Monday, June 29th, 2009
The Economics of Immigration Enforcement
Assessing the costs and benefits of mass deportation
by Edwin S. Rubinstein
Research from
The National Policy Institute
All NPI publications can be found at:
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/publications
December 2005: Issue Number 101
Synopsis
In July 2005, the Center for American Progress published a report assessing the costs of arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and deporting illegal aliens. The study, Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion over five years or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period. The following paper reviews the data on mass deportation. In reassessing the cost, the following analysis compares and contrasts what an amnesty would cost taxpayers in terms of social services, lost wages, health care subsidies, and educational expenditures. The author concludes that comparative estimates demonstrate “no matter how high the costs of deporting illegal aliens may seem, the costs of not deporting them are larger still.”
Excerpt:
A July 2005 study questions whether deporting illegal immigrants would be worth the costs. Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment is published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank. Its authors claim the study is the first-ever estimate of costs associated with arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing immigrants who have entered the United States illegally or overstayed their visas.
The cost of mass deportation?: $206 to $230 billion over five-years, depending on how many illegals leave voluntarily. That’s an average cost of $41 billion to $46 billion per year for five years. About 10 million illegals would be subject to deportation, according to the study.
Advocates for tougher immigration laws say the estimates are too high. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies argues, for example, that as many as 50 percent of illegals would leave voluntarily if the government were to initiate an aggressive deportation policy. By contrast, the study assumes only 10 to 20 percent would leave voluntarily.
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.–CO) called the study “an interesting intellectual exercise” that is “useless…because no one’s talking about” mass deportation. Rather than deport individuals he would impose fines and impose sanctions on employers who employ illegals—something the government has stubbornly refused to do.
We believe that neither the pro- nor the anti-immigration groups are asking the right questions. Neither side has assessed the costs of maintaining the status quo, i.e., the annual costs of an immigration policy that refuses to either stem the influx of illegal aliens or deport illegals already here.
Illegal aliens are poorer than natives. They are eligible for welfare, medical assistance, and housing subsidies. Like all people, they enroll their children in school, drive on roads, and require police, fire, and sanitation services. They are also more likely to be incarcerated.
They also pay taxes. Even when working “off the books” illegal immigrants can’t avoid paying excise, sales and other taxes. So the fact that they receive public benefits does not necessarily mean they are a net drain.
Unfortunately, every study of the fiscal impact of immigration finds that the public expenditures attributable to illegal immigrants exceed their tax payments by a wide margin.
In addition there are indirect economic costs. Illegal immigrants reduce the incomes and employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers. Since the 1986 amnesty illegal aliens have become the largest contributor to U.S. labor force growth. Immigrant inflows—about one-third to one-half of which are comprised of illegal immigrants—accounted for almost half of U.S. labor force growth in recent years, and even more in certain areas and industries.
About 15 percent of U.S. workers were foreign born in 2004, up from 10 percent in 1990. Exactly how much of a reduction this has had on incomes of U.S. born workers cannot be known with certainty. A study by Harvard University Professor George Borjas concludes, however, that every 10 percent increase in the
U.S. labor force due to immigration reduces wages of native workers by about 3.5 percent. If Borjas is right, the income lost by displaced native born workers is enormous and growing rapidly.
In this paper we will show that, no matter how high the costs of deporting illegal aliens may seem, the costs of not deporting them are larger still.
Illegals Hurt Government Finances
Illegal aliens receive more than $26.3 billion in federal services while paying only $16 billion in federal taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of about $10.3 billion. The figures for 2002 are from a report published by the Center for Immigration Studies in 2004. These are conservative estimates…
This complete report can be ordered in electronic form for free from the National Policy Institute web page. It is in their Publications section. –VJ
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Global Research Articles by Floyd Rudmin
Media Distortions:
Preparing us for War
with Iran
The difference between “a” and “the” can be the difference between no war and nuclear war
by Floyd Rudmin
Global Research, January 19, 2007
For the past decade or two, US journalism has become deficient, dysfunctional, defunct when reporting on international events. For finding out what is going on in the world, it is best to read Hong Kong’s Asia Times or Britain’s The Independent
A recent article in The Independent entitled “Tensions rise as Washington accuses Iran over militias” (by Andrew Buncombe, January 14) reports the anti-Iran rhetoric of President Bush and cites a secret executive order directing US troops to attack Iranians in Iraq. This order apparently authorized two recent US attacks on Iranian diplomats, who had in fact been invited and authorized by Iraq’s elected government. In contrast, the December report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) had in fact recommended diplomatic engagement with Iran as part of a plan to pacify Iraq and save America from defeat. But Bush has rejected that advice and would rather attack Iranians than talk to Iranians.
The article in The Independent also reported deployment of two US aircraft carrier fleets to the Persian Gulf and deployment of Patriot Anti-Missile batteries to the region, presumably to defend against Iranian missiles should US actions provoke a wider war. The British newspaper, The Times, last week reported that Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran. Recalling Vice-President Cheney’s threat on 21 January 2005 that Israel could attack Iran if the USA does not, and recalling the report in the New Yorker on 14August 2006 that Israel’s war on Lebanon was planned and provoked as part of preparations for war on Iran, then it looks like the USA and Israel are in the final stages of preparation for a wider regional war. This new war will definitely not serve US national interests considering the dire consequences for US military personnel in the region and considering the catastrophic consequences for the US economy.
Nevertheless, Israel and the USA may even use their nuclear weapons to destroy the nuclear weapons program in Iran. Iran consistently says it has no nuclear weapons program, and IAEA inspectors have found “no evidence of a nuclear weapons program”.
As part of preparation for war with Iran, US politicians and the public must be made to see the threat that Iran poses and made to see the actual evidence of Iranian aggression, even if in fact there is no such evidence and even if in fact Iran is trying to stabilize Iraq as the Iraq Study Group concluded and as Iran itself has confirmed.
We have been through this once before. Four years ago, in 2003, in preparation for invading Iraq in the first place, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and others succeeded in making US politicians and the US public see the threat posed by the weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam, including the acquisition of uranium from Niger, the chemical plants for making the poison gas and the missiles capable of delivering the weapons on a few minutes launch warning. Secretary of State Powell gave a slide show at the UN show the manufacturing facilities, the storage facilities, the transport systems and all of the evidence for the weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam.
But it was all false. The supposed facts were fiction. We were fooled by public relations lies, by repeated propaganda, by so-called experts and authorities, and by rhetorical tricks, including clever use of “the”.
American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus, and her colleagues have shown how rhetorical tricks can make people misconceive reality. In one study by Loftus and Zanni (1975), people were shown a film of a car accident, and then asked questions about what they saw. A random half of the witnesses were asked “Did you see a broken headlight?” and the other half were asked “Did you see the broken headlight?” In the first version, 7% of the people said they saw a broken headlight. In the second version, 17% said they saw the broken headlight. In fact, there was no broken headlight. If someone uses the definite article “the”, then listeners and readers tend to presume that what follows actually exists.
In another study by Loftus (1975), people viewed a film and one group answered a questionnaire that included, “Did you see the children getting on the school bus?” and the other group did not get this question. A week later, people filled out a second questionnaire that contained the question, “Did you see a school bus?” Only 6% of the people who had not been exposed the the question a week earlier recalled seeing a school bus, but 26% of those who had been exposed to the the question a week earlier said “yes” they had seen a school bus. In fact, there was no school bus.
Thus, by the simple use of the, just one time, 10% of the people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there. With some additional details that fit, like children getting on school buses, and with the delay of a week to consolidate the false information, 20% of people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there.
Imagine the effectiveness of the, repeated over and over and over and over, for weeks and months, by authorities whom we are trained to trust, providing lots of information that coherently fits with the false claims. For example, The Independent article quoted President Bush using the three times: “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” There are in fact attacks on US forces (but done by anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents), and there are in fact networks providing advanced weapons for these attacks (but coming from pre-war Iraqi caches and pilfered from US supplies). Those two true facts serve to add coherence and believability to the unsubstantiated claim about “the flow of support from Iran and Syria,” for which there is in fact no evidence. Thus we come to confidently believe something is there that is not there.
The Independent is careful not to serve as a propagandist for governments bent on misleading the public in order to make new wars. When unnamed officials make claims, they are not presented as true, but as alleged, reportedly. And when there is no evidence, The Independent says that there is no evidence: “Officials have also reportedly claimed that thousands of Shia militia fighters have been trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Again, no evidence to support these claims has been made public.”
American journalists writing for US media are much less careful, and much more comfortable reinforcing beliefs for which there is no evidence, other than that they are being repeated over and over and over. For example, ABC News headlined a report, “EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Weapons Arm Iraqi Militia.” The report quoted unnamed authorities that “smoking-gun evidence” has been found, that “the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias” and that “the weapons have been supplied to Iraq’s growing Shia militias”. But the alleged weapons and other evidence are only hearsay, never made public and not seen by the reporter. The “smoking gun” is actually smoke and mirrors made by repeated use of the definite article, the. The world is again being tricked into war by empty rhetoric and fear, unsupported by facts.
Americans and everyone else have good reason to be alarmed. We may be on the verge of an horrific war, that will kill people by the hundred thousands if not millions, that will send economic shock waves around the world, that can come to no good end. The US is now governed by incompetent and deluded leadership; there is no reason to trust its judgement on matters of war, and certainly not nuclear war. Citizens around the world need to make known to their representatives in government that they insist on effective actions to prevent the US and Israel from starting a new war. Active military personnel need to review their oaths and their codes of conduct. All experts, whether military, academic, political, journalistic, or theological, need to use what authority they have to prevent a new war, perhaps a nuclear war.
Global Research Articles by Floyd Rudmin
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »