NASSAU COUNTY CIVIC ASSOCIATION, INC.
"The government is us, we are the government, you and I." Teddy Roosevelt
|
NASSAU COUNTY CIVIC ASSOCIATION, INC. "The government is us, we are the government, you and I." Teddy Roosevelt |
|
February 15, 2006
Illegal Immigrants working in the USA
How illegal aliens trump a nation of laws
By Barrett Psareas
What does it take for the Federal, State and Local government to find people who are in this country illegally? Not much. You can go to many street corners in this country and find people seeking work or waiting for an employer that is offering them work and yet these same employers do not want to pay American Taxpaying Citizens. Even your government is pandering to the immigration special interest groups, the Latino advocacy groups and corporate lobbyists, all at your expense.
It is amazing how you read it in the newspapers and on the television, all of these people at certain street corners and parking lots just standing there in this country illegally working without paying taxes on their illegally earned income and yet the government will not prosecute those who are here illegally. The employers that pick up these people are also not paying into the tax system; crooks, that is what they are, all at the taxpayers expense. Yet your government will not prosecute these crooks.
You hear excuses of how important illegal immigrants are to our economy and how they take jobs that Americans won’t do. Bull! Do these advocates of open borders believe that people like me who worked as a dishwasher, a landscaper, a laborer, a painter, etc… took a job from an illegal immigrant? Our lawns were getting cut, our strawberries were being picked, our meat was being packed, our children were being watched, our houses were being painted and our houses were being cleaned before we had this massive illegal immigration flow into this country. The idea that somehow we suddenly can't run a country without an unlimited supply of illegal immigrants is absurd. The crooked employers claim that they are now so dependent on their services that they can’t work without them. But to the employers that hire these law breakers, they have no fear of breaking the law unless prosecute them and stop the flow of illegal immigrants in this country.
Let me give a personal story behind the hiring of illegal immigrants. I started a painting business in 1996. On several occasions I gave estimates and bids on various jobs and projects. Even though I was giving fair prices, I was not getting any of the jobs. For the life of me I could not figure out why I was not even getting a response, until I saw a painter that estimated for the same job that I estimated for picking up workers at the Dunkin Donuts parking lot in Freeport. Needless to say my company went bankrupt in 3 years. I had to compete with the hiring of illegal immigrants standing on the corners waiting for work. Imagine that, born and raised in Kings County, New York in the good ole U.S.A., paid my due share in taxes, losing a piece of the “American Dream” all because I would not hire an illegal immigrant to do my work.
Illegal immigrants get the jobs that employers do not want to pay legal taxpaying citizens. The American tax payer is virtually subsidizing the labor costs of the greedy corporations, contractors and employers by supplying the illegal foreign worker and/or their families with welfare, free education, free medical, WIC, housing assistance, etc.; something the corporations, contractors and employers would not do. It is true that if we enforce the immigration laws and deport those that are here illegally, (12 million?) this country may go into an economical shock. You know what, that is what this country needs. Pearl Harbor was a shock to the country, AIDS was a shock to this country, (and the world) and September 11, 2001 was a shock to this country. Deporting 12 million people in this country is the shock in the rear that we need.
Let’s do the math on how the people that are in this country illegally do not pay into the tax system and what it is costing the legal taxpaying citizens of the United States. Here in New York, it is an average of $100.00 a day to pick up someone on the street corner, (more for others if you have some sort of skill and you get picked up earlier that 8:00 a.m.). Times that by an estimated 12,000,000 people illegally in this country and that equals to $1,200,000,000.00 a day, which is not getting funneled through the federal, state and local government’s tax systems. Take the $1,200,000,000.00 a day and times that by the about 250 day work year calendar, which comes to an approximated $300,000,000,000. That is an estimated $300,000,000,000 that is not being taxed every year. That is THREE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. Yet these people that are in this country get to enjoy the great social, medical, governmental and educational benefits that are offered to them that I can not get because, “I make too much money”. Yeah right, if my car dies today I would not even have enough money in my family’s bank account to buy another car.
If I was to lose my job to someone that is in this country illegally, I would have no food on the table and will go bankrupt in 6 weeks. This is what I and many others have to fear as legal taxpaying citizens in our country of origin and who immigrated legally. Yet the only thing people in this country illegally have to fear is being deported which really is only a hindrance to them. The odds in their favor as your government has a catch and release program. Is it any wonder why an illegal immigrant would not show up for their immigration hearing? Even if they are deported, they just return.
If they are in this country illegally, they legally [illegally] have the right to collect workers compensation benefits. If they are in this country illegally and the crooked employer that hires them does not pay them for the illegal work that they perform, an illegal immigrant can sue that employer (with the help of immigrant advocacy groups) and collect the money. On another personal note; I went to claim money that was owed to me (that I was taxed for) at Small Claims Court. Instead of a judge, all I got was an arbitrator who ordered that I must get paid in installments and if no payments were issued, I would have to enforce the order with the local Sheriffs Department. Needless to say I have not seen a dime of the money since 1996 and yet these illegal immigrants go to Immigrant Advocacy groups that actually give them a lawyer to get money that they illegal worked for. Ghastly, and it is also repulsive.
Illegal immigrants are directly responsible for their illegal presence. Blaming the entire problem on employers for illegal immigration is wrong. There is plenty of blame to lay at the footsteps of Congress, the Senate and the White House and of course the state and local communities. Americans have a moral obligation first to provide opportunities to our fellow citizens including our own working poor, homeless, and unemployed, and our struggling middle class.
One more item; let us not forget. On September 11, 2001 there were 19 people in this country illegally. They were here for over a year, plotting, waiting with patience to strike. If it took 19 people to do what they did on September 11, 2001, just imagine out of the estimated 12 million people in this country illegally, how many of them are here to do harm to this country as did the 19 terrorists on September 11, 2001?
Barrett Psareas is the Vice President of the Nassau County Civic Association, Inc.