Evrybody has harsh words about illegal immigrants and all that they take from the American worker by taking our jobs, sending their money back to Mexico and not paying taxes while living on government assistance. Well, what about Walmart? They take jobs (by forcing out other business), drive wages down, I don't know where they send all their money but it's not to their employees; and although I am sure that they pay taxes I have a hard time imagining they don't get some sort of big government handout or tax write off. So what's the difference?
210701
Wal-Mart CEO makes 32 million a year\n\nAverage Wal-mart employee makes 13,025 a year.\n\nDon't shop at Wal-mart\n\nThere is no differance, they are both bad things that need to be stopped.\n\nOne is pure evil- Walmart\nThe other is something that has been ignored and let get out of control for way too long. Republicans are screwed for next term. They need to take care of things. Illegal immigrants shouldn't be thrown back across the boarder they should be heavily fined. Learn English and American history.\n\nThe government should just put a heavy tax on any money transfers to Mexico.
184287
I agree with some, but not all of your thoughts...\n\n1) when they come here and work, they are paying taxes - it gets taken out of their paychecks. So does Social Security. \n2) when they go to the store here, they pay taxes, just like you and I. Same thing at the gas pumps, liquor stores, mall, etc. Its not like they come here, work and take the money to Mexico to go grocery shopping. So, they are contributing to the economy - more so than rich folks in America that hide all their money so they DONT have to pay taxes. \n3) they are humans...they have HUMAN RIGHTS. \n\nLast study I read said that Illegals contriubute $90 BILLION dollars to Social Security a year, and only receive $5 BILLION in outside aide. That leaves $85 BILLION to the rest of us. Im also willing to bet that there are more African Americans in our prison system than illegal immigrants - so they are obviously following our laws, despite having "jumped a border." At least they arent killing each other over gang territory or robbing their own people or getting over on charities like wwhats been going on with all the Katrina aide...\n\nNow that I think about it, I dont agree at all with you!
268370
Thanks for asking this! You bring up the real issue, the real crisis surrounding millions of illegal aliens living in the USA. Fact is they do NOT contribute to our economy because they don't pay taxes. To make matters worse, they send quite a bit of the tax free money they make back to Mexico. Then to make matters really worse they use our hospitals for medical care because, that's right, in the ER no doctor will (or should) refuse to provide medical care based on the ability to pay. Hospital's are not allowed to ask whether you are legal or illegal. Going to the ER for anything is very expensive but since illegal aliens don't have insurance or a social security card or any form of ID that identifies them as a citizen of this country, they can't go see a regular family physician. Guess who pays the hospital bill?????? You guessed it! All of us taxpaying suckers. Don't even get me started on food stamps. Oh yeah, didn't you hear that some illegal aliens are getting food stamps. Did you also hear that some are getting housing assistance???? Did you know it is now considered taboo to ask about residency status??? How about our prisons? Do you have any idea how many illegal aliens are sitting in our prisons receiving medical care, 3 meals a day, clothing and clean sheets???? Yeah, we also pay for that. Oh and wait!!! don't forget the education of their children in our public schools. Who pays for that???? Oh yeah, that's right, the taxpayers. \n\nYou are absolutely right!!! This is not about race!!!! There is a far greater crisis at hand. There is no way the amount illegal aliens contribute by working (tax free) can even begin to scratch the surface of what they take from our economy. This is criminal! This is illegal! If they are illegal send them home!\n\nPlease teach us a lesson! Go home, we will learn how to pick our own vegetables and do our own laundry!
179298
Majority of the illegals here that are working do pay in taxes they just can't get any of that money back.So where is all that money going?
217791
Has JD ever had an original thought?  War, invasion - typical scare tactics that too many ignorant citizens choose to worship.  You act as if you earned your citizenship.  It is just a matter of luck that you were born in this country.  You are not special and you have never done anything spacial, just dumb luck.  What is a bigger drain on society a population that works but can't pay taxes because their oppressors choose to look the other way or citizens who sit on their butts and collect TANF (welfare) and don't pay a penny in taxes?  Guess which ethnicity makes up the highest percent of the total welfare recipients.  Let's just say "illegal" immigrants can't receive welfare.
198974
CURLIES_10-You Need To Learn The Underlying Issues Before You Become A Taxpayer(Im Assuming Youre A Student Living With Your Parents)\n\nFREEDOMHAMMER Makes The Point Best-It Is GREEDY Unscrupulous EMPLOYERS That ENABLE This Problem And Have Compounded It To This Point\n\nThere are jobs Americans simply won't do, so that the importation of foreigners is essential. Whether these foreign workers are ILLEGAL ALIENS,  guestworkers, or permanent Legal Immigrants is a detail to be worked out by us, the argument goes, but our need for them is unchanged.Even many opponents of the proposed Bush Amnesty assume this to be true, leading them to propose new and improved guestworker programs, with provisions for stricter controls against Permanent Settlement, greater incentives to return, tighter enforcement against Unscrupulous Employers, etc. As well-meaning as such efforts may be, the basic assumption is false — \n\nThere is simply no economic reason to import FOREIGN Workers.If the supply of FOREIGN Workers were to dry up (say, through actually ENFORCING the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. \n\n1: One, they would offer HIGHER Wages, INCREASED Benefits, and Improved Working Conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers.\n\n2:At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a NEW Equilibrium, with Blue-Collar Workers making somewhat Better Money, but each one of those workers being more productive.\n\nMany people fear the first part of such a response, claiming that prices for fruits and vegetables would skyrocket, fueling inflation..NOT TRUE..Labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce,  so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers.\n\nSeveral people told me they used to do the "jobs Americans won't do" until local employers figured out they could get ILLEGAL Aliens to work for less than half the same amount. As an example, a young landscaper who used to make $15 an hour 10 years ago, can't get a similar job now for more than $8 an hour. Same heat. Same difficult working conditions.  But with the Depressed Wage, AMERICANS – who live in a country where the cost of living is miles above that of Mexico's – can't afford to take such jobs.It's not that he and other Americans don't want to do landscaping anymore; it's just that in heavily trafficked ILLEGAL Alien environments, IT DOESNT PAY WELL ENOUGH ANYMORE.\n\n Younger U.S.-born high school graduates are squeezed at both ends. Jobs that would have gone to them in the past are now being grabbed by college graduates. The lowest-wage jobs are unappealing, and employers will not raise wages as long as ILLEGAL Immigrants will take them.\n\nIf this is what the open borders crowd means by ILLEGAL ALIENS doing jobs Americans don't want, they're right. American workers want jobs that can Earn them a DECENT LIVING in this country. Minimum wage is a fortune south of the border, but it doesn't go far here. \n\n\nthis is to illustrate the absurdity of a "comprehensive" approach to ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS , and the more radical of the ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT  advocates who are proponents of an "open borders" policy. We don't take a comprehensive, humane approach with drug dealers because they are breaking our laws and causing great damage to this country by poisoning our children. Similarly, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS  violate our laws and Poison our system of Economics by TAKING JOBS  from American Workers, Keeping WAGES ARTIFICIALLY LOW, and Sucking MILLIONS of Dollars of TAXPAYERS MONEY out of our Welfare and Medical Systems. \nNot To Mention The Fact That A Majority Of ILLEGAL ALIENS Live And Work In This Country And Then Send Their Money Back Home To Their
513230
Employer!  The worker is just trying for a better life while the employer is looking to exploit low wage workers.  If you pay lousy, and all your workers are immigrant, well, you can probably figure they're all illegal; so don't give me this "but I thought they had papers..." story.\n\nBUT having said that...we have been tacitly giving the ok to this behaviour for 20 or 30 years, can we all of a sudden say, well, it was ok to violate the law yesterday and I know you have kids and a house and a family, but now we decided to enforce the rules so go home or go to jail???  That is not moral or ethical behavior.
597745
Illegal immigrants make up a huge chunk of the base of the work force, pay taxes (both on their pay and in sales taxes, etc), keep money moving around the system just like anyone who lives here (by buying groceries, gas, clothes, etc), and actually receive less in social services than legal immigrants because they're not able to get many social services without paperwork (despite what certain right-wing lies you might hear).
516436
Guest worker problem is dodging issue yet again.  I also take exception to those two statements\n\n1) "They only take jobs Americans won't do" is not true.  They take jobs Americans won't do for THE LOW PAY!!  Companies are just saving money and paying minimum wage (if that).  Americans can't live on minimum wage.  Illegals can, cause they don't pay taxes, don't contribute to Social Security,or don't have to pay health benefits.\n\n2) "Deport all illegals and Americans will pay higher prices" is true but will never happen.  Unfortunately we have no way to track all the illegals in this country now and I highly doubt that if we do have a guest worker program that all illegals will come forward.  Employers will have to pay higher costs in wages and taxes thereby making us pay more for their product/service.\n\nI've said it once, I'll say it again -- I have no problems with people coming into this country to get a better life if they adapt to the American way of life, learn to speak English and become US Citizens like the millions of other immigrants who came to the US have!!\n2)
136409
From what I've heard, a lot of illegal immigrants are law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.  Law-abiding except for the illegal immigration, of course.
189878
It's a damn shame that, this is what it has come to in parts of the country. I work a manual labor job, granted I don't make 5 dollars an hour.. so, I would have to disagree there will always be people to take those jobs.. some sort of jobs. People that really want to provide the best they can for themselves or their families. My boss hired a Mexican lady once, she was legal.. married to a American man. She seemed nice.. BUT... she could NOT read english, barely write it and speak it. I asked her if she was going to learn english... and she told me straight out no!! I was taken aback by this.. as I have never encountered this before but I was pissed. If you want to be legal and come here and work,fine for now I guess!(who knows what the government will do w/amnesty) NOT live off the system.. NOT live in a shitty house with 6 kids and have a brand spanking new car in the garage! I don't know about anyone else but refusing to speak english is a pure insult!! (Sorry, I know part of my response is in the wrong catagory.) I don't think they will get a higher education.. some may and a lot more may not. They just want the money.. but shame on some of our employers for hiring them. It's such a double-edged sword.. you feel bad for them on a level but angry with them on another level. I guess time will tell.
289736
Walmart is the devil!\nThey drive many American businesses out of business... because their "price rollback" means they can't make enough money on their products. So these business move to another country or just shut down their doors.\nAlso, walmart is horrible to their employees - health care? what's that? and, a friend of mine was kept at 37.5 hours (or something) a week, 1/2 hour shy of full time, just so they wouldnt have to give her health care.\nWalmart is the DEVIL!
559115
First and foremost.... these people DO NOT WANT TO BECOME CITIZENS.  Therefore, they will not join up to pay taxes, etc.  They will just continue to send $$$ home to Mexico. Bush and company assume they want to be citizens, but I have not heard any of the illegals say that.  Just that they are "taking over".  Send them all  back.  No special treatment or deals.
221949
No, it did not change my mind. Most who protested are illegals (many were not) and by protesting and leaving the job for a day they thumbed their noses at the very people who gave them jobs (illegally or not, they were given jobs). Biting the hand that feeds you to use a cliche.  Also, they are here ILLEGALLY, that means they are in violation of our laws. I commend those who came here legally and fought long and hard for their citizenship, so we are now just to hand it over because they are protesting? What about all those people who have studied and worked hard to become citizens?  What a slap in their face.
323752
Without illegal immigrants there would probably be less taxes for us taxpaying citizens (they don't pay income tax, and they cost us taxpayers fifty billion dollars a year), there would be less unemployment for American citizens, higher wages, less crime, and fewer illegal drugs brought into this country. The majority of illegal drugs brought into this country are brought in by illegal Mexican immigrants. In the beginning it might have been mostly the jobs that American citizens didn't want that they were doing but that isn't true anymore. I'm a construction worker and they have almost completely taken over the construction industry and if you can even find a job you have to take it at a lower pay just to compete with the illegal Mexican immigrants. They can work for less money than us and still bring home more money because they don't have to pay income tax. I think it should be a felony for American companies to hire illegal immigrants. They don't even have to have health insurance because they get free health care at the expense of us taxpaying citizens. The government won't give me free health care. They are here illegally and I don't think they should be rewarded for breaking the law.
183683
Here is the delema. The reason that there is so much of a stink is. The illegals are getting offered wages for like, $3 and hour, which is targeted at them to give the employer cheaper workers, just an example. This is below minimum wage, and illegal. An illegal immigrant will take this, and can't complain because they are illegal. Now if the same job was offered at minimum wage. Granted alot of people aren't going to take the job, but there would be more people inclined to take it. No one in there right mind, if they are legal, is going to take a job at $3. So how they are saying that americans won't do those jobs, is inaccurate, because these jobs aren't being offered at legal wages. The American may have little education, but you know what, they are still citizens, and should have atleast a chance at the job, at minimum wage. When they are saying that the wages are low, they don't mean minimum wage low, like Mcdonalds. They mean unsustainably low and illegal. The reason they can live on these low wages is, if there are a bunch working, they all get a small place and use the money together to live there.
627240
Amen Amen, you are so right....America tends to forget about its own.....I have known families of illegals drawing benifits that should have gone to our people here.  Yet my husband has to pay taxes every week out of his check like all the rest of us legal americans do...yet they work, draw a check and no taxes are held out.  I feel sorry for all the other countries but good god we need help here to.