Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes

Unlike Donald Trump, the first American President in decades who refused to release his tax returns, an undocumented immigrant showed her tax forms and proved she paid $300 into a system that refuses to acknowledge her or give her any benefits in return.

Undocumented immigrants not paying taxes has been a right wing lie for centuries, yet proof of the contrary has never seemed to slow down the haters in the least.

Comments on her disclosure are proving once again that facts don’t seem to make anti-immigrant hate mongers change their tunes.

In fact, they seem to believe that if they shout their hate louder, then maybe they can drown out the facts and restore their faith in their all-American fantasy tale that immigrants are bad for America.

The fact that our nation’s entire history is one huge immigrant success story doesn’t seem to faze the ultra-conservatives much, and hundreds of years of their vociferous dribblings don’t give me any hope it will stop any time soon, either.

So, in the mean-time, Dreamers, keep up the good fight, and leave the bad fight to the haters, who, in the end, will be the losers, for fate ultimately validates the righteous.

In a World. . . where Republicans rule supreme.

Where Democrats don’t have much say in government and are left to sit on the sidelines and complain about what could have been.

 

A young man gets shot by someone who bought a gun and some ammo at recent gun show and robbed him of his cell phone and wallet. The hospital bill is in the tens of thousands of dollars, even though he was released that same day, because the Affordable Health Care Act was repealed and Medicare has been gutted to barely care for some of the necessities of senior citizens who cannot afford their own private medical insurance.

He goes home and fixes the same thing he eats every day—Ramen noodles. Sometimes, for a special occasion, he will add a few Ketchup packets he boosts from the fast food restaurant he started working at, ever since all the immigrants got deported, creating a vacuum in the economy and causing chain layoffs as companies lost people who could afford their products. Job choices are slim since many other college graduates have flooded the foodservice, hospitality, homecare and other menial job markets.

This bright, intelligent, 26 year old man is thinking it might not be too late to join the military, the only healthy industry left after the Republican dominated government cut all the “parasitic social services” in order to create tax breaks for the rich and reduce spending to balance the budget, not to mention motivate those people “addicted to government subsidies.” Balancing the budget was supposed to be the main goal, but with all the other problems with the economy and the new wars breaking out with the Russians, Chinese, Chechens, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Afghans and those pesky Pakistanis. America understands it’s hard to think about the budget at times like these, so they will wait until times are better and they can afford to focus on such things. Until then they will support an ever growing military budget and still find room to blame our overspending on the few remaining social programs that are struggling for survival.

A woman he met at a party a few weeks ago comes to his home and informs him she’s pregnant, having lost any access to birth control services she previously used, and since abortion is outlawed, they must have the baby. They both struggle to figure out how they are going to be able to support their child, let alone each other.

The day is not a total loss as they are both invited to a going away party for two of the young woman’s gay friends who are leaving for Europe, where Gay relationships are not so harshly punished and they will even be able to get married and enjoy family benefits. They are both excited at the prospect of possibly scoring some food at the party, or at least a few beers.

At the party, the main discussion makes its way to the usual topic of late; life in America and how it changed so much in just a few years.

With his wallet gone, he’s without a license, so he won’t be able to vote in next week’s elections. Everyone at the party agrees they would vote for someone other than a Republican, except they keep producing these great video promos that play all the time and really convince everybody that things will get better and we, as a society, are returning to a better, more “pure” America, just like in the good ol’ days.

Everyone can hardly wait.

US Immigration Reform PLAN A Taxable

I want you to pay your taxesTaxable is a great way for this program to pay for itself.

There needs to be a way for our immigration system to be able to be self-supporting. Sure, the immigrants will add value to our society by purchasing goods and filling jobs, but we need to be able to set up systems that will ensure both the immigrants and US citizens are taken care of. Think of it as an “immigrant work tax” program.

Being able to track and tax the income of all people within our borders is very important, citizen or not. Today there is a shadow society of people who do not pay income taxes, or those that do cannot reap the benefits for which they are being taxed. Both situations need to be addressed if we want our new immigration policy to be effective.

The new immigrant work tax should be above and beyond what citizens are required to pay. Immigrants who are not citizens may have needs that US citizens do not, such as legal services, court fees, incarceration costs and deportation costs. The fees for participation should cover the expenses to administer this program, see to it that every immigrant inside our borders complies, and to fund the system that deals with the people who refuse to participate. Our new immigration program should not be a burden on our society.

The normal taxes collected by the IRS should go to the same programs that US citizens fund with their taxes, as well as unemployment and disability insurance. In order to attract and retain great workers, we need to show our possible future citizens what it’s like to be a US citizen. Having the same programs in place for immigrants, as citizens, will also help us keep things simple and affordable.

This same program should also have the same requirements for immigrants to join health care programs for obvious health and financial reasons. Ensuring compliance with all of the programs an immigrant is expected to participate in is an expense in and of itself and should be funded the immigrants themselves.

Finally, what would welcoming new people into our country without equality?

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Immigrants are not the bad guy


New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg offers his views on immigrants. Coming from a state with an estimated half a million undocumented immigrants, you could bet he knows a little bit about them.

Illegal Immigrants don’t pay taxes

They don’t pay taxes- 

What they’re really saying is they don’t like latinos, and this is the best argument they can come up with. They heard someone say it, or read it somewhere and it validates their anti-latino mindset, so they never bothered to check the actual facts.

How to respond- 

Over 75% of undocumented immigrants pay taxes, and most of that is money they can not benefit from. They cannot collect unemployment, or social security, and many of them cannot qualify to file a tax return and according to Standard and Poors

“Each year, for example, the U.S. Social Security Administration maintains roughly $6 billion to $7 billion of Social Security contributions in an “earnings suspense file” — an account for W-2 tax forms that cannot be matched to the correct Social Security number. The vast majority of these numbers are attributable to undocumented workers who will never claim their benefits.” 4

If this fact from a completely unbiased organization who got their facts from the United States Government, then they are hopelessly lost in the anti-Latino rhetoric and continuing the conversation with logic and real statistics is worse than futile; it could actually make you both angry and heated, which neither of you really needs anyway. Give it up. Take your educated and unbiased mentality to a safer,  more nurturing environment. Life is too short to argue with people who won’t listen to facts or reason.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/apr2006/pi20060407_072803.htm