Census to count all people equally

[kiryan]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 81832.html

Do you agree with counting non citizens in the census?

[Adriorn Darkcloak]

If they are in the process of becoming citizens but have not attained the status yet, sure. If they are illegally here, no. Things like these add millions to data you usually see, like uninsured "Americans".

[fobble]

I agree with counting non-Citizens in Census. I think we also need to find out who are citizen, green card, illegal, in-progress, type too.

Biggest two reason for why counting non-Citizens in Census is for the following reason in my opinion.

1. Regardless of your status, you use up resources provided by the Government.
2. Regardless of your status, you make-up the population and provide trend in the population (growing, shrinking, shifting, etc.).

Whether individual is legal or illegal, that individual(s) will use Government resources on both State and Federal level. If you been to township with heavy illegal immigrant population you know exactly what I mean....School, Emergency (Police, Fire, EMS), Hospital are perfect example. Huge drain on those resources and the cost get shifted to legal immigrants and citizens. Personally I think toll on Hospital and School is the heaviest since costs of these two are mostly off-set by proerpy & income tax and health insurance. Which majority of illegal immigrants don't have and pay their shares.

I think we need to know this. This information cannot hurt us but rather help us making in decisions. Personally, the political clout of states with heavier population of illegals vs. states with less population of illegals is just political bitching due to census driving certain portion of money that gets dolled out by the Fed gov't.

[kiryan]

In past censuses, they did a short form and a long form. Only the long form asks for citizenship status. This census, there will be only the short form, so it looks like there will be NO WAY to differentiate between the legal and illegal population. On the plus side, during the confirmation hearings last year, the census head said they wouldn't use statistics to modify the #s for "hard to count populations".

You say we have to count them because they drain resources and of course you are right... but why don't we just stop giving them free services? Why do we provide healthcare for illegals and education? Why do we allow our government to give them more and more rights and votes, making them defacto citizens. Why are we bending over backwards to make illegal immigrants into American citizens or at least provide them with everything American citizens have?

Why does Missouri get less votes / legal citizen than Arizona because Arizona has more illegal immigrants? Why does California have more clout in the house than New York based on harboring more illegal immigrants? Why don't we just give Mexico a vote?

The money matters (and its a lot of money) and the votes matter. Why would we give illegals representation in our government? On issues from immigration to healthcare to climate change to social security? They don't have a right to be in this country, they don't have a right to vote, yet they now have the right to be counted as a citizen. Its ludicrious

[Sarvis]

making them defacto citizens. Why are we bending over backwards to make illegal immigrants into American citizens

Why NOT let them become citizens?

[Ragorn]

You say we have to count them because they drain resources and of course you are right... but why don't we just stop giving them free services? Why do we provide healthcare for illegals and education? Why do we allow our government to give them more and more rights and votes, making them defacto citizens. Why are we bending over backwards to make illegal immigrants into American citizens or at least provide them with everything American citizens have?

Uh... we don't, and we aren't?

[fobble]

It's nearly free but not completely. Illegral immigrants do pay taxes that does not require their SSN checkup. Taxes such as sales, food, gas, etc. Some illegals even pay property and income taxes (personal & business) by using SSN of friend, family, or their children on paper.

Regarding services, while it costs us to provide it. Consider the alternative of cutting them off.

1. Health: Do we stop treatment of someone because of their legal status? Do we let the person die or continue to suffer? If we do not lookout for fellow individuals upto a certain basic level, what defines humanity and isn't humanity what sets us apart from most animals. Also untreated medical injuries and disease will ultimately cost us more in the long run regardless. For example, illegal immigrant has virulent disease or went to work feeling quite sick. Disease will spread instead of being caught, treated, and contained to general public. Sick worker could be working in construction or food industry and cause accident, etc.


2. Education: Whether we like it or not, children of illegal immigrants will stay in the country and large portion of the children are of legal status. Despite what different people feel about that, the children of illegal immigrant live with us, live amongst us, and will continue to live with us regardless of their legal status. Keeping that in mind, we know that education opportunity provides an out from proverty and not so great neighorhood (ghettos, slums). Children of illegal immigrants will also grow to be part of our future labor force. If we do not provide education opportunity for the children of illegal immigrants...bottom-line is that we'll have more of illegal immigrants' children turning to criminal activities. If not criminal activity and they join our legitl labor force, they will lower the productivity and education/skill level of our country's labor force on the whole.


For me, it's matter of we do want to pay the cost now upfront when it's cheaper or do we hold off and pay later and most likely having our children pay that cost instead of us. The cost being money cost, social cost, and opportunity cost.

[kiryan]

I don't get your comment Ragorn. We aren't providing them rights and votes or we don't give them free services or what? With the upcoming census, we will be making illegals equal weight to a US citizen in representation in the house. They definitely have the right to free healthcare in our hospital ERs and their children get free education.

Consider the alernatives... Its very easy to make an emotional argument, but why don't you consider the alternatives. If they followed the law and lived in Mexico or in the US legally, they would get the care they were entitled too (maybe thats not care in Mexico... so what?). If we didn't have so many illegals and the associated costs, we could have lower tax rates and more of the money we earn in our own pockets.

it is very well documented who pays the bulk of taxes, the rich. Its not illegals making $10 bucks an hour drywalling or $8 an hour picking crop. They may pay sales tax and Social Security taxes on a false SSN, but they are not coming anywhere close to paying their way.

--

as far as kids are concerned.
#1, It is 100% legal to deport a child who is a legal US citizen if both their parents are illegals.
#2, Why are you automatically a US citizen if you are born in the physical boundaries of the USA? If your parents didn't have a right to be here, you should not be a legal citizen.
#3, the kids are poorly served by being allowed to stay. Their parents are repeatedly doing illegal things from immigrating to working illegally, they can't fully participate in society due to their illegal status so the kids have it tougher. its certainly not better for them to be shipped back to Mexico, but that is where they would've been if their parents had done things legally in the first place.

#4, the resources spent to educate kids who can't speak english is ridonkulus. Your kids get a worse education because of illegal kids jamming the school systems and consuming more resources becaues they don't have basic skills.

[fobble]

Holy crap. I wrote a nice response to your points Kiryan and right before I can submit...my friggin IE crashed.

So um...yeah take my word that I wrote some valid points to respond to you and we had a good discussion hahaha. Damn the IE6.

[Sarvis]

Holy crap. I wrote a nice response to your points Kiryan and right before I can submit...my friggin IE crashed.

So um...yeah take my word that I wrote some valid points to respond to you and we had a good discussion hahaha. Damn the IE6.

You know they're on 8 now, right? :P

(Not that 8 crashes any less on my PC at home...)

[Adriorn Darkcloak]

Damn the IE6.

You know they're on 8 now, right? :P

Aside: I want to know who the fucking idiots of human beings were that designed the layout for the new IE. The lack of customizable control, horrific button layouts, missing buttons, etc. etc. Totally not related, but I despise the new IE that much. I permanently hid the upgrade option for IE on Windows Update and continue to have IE6 installed just for those random websites that don't work well with Firefox.

/rant

[Kifle]

Damn the IE6.

You know they're on 8 now, right? :P

Aside: I want to know who the fucking idiots of human beings were that designed the layout for the new IE. The lack of customizable control, horrific button layouts, missing buttons, etc. etc. Totally not related, but I despise the new IE that much. I permanently hid the upgrade option for IE on Windows Update and continue to have IE6 installed just for those random websites that don't work well with Firefox.

/rant

I'm in the same boat. Firefox for normal usage, IE6 when Firefox wont load the page properly.

[Sarvis]

I generally use Chrome, and can't remember the last time I had to load IE for a site. (Actually, last time I tried it turned out the site didn't work properly in IE either...)

We use it at work though, because we're (the programmers) too lazy to make the site properly cross-browser compatible and we know everyone has IE. :P

[Desirsar]

I steal this idea from elsewhere. Solution to immigration as it pertains to taxes and services that renders the census problem moot :

Abolish income taxes at all levels. Add a federal sales tax. Tax anything EU normally slaps VAT on. Instead of paying a third of your $1000 a week on income taxes and leaving you with $666, you now actually have $1000 in your pocket. (This is after FICA and other taxes that won't quite go away as easily, but without regular income tax.) This allows people to buy more tax exempt things like food, which reduces the strain on welfare programs. Illegal immigrants have to buy gas, pay rent (which would be taxed), utilities, and go to movies or baseball games or anything else that normally has sales tax added. They would now be paying federal taxes like anyone else, even if they are paid under the table when hired illegally.

[Corth]

It would have the added benefit, Desirsar, of encouraging people to save money. The problem though is I think you would have a lot more unreported cash transactions. Even with sales tax being in the single digits, there is plenty of that. With a much higher sales tax you would see a lot more of it.

[Ashiwi]

it is very well documented who pays the bulk of taxes, the rich. Its not illegals making $10 bucks an hour drywalling or $8 an hour picking crop. They may pay sales tax and Social Security taxes on a false SSN, but they are not coming anywhere close to paying their way.

Those illegals do contribute deeply, however, to the pockets of the rich.

As long as the situation continues as it is, there will always be a ton of illegals, and they will always cost us here, and benefit us there. What happens if you get rid of them all? Have you asked yourself that?