just how much they pay is hard to determine because the federal government doesn't fully tally it. But the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income alone, just through Social Security and Medicare taxes this year. One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year. These dollars will never be paid out to the people who put them in the system.

Paycheck withholding collects much of the federal tax from illegal workers, just as it does for legal workers. The Social Security Administration estimates that about three-quarters of illegal workers pay taxes that contribute to the overall solvency their local state funds, Social Security and Medicare.
The agency estimates that for 2010 (the last year for which figures are available), about $9 billion in taxes was paid into the system on about $75 billion in wages from people who filed W2 forms with incorrect or mismatched data, which would include illegal immigrants who drew paychecks under fake names and Social Security numbers.

Spokesman Mark Hinkle of the SSA said in 2008 that Social Security does not know how much of the $9 billion can be attributed to illegal immigrants. The number is certainly not 100%, but a significant portion probably comes from taxes paid by illegal immigrants.

The impact on Social Security is significant, because that money is never claimed by the people who pay it but instead helps cover retirement checks to legal workers. Federal law prohibits paying Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants, but the administration factors in both legal and illegal immigration when projecting the trust fund's long-term solvency. For illegal contributors to the SSA system it is a full loss. The Internal Revenue Service doesn't have an estimate of how many illegal immigrants pay income tax (federal and state). But one indicator is the 9 million W-2 forms with mismatched names and Social Security numbers it received in 2008. The IRS said the W-2 forms with invalid Social Security numbers reported about $53 billion in wages and about three-fourths of that, $40 billion in wages, had taxes withheld.

The IRS also has been issuing Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, for about 15 years to legal immigrant foreigners without a Social Security number. It's believed that many workers who seek the ITINs are in the country illegally, and the IRS reported that there are generally about 2.5 million tax returns filed with an ITIN. In a public statement in 2006, then IRS Commission Mark Everson told Congress that "many illegal aliens, utilizing ITINs, have been reporting tax liability to the tune of almost $50 billion from 1996 to 2003."

The Social Security and Medicare taxes from mismatched W2s for the same period was $41.4 billion. That adds up to roughly $90 billion in federal taxes during the eight-year period. The IRS defends the ITIN system, despite criticism that some illegal immigrants have used it to open bank accounts, get mortgages and establish a record of residency and taxpaying they hope might someday lead to legal status.

"The ITIN program is bringing taxpayers into the system," Everson told Congress. He said the tax contributions from illegal immigrants, including sales taxes, property taxes and excise taxes (such as the gas tax), are significant. He calculates that illegal immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars to the nation's $13.6 trillion gross domestic product in 2006. That number assumes illegal immigrants are 30% less expensive for their employers than other workers.

 

I try to avoid watching or reading anything in the mainstream news, and to be perfectly honest, my braincell just cant' wrap itself around a lot of facts and figures....I knew I was paying for hospital visits for illegals somehow, whether it was ER trips or taxes or just my (non-work-provided-and-therefore-rather-pricey) medical insurance. Still coming out of my pocket one way or another.

I do agree, though, that Americans are becoming too reliant on cash-only low-wage laborers...those crops rotting in the fields? Yeah...there's how many people unemployed right now who could have been hired on to help harvest? A friend who's blog I read was walking around town one day, and listened to a recent college grad bemoaning the economy and the fact that he couldn't find a job. Blogger spoke up and told him about a friend of his in the oil business who had mentioned that there was a shortage of roughnecks on the rigs, and that they were hiring pretty much anyone with all limbs still attached. College grad snorted and started scoffing at such low, menial labor for someone with a business degree, he was going to wait for the six-figure positions to open up. Until then, he would just continue to draw unemployment and live in his parents' basement. Blogger had to leave before he proceeded beat the real world into this kid.

 

I'd like to embrace Biaks idea of embracing women, subsequently, embraced by Skipper.

 

In both Georgia and Alabama millions of dollars worth of crops rotted in the fields due to a lack of farmhands to pick them, almost exclusively due to the harsh immigration laws those two states passed. The average farm worker in both states makes at the top end (skill still counts) about $8.00 per hour. The work is so difficult however that most unemployed persons who had never done the work, but tried it didn't last very long. A week usually at the far end, most quit the first day before they even learned how to do the job. No benefits are involved here either, no health care, no overtime, and most have to provide their own nutrition while in the fields.

As to "food stamps"; in Las Vegas, the mayor tried to live on what 1.1 million people in Nevada survive on in their SNAP help (food stamps). $29 a week, that is the norm for a single male person, he lost four pounds in the single week, stated he couldn't focus on his job, and was light headed if he stood up too fast. Yeah, those "food stamp" bums really live the high life. It is called a SUPPLEMENTAL (the "S") program after all, to make a balanced diet the person really has to add to the puny food stamp amount. In Montana the amount is even smaller, I think it is about $88 a month for a single adult male, or $22 a week, big give-away huh.

The SNAP program needs better and closer scrutiny to cut down on fraud and "gaming" the system, but I have applied for SNAP and still get some help and it is a process that takes a long time to qualify for in Montana. I survive on my SSDI funds that I paid into while I could still work, but I am now over 90% disabled. I cannot work, even though that is what I miss doing most of all. Montana isn't one of those states that had the "automatic" enrollment if the person/family received as little as a single dollar in energy assistance. That loophole shouldn't exist at all, or at least not at that low a level.

 

Sadly they world is going to sh*t really fast, Not just Mexico, But look at all of South and Central America, One City alone in a fortnight has had over 140 murders. The Mexican government is losing control of entire regions and drug cartels are now building submarines!!, Forget looking towards China as the threat, Our biggest current threat is the cartels, What happens when they start selling rides or submarines to terrorists?