Objectively speaking, what harm is caused by illegal immigration? (Thought experiment)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

"High quality immigrants"? WTAF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

This. That's why they prefer immigrants from countries where the dominant culture values education. You would be surprised how many Latin American illegals are illiterate in Spanish. How are they going to learn English when they can't even read in their own language? Sad but true. They may be nice and hardworking but they are unfortunately a drain on limited resources.

This is from low access to education not from lack of caring about education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

What I wonder about is families of English Learners are paying taxes towards those seats. They pay rent and their landlord then pays taxes from that rent, or they own and pay taxes. So, yeah when enrollment goes up, then costs go up, but more people living in an area means more money for the township. My experiences teaching in schools has demonstrated that while yes, EL's need special services, they truly get next to nothing. I mean, I taught in a city school with 500 kids and I was the only EL teacher. 200/500 qualified for services. So, they were getting maybe 30 minutes of push in support each week. It isn't much. Plus,most of the kids who qualify for EL support come from families who are here legally. So, not sure how much money having undocumented folks actually "cost". Plus when you figure in the tremendous amount of economic activity immigrants bring in, the amount of taxes their businesses bring, the amount they pay in stores, etc, I suspect they give more than they take.
I live in Chicago and while everyone knows about Michigan Avenue, many people don't know about 26th Street in Little Village that is the 2nd highest economic generator in the entire state. That area is nearly entirely Spanish speaking with lots of immigrants, documented and undocumented.

You think their landlords are reporting the income they receive, likely in cash, from illegal aliens? Bless you.

The landlords still have to pay property taxes, whether they report the rent as income or not.

Yes. But when four families live in a single family home the property taxes don’t pencil for school, police, fire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

What I wonder about is families of English Learners are paying taxes towards those seats. They pay rent and their landlord then pays taxes from that rent, or they own and pay taxes. So, yeah when enrollment goes up, then costs go up, but more people living in an area means more money for the township. My experiences teaching in schools has demonstrated that while yes, EL's need special services, they truly get next to nothing. I mean, I taught in a city school with 500 kids and I was the only EL teacher. 200/500 qualified for services. So, they were getting maybe 30 minutes of push in support each week. It isn't much. Plus,most of the kids who qualify for EL support come from families who are here legally. So, not sure how much money having undocumented folks actually "cost". Plus when you figure in the tremendous amount of economic activity immigrants bring in, the amount of taxes their businesses bring, the amount they pay in stores, etc, I suspect they give more than they take.
I live in Chicago and while everyone knows about Michigan Avenue, many people don't know about 26th Street in Little Village that is the 2nd highest economic generator in the entire state. That area is nearly entirely Spanish speaking with lots of immigrants, documented and undocumented.

You think their landlords are reporting the income they receive, likely in cash, from illegal aliens? Bless you.

+1 Ask mobile home park owners...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

What I wonder about is families of English Learners are paying taxes towards those seats. They pay rent and their landlord then pays taxes from that rent, or they own and pay taxes. So, yeah when enrollment goes up, then costs go up, but more people living in an area means more money for the township. My experiences teaching in schools has demonstrated that while yes, EL's need special services, they truly get next to nothing. I mean, I taught in a city school with 500 kids and I was the only EL teacher. 200/500 qualified for services. So, they were getting maybe 30 minutes of push in support each week. It isn't much. Plus,most of the kids who qualify for EL support come from families who are here legally. So, not sure how much money having undocumented folks actually "cost". Plus when you figure in the tremendous amount of economic activity immigrants bring in, the amount of taxes their businesses bring, the amount they pay in stores, etc, I suspect they give more than they take.
I live in Chicago and while everyone knows about Michigan Avenue, many people don't know about 26th Street in Little Village that is the 2nd highest economic generator in the entire state. That area is nearly entirely Spanish speaking with lots of immigrants, documented and undocumented.

You think their landlords are reporting the income they receive, likely in cash, from illegal aliens? Bless you.

The landlords still have to pay property taxes, whether they report the rent as income or not.

Yes. But when four families live in a single family home the property taxes don’t pencil for school, police, fire.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

This. That's why they prefer immigrants from countries where the dominant culture values education. You would be surprised how many Latin American illegals are illiterate in Spanish. How are they going to learn English when they can't even read in their own language? Sad but true. They may be nice and hardworking but they are unfortunately a drain on limited resources.

This is from low access to education not from lack of caring about education.

+1 Definitely! But also costly for impacted schools .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Frumpy middle-aged wallflowers would simply find another cause for their fake outrage.

Why are they so worked up about illegal immigration right now? Ae they competing for the same jobs?

I was involved in an accident in California 8 years ago in San Onofre. A lawnmower fell of a truck and bashed the front of my rental car. Police were called. Driver had a Mexican driver license and no insurance. The police wrote the report as uninsured and let him drive away. No license. No citation. I kid you not! Rental company picked up the tab for the damage and I had luckily bought the rental insurance, but they really pestered me to go back to my insurance company and foist it on them. It was a mess. Driver was never heard from.

There are two sets of rules. I would have never have gotten away with that. Things have gotten way out of control over time and it's high time to pull it back in. There are a slew of second and third order effects of illegal immigration; things you never hear about. The more "fair" this system becomes, the more unfair it becomes in actuality.

I hate ICE and I mean HATE ICE. But in this matter, I agree with you. If someone causes an accident and doesn't have insurance, they should be written a ticket, fined, and have to pay the person back, even over time if needed. Both undocumented people and all the Americans without car insurance shouldn't be driving.

But this requires law enforcement. And people here, at least in Fairfax county, want a sanctuary county. In the recent case, when an undocumented man shot and killed someone else immediately after release, would it have been so hard to call ICE to come get him? Or how about the man with the long wrap sheet who raped a woman on the W&OD trail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

If we do need people to fill jobs, then open up visas (not the abuse of HxB that we currently have going on). So truly has to be based on need. I grew up with 1st Gen kids who didn't speak English in the home. They all had homes (small) or an apartment and a car.
Nobody was living crammed into an apartment with other families, etc. with kids unsupervised because they had work around the clock.

And yes, people need to be screened for illnesses like Aids, etc before they are allowed in so they don't become public charges.

If they are working and here legally, they would be getting health insurance just like anyone else. HIV screening really would not matter in public burden anymore than anyone else with HIV who works and has insurance (life expectancy is the same with HIV treatment, they live just as long).

TB screening would be most important. I forget if it is one third or one fourth of the world population that is infected(!!) as at least a latent carrier. Latent carriers can become active/contagious at some point so we would want to treat for it as a preventive measure.

My great GF's visa was rejected due to his vision. He needed eyeglasses! The US did not want to pay for that. Fortunately, he was able to get them, reapply and get here. People need to have health screenings so we are not paying for treatment.

If they are working, we are not paying for their treatment.

This assumes all have and maintain jobs with healthcare.

Ok and that is true for Americans too. Perhaps we should solve healthcare? I am not holding my breath as Republicans complain about it and have not come up with anything viable for at least 15 years. They removed the individual mandate which was the best way to solve it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's say all the undocumented immigrants and asylees and refugees were suddenly, magically removed from the country and replaced by citizens. What would be different? I'm going to assume that these citizens would be employed in the same jobs as this group of people currently is, so I'm not talking about shortages of landscape workers, slaughterhouse workers, ag workers, disaster cleanup workers, and so forth. According to statistics we would have a somewhat higher crime rate. Probably a somewhat higher rate of illegal drug use (migrants are less likely to use drugs). I'm assuming we need the population numbers, including to support the social security retirement program. We might have a larger burden on assistance programs if pay rates for the people who replaced them did not change, but we wouldn't be able to blame immigrants for that. Seriously, I wonder what the actual threat to borders has been. While supposedly Biden opened the borders we didn't have terrorist attacks from people who had slipped through as far as I know.

If in this thought experiment these people were not replaced magically, we would certainly have shortages of healthcare aides, maintenance workers, ag workers, meat processors, roofers, and disaster cleanup workers. Not only would there be fewer people to care for elderly people who need to be cared for, there'd be fewer people paying into Social Security to pay for their retirement income (which, in long term care, usually goes to the LTC facility).

I also wonder about the issue with assimilation. What exactly does that mean? Learning English? Most people who are able to do so to learn English one way or another, but if not, so what? It seems to me most people who complain about lack of assimilation are complaining about language and clothing as the most visible attributes of a population that is not assimilation.

Is it the slippery slope theory? That if a significant number of people manage to cross the border illegally every year and to stay for an extended period of time it will become an uncontrolled avalanche? Would it have been a bad thing if immigration laws had been changed to make immigration much, much more accessible legally and reduce the burden on the systems set up to deal with illegal immigration?

I'm truly trying to consider a blank slate take on this.

People need to obey the law in a civilized society. Is your point that immigration law should be changed, or that it’s ok for people to disregard laws that they disagree with?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

FCPS would no longer plausibly cry about a “budget crisis” every single year (though their extreme mismanagement has much to do with as well).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

If we do need people to fill jobs, then open up visas (not the abuse of HxB that we currently have going on). So truly has to be based on need. I grew up with 1st Gen kids who didn't speak English in the home. They all had homes (small) or an apartment and a car.
Nobody was living crammed into an apartment with other families, etc. with kids unsupervised because they had work around the clock.

And yes, people need to be screened for illnesses like Aids, etc before they are allowed in so they don't become public charges.

If they are working and here legally, they would be getting health insurance just like anyone else. HIV screening really would not matter in public burden anymore than anyone else with HIV who works and has insurance (life expectancy is the same with HIV treatment, they live just as long).

TB screening would be most important. I forget if it is one third or one fourth of the world population that is infected(!!) as at least a latent carrier. Latent carriers can become active/contagious at some point so we would want to treat for it as a preventive measure.

My great GF's visa was rejected due to his vision. He needed eyeglasses! The US did not want to pay for that. Fortunately, he was able to get them, reapply and get here. People need to have health screenings so we are not paying for treatment.

If they are working, we are not paying for their treatment.

This assumes all have and maintain jobs with healthcare.

I guess the issue is different here in the US. In countries with public health systems, this is definitely a concern. Australia rejects applications for visas if the costs of medical care would exceed $86,000 over 10 years, with some ministerial discretion. I suppose if you are certain nobody else would bear the costs of inordinately expensive medical care here then that is different. What happens in the sad scenario that someone comes here on a non-permanent visa and it turns out their child has a medical condition that requires very expensive ongoing treatment? Who bears the cost?

[Anonymous]

If we got rid of all immigrants, we'd be left with Native Americans only. Each and every one of us who is not a Native American is an immigrant.

I'm not for that.

I do think we have to have sane immigration, not thousands of people flooding over the border, released to our equally insane immigration system.

We had a bipartisan bill that Trump told the GOP to kill because he wanted to use immigration to help his re-election efforts.

Of course we need immigration. One of my kids goes to a prestigious grad program, and 3/4 of my kid's cohort is from outside the US. These people are brilliant, the best and the brightest IN THE WORLD. Many of them have brown skin. Why would we want to keep them out of the US?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Each and every one of us who is not a Native American is an immigrant.

Ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

"High quality immigrants"? WTAF.

Ask Canada. Literally. Canada’s immigration system is based on “points.” You only get in if you have a degree or you invest 1 million+ Canadian dollars.

Unskilled worker? ZERO points. Canada only allows high quality immigrants; others caught illegally are deported by Canadian authorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

A lot of the school budget comes from property taxes. Those immigrants rent apartments, and pay rents, which goes to the landlord who pays the property taxes out of the rent money. But everyone pretends they are getting a free ride. They aren't, since they are paying via rent just like any American is. We don't complain about non-immigrant kids getting the same "free ride."