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 LordofHats wrote:
France has a rather large water border and gets plenty of illegal immigrants (and 2000 miles is just the land border, 4x that for our total border that would need policing to make a significant dent in illegal migration). All of the developed world deals with challenges concerning illegals, but it's hard to argue that the US massive border's don't contribute to the larger influx, as well as it's massive prosperity even compared to other developed countries. Most of the rest of the world doesn't have a border made up mostly of sparsely inhabited bordering on uninhabited desert.

I assume you mean the southern border. Even so it is easier to jump from North Africa to Spain and then onto France, or come through Eastern Europe. Funny story, France has little problem deporting illegal immigrants.

 LordofHats wrote:
It's not that it's not in my tastes (countless people are killed crossing the border every year from all kinds of things) as much as I don't view any real way to secure the border. It's too big and the resources that would be necessary for the task are realistically unobtainable. Unless you want to turn the US into a third world country, we can't really remove the incentive for illegal immigration by any means other than making legal immigration really easy. The whole reason people want to live here is because we're not Honduras or the Congo.

I offered suggestions above, none of them would have involved turning the US into a third world country

 LordofHats wrote:
Illegal immigration is a net consequence of our size and our prosperity. It's not going away because of rhetorical arguments about Americaness and how lazy poor people are.

You might have a point if I put this argument forward (I didn't)

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Funny story, France has little problem deporting illegal immigrants.

Read more French news (not that I do mind you, but they have no more success than anyone else). They're debate on this issue is quite similar to ours.

I offered suggestions above, none of them would have involved turning the US into a third world country

Honestly, I disagree. Destroying welfare programs doesn't just effect illegal immigrants it effects legal ones too as well as natural born citizens. There's no shortage of people offering fake and stolen identities. Unless we want everything to become the Inquisition, which again I understand people are general unhappy with such things, you aren't going to be able to deny services to just illegals and no one else. There's a half decent reason the government lets them have those things and its because the struggle to deny those to them would probably cost more overall than just letting illegals have them.

It's the same logic corporations use when they settle with a plaintiff even when they know they'd win in court. The cost of the battle is in excess of its worth. It's easier and cheaper not to fight it at all (same logic used by those who want the Drug War to end too). Further, even if we did away with all welfare for everyone (which, really?) it's still better to live here than there.

I do find it very distasteful when people are happy with letting other people starve, die of curable ailments, and live in third world conditions just because we don't like them. It's one thing to say people in another country are not our problem, we have our own to worry about. It's another to be completely indifferent to people on our lawn, whether the law says they're supposed to be here or not. There are too many illegals to deport, so we have to develop a practical and humane way of dealing with the ones already here. "They shouldn't be here at all" isn't an argument. It's just ignoring the problem.

You might have a point if I put this argument forward (I didn't)

I don't claim you did. I'm referencing the larger immigration debate, which like many debates, tends to be dominated by really stupid talking points.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They'll still smuggle in drugs, but it'll be tax evasion instead of trafficking in illegal substances. Trading one crime for another, and all the other assorted problems will remain.

And the only people who would buy then would be insane. Even with heavy regulation and taxes, legalized drugs would be infinitely cheaper than illegal drugs. If anything, like Tobacco there will probably be crimes involving the removal of the real drug from products and replacing it with a cheap knock off and then reselling the real drug at a higher price.

Either way, the Cartel's aren't going to need personal armies to defend their business anymore.

Yup.

Think of it this way, Grey Templar. Use tobacco as an example. As a criminal, I could smuggle my product all the way to Britain in order to avoid the taxes (which are incredibly heavy over here!). The problem with doing so is that firstly, I'd have to smuggle cigarettes for the larger part, as that's what smokers here use for convenience. People do buy pouches of tobacco, but far fewer than buy cigarettes.

Secondly, I'd be competing with huge legal conglomerates and corporations. They can grow stuff in bulk, ship it in bulk, and distribute it in bulk. My product, comparatively, moves in far smaller amounts and in far more secretive ways. This raises the price of smuggling the blasted things to almost as high as it would be with the tax included. And with the tobacco being legal, I don't have the grip, and will never have the grip on the market needed that I can arbitrarily raise my prices whilst the legal industry is trading. So no raising my prices to offset my smuggling costs and turn myself into a tobacco kingpin.

This in turn reduces the profits of your local dealer to that of someone who runs the local convenience store. Which hits your ability to build a distribution network, because why would risk getting locked up and prosecuted for the same level of money you can make legally? Then, even if I had dealers still willing to sell, customers like convenience. If my heavily smuggled product only comes at at 20p cheaper per box of ciggies, no-one will deal with me. Shoppers want to just pick up a pack of smokes whilst doing their shopping, getting the paper, etc. Why would you bother cultivating drug and gang contacts for a 20p discount? Why would you meet people in car parks at awkward times of day? Sod that, you just buy legally.

Finally, as a consumer, you'd be worrying about what was in your smuggled ciggies. They're not checked, and anything can make it's way into the supply chain to bulk it out. I'd worry about finding sawdust and rat crap bulking out those ciggies on a minor level, and if it was in bulk pure tobacco form, many other substances. I have no recourse as a consumer should this stuff I'm smoking not be entirely what it says on the packet.

The result? You buy legal, and tobacco smuggling here is practically non-existent, despite being heavily taxed. Weed would be exactly the same. The cartels think they have power, but when Benson and Hedges start cultivating weed on an industrial production level, they'll find their income from that department dwindles over the course of 2-3 years until it becomes non-existent.

Now this is not an argument for legalisation. Simply an analysis of some of the effects thereof.

The argument that a police officer might die if you don't tech them up to the nines is a weird one. The risk of harm is part of being a police officer, it's an assumed part of the job.

I'm pro-police (my Dad was a policeman) but I think they do what they do in the knowledge that they're not going to be perfectly safe.

'course, I'm coming at this as someone who grew up in the Republic of Ireland, where beat gardaí are only armed with sticks in a lot of areas, and at most a stab vest and some pepper spray in the rough inner city areas. Living abroad and seeing policemen carrying guns on the street, or automatic weapons in some cases is totally jarring and intimidating to me.

(To be honest, it gives me the feeling of being a Hobbit seeing a fully armed and armoured Man for the first time, after dealing with mostly genial Sheriffs up to that point!)

 Da Boss wrote:
The argument that a police officer might die if you don't tech them up to the nines is a weird one. The risk of harm is part of being a police officer, it's an assumed part of the job.

I'm pro-police (my Dad was a policeman) but I think they do what they do in the knowledge that they're not going to be perfectly safe.

'course, I'm coming at this as someone who grew up in the Republic of Ireland, where beat gardaí are only armed with sticks in a lot of areas, and at most a stab vest and some pepper spray in the rough inner city areas. Living abroad and seeing policemen carrying guns on the street, or automatic weapons in some cases is totally jarring and intimidating to me.

Same argument could be made for us in the military. So should I not be issued my ACH and IOTV? Risk is part of the job, so why should I have the equipment that lowers that risk?

Equipment is not the issue. It's the policy that drives its use. That is the issue.

The military has a different job than the police though. The police are supposed to keep the peace, and protect the community. It's harder for them to connect with that community if everyone is afraid or intimidated by them.

The military is completely different, and I think that's the point of this thread.

To possibly stretch my argument too far, I am a teacher. I could enforce discipline a lot more easily if I could beat the crap out of or kill unruly students. But that would be completely wrong, because that's not what being a teacher is about.

(To be absolutely clear on this, because the internet leaves things a bit ambiguous at times: I don't ever want to have to raise a hand to another person's kid.)

 Ketara wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They'll still smuggle in drugs, but it'll be tax evasion instead of trafficking in illegal substances. Trading one crime for another, and all the other assorted problems will remain.

And the only people who would buy then would be insane. Even with heavy regulation and taxes, legalized drugs would be infinitely cheaper than illegal drugs. If anything, like Tobacco there will probably be crimes involving the removal of the real drug from products and replacing it with a cheap knock off and then reselling the real drug at a higher price.

Either way, the Cartel's aren't going to need personal armies to defend their business anymore.

Yup.

Think of it this way, Grey Templar. Use tobacco as an example. As a criminal, I could smuggle my product all the way to Britain in order to avoid the taxes (which are incredibly heavy over here!). The problem with doing so is that firstly, I'd have to smuggle cigarettes for the larger part, as that's what smokers here use for convenience. People do buy pouches of tobacco, but far fewer than buy cigarettes.

Secondly, I'd be competing with huge legal conglomerates and corporations. They can grow stuff in bulk, ship it in bulk, and distribute it in bulk. My product, comparatively, moves in far smaller amounts and in far more secretive ways. This raises the price of smuggling the blasted things to almost as high as it would be with the tax included. And with the tobacco being legal, I don't have the grip, and will never have the grip on the market needed that I can arbitrarily raise my prices whilst the legal industry is trading. So no raising my prices to offset my smuggling costs and turn myself into a tobacco kingpin.

This in turn reduces the profits of your local dealer to that of someone who runs the local convenience store. Which hits your ability to build a distribution network, because why would risk getting locked up and prosecuted for the same level of money you can make legally? Then, even if I had dealers still willing to sell, customers like convenience. If my heavily smuggled product only comes at at 20p cheaper per box of ciggies, no-one will deal with me. Shoppers want to just pick up a pack of smokes whilst doing their shopping, getting the paper, etc. Why would you bother cultivating drug and gang contacts for a 20p discount? Why would you meet people in car parks at awkward times of day? Sod that, you just buy legally.

Finally, as a consumer, you'd be worrying about what was in your smuggled ciggies. They're not checked, and anything can make it's way into the supply chain to bulk it out. I'd worry about finding sawdust and rat crap bulking out those ciggies on a minor level, and if it was in bulk pure tobacco form, many other substances. I have no recourse as a consumer should this stuff I'm smoking not be entirely what it says on the packet.

The result? You buy legal, and tobacco smuggling here is practically non-existent, despite being heavily taxed. Weed would be exactly the same. The cartels think they have power, but when Benson and Hedges start cultivating weed on an industrial production level, they'll find their income from that department dwindles over the course of 2-3 years until it becomes non-existent.

Now this is not an argument for legalisation. Simply an analysis of some of the effects thereof.

Tobacco smuggling is also far more difficult to do because there is no infrastructure for doing it.

The drug lords have a massive existing well organized supply chain.

And we don't have massive companies to supply weed, yet. They may exist eventually, but given that people already have a very large source either by growing it themselves or by buying it from the guy in the alley...

Yes, it may reduce the market the Drug Lords have. But they'll still smuggle it in.


And even if their weed market dries completely up, they'll just step up smuggling of other drugs.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Tobacco smuggling is also far more difficult to do because there is no infrastructure for doing it.

You really thing the infrastructure of the drug trade changes between coke and tobacco? Really?

And we don't have massive companies to supply weed, yet. They may exist eventually, but given that people already have a very large source either by growing it themselves or by buying it from the guy in the alley...

This is circular logic.

they'll just step up smuggling of other drugs.

Weed and coke are the biggest markets. The more intense the drug, the fewer people addicted and crazy enough to use them, especially when you consider how drug dealers try to push users towards harder and more expensive drugs. Make week and coke legal, and you can start dealing with addicts like we deal with alcoholism, especially since the stigma of illegality is removed and discussion addiction and abuse becomes easier. Help those people and you have fewer people moving to harder stuff, etc etc.

Not to mention give it time, with a lack of the ability to exploit, use of such drugs might drop alongside the decreasing of of tobacco.

You've gone past grasping straws to grasping ashes that use to be straws before they were burned in an accidental house fire started by someone who left their oven on and foolishly placed gasoline inside it for some god awful reason then went out to lunch.

Just for general knowledge, there is a big tobacco smuggling industry in the US.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/cigarette-smuggling-new-york-_n_5041823.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/why-the-massive-black-market-trade-in-cigarettes-affects-you-even-if-you-dont-smoke/

http://taxfoundation.org/article/cigarette-taxes-and-cigarette-smuggling-state

 djones520 wrote:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/cigarette-smuggling-new-york-_n_5041823.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/why-the-massive-black-market-trade-in-cigarettes-affects-you-even-if-you-dont-smoke/

http://taxfoundation.org/article/cigarette-taxes-and-cigarette-smuggling-state

I referenced this earlier when I mentioned how people swap cigerettes with cheap knock offs to resale the products elsewhere. If you look for it, there's an illegal trade on a lot of luxury items. Tobacco, prescription drugs, guns, electronics, pirated media, etc etc. Even olive oil (hint, it's entirely possible you've never consumed real olive oil, literally). Interesting thing is is that while there's big money in all these trades, it's nothing compared to what the Cartels are into, and no one is raising armed militias to defend the business because that kind of money just isn't there.

The illegal trade of an legal item to skirt regulations and taxes is not quite in the same league as the coke trade.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Tobacco smuggling is also far more difficult to do because there is no infrastructure for doing it.

If a weed smuggler wanted to smuggle tobacco instead, they'd just swap what they put in the packet. It's exactly as difficult, no more, no less.

The drug lords have a massive existing well organized supply chain.

I guarantee the tobacco companies supply chain make the cartel's ones look like kids swapping sherbet in the playground.

And we don't have massive companies to supply weed, yet.

Because it hasn't been legalised on the same scale. Note the '2-3 years' timeframe.

They may exist eventually, but given that people already have a very large source either by growing it themselves or by buying it from the guy in the alley...

I just gave about twenty five reasons up above as to why the bloke in the alley will no longer be interested in selling it, and people wouldn't bother buying it from the guy in the alley when they get it in the supermarket.

Yes, it may reduce the market the Drug Lords have. But they'll still smuggle it in.

Not really. When you're making barely any more profit then you would doing it legally, why bother doing it illegally?

And even if their weed market dries completely up, they'll just step up smuggling of other drugs.

Possibly. Khat smuggling looks sure to pick up here. But ultimately, as others have said, it's a lot less sociably acceptable to do the harder stuff, a lot more expensive, and a lot fewer people are willing to take a chance on it then they are a casual spliff. The profits will drop whatever the drug barons try and smuggle as substitution.

 djones520 wrote:
Just for general knowledge, there is a big tobacco smuggling industry in the US.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/cigarette-smuggling-new-york-_n_5041823.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/why-the-massive-black-market-trade-in-cigarettes-affects-you-even-if-you-dont-smoke/

http://taxfoundation.org/article/cigarette-taxes-and-cigarette-smuggling-state

By 'smuggling', I wasn't really referencing driving between the borders of different states to save cash. That's like people who drive lorries from Britain over to France and buy booze in bulk in a port town and then drive back on the same day and sell it to the off licenses. It's not the quite same thing as the narcotics networks. Sure, it's a bit dodgy, but it doesn't exactly support the cartels in Mexico, or the poppy trade in Afghanistan.

 LordofHats wrote:
Honestly, I disagree. Destroying welfare programs doesn't just effect illegal immigrants it effects legal ones too as well as natural born citizens. There's no shortage of people offering fake and stolen identities. Unless we want everything to become the Inquisition, which again I understand people are general unhappy with such things, you aren't going to be able to deny services to just illegals and no one else. There's a half decent reason the government lets them have those things and its because the struggle to deny those to them would probably cost more overall than just letting illegals have them.

It's the same logic corporations use when they settle with a plaintiff even when they know they'd win in court. The cost of the battle is in excess of its worth. It's easier and cheaper not to fight it at all (same logic used by those who want the Drug War to end too). Further, even if we did away with all welfare for everyone (which, really?) it's still better to live here than there.

I do find it very distasteful when people are happy with letting other people starve, die of curable ailments, and live in third world conditions just because we don't like them. It's one thing to say people in another country are not our problem, we have our own to worry about. It's another to be completely indifferent to people on our lawn, whether the law says they're supposed to be here or not. There are too many illegals to deport, so we have to develop a practical and humane way of dealing with the ones already here. "They shouldn't be here at all" isn't an argument. It's just ignoring the problem.

You seem very quick to reach for a strawman. No one but you said destroy welfare. No one said anything about ending welfare. What was said was to tighten it up and stop illegal immigrants using it. It is hard to have a conversation with someone who is doing his level best to ignore what is being said.

Too many illegals to deport you say? Why is that? Simple, because they know that there is little enforcement and that some places will shelter them from Federal authorities. To repeat my point about removing economic incentives for illegal immigrants, that means that a lot will self deport as they cannot sustain a life here.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
To repeat my point about removing economic incentives for illegal immigrants, that means that a lot will self deport as they cannot sustain a life here.

Well you can pick the comment not expressly intended to respone to you and ignore the rest of the post if you want to

 LordofHats wrote:
Well you can pick the comment not expressly intended to respone to you and ignore the rest of the post if you want to

You quoted me three times, and replied to each. which reply (after each of my quotes) was I to take as not intended as a response?

 Grey Templar wrote:
They're not going to lose their market.

They'll still be able to offer it without taxes and without regulation.

Do you think that cigarettes without a tax stamp and moonshine liquor are putting serious dents in the profits of Phillip Morris and Anheuser Busch?

Yes, there will still be untaxed, and hence, illegal product; but it will be some tiny fractional bit of the market that can barely even be said to exist. Yeah, the moonshine might blind you, but it's $2 cheaper! Come on.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also how did we get here from the militarization of police? I just realized what thread we're in.

 Ouze wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They're not going to lose their market.

They'll still be able to offer it without taxes and without regulation.

Do you think that cigarettes without a tax stamp and moonshine liquor are putting serious dents in the profits of Phillip Morris and Anheuser Busch?

Yes, there will still be untaxed, and hence, illegal product; but it will be some tiny fractional bit of the market that can barely even be said to exist. Yeah, the moonshine might blind you, but it's $2 cheaper! Come on.

Yes, I do think there will still be a significant illegal weed market even if we legalize it.

You can't draw a parallel between Weed and Booze or even Tobacco. Tobacco has never been illegal IIRC and Alcohol was only illegal for a very short time.

The Drug Lords will just cut their prices, if they need to at all, to compete with any legal sources of weed. The profits will not dry up like people claim, just shift around.

You might make the case for what you are claiming 100 years down the road, if Marijuana is socially acceptable(which it should never be) like Tobacco and Alcohol.

Marijuana is going to get the gak regulated and taxed out of it(as it should be)

I'm ok with legalization for medical use, and maybe recreational use if, and only if, its highly regulated. And I mean a legal age, producer regulation, taxes to support drug rehabilitation, no private production or sales, and a general PR campaign highlighting the problems with using drugs. Similar to what we do for Tobacco.

Anyone using it medically should have to get their supply from a pharmacy like any other regulated medicine.

 Grey Templar wrote:

You might make the case for what you are claiming 100 years down the road, if Marijuana is socially acceptable(which it should never be) like Tobacco and Alcohol.

I can think of several large parts of the country, and segments of the national population, in which marijuana use is not only considered socially acceptable; but expected.

 Grey Templar wrote:

They'll still be able to offer it without taxes and without regulation.

The only relevant piece of your comment is the bit about regulation. Where illicit dealers will maintain an advantage is in their ability to supply a product laced with a substance that is probably itself illegal.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Too many illegals to deport you say? Why is that?

Does it matter?

They're already here, and the methods you wish to use to encourage them to "self-deport" would negatively impact legal immigrants and natural-born citizens; concerns which I believe outweigh any associated with illegal immigration.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/living/vargas-documented-immigration-essay/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
This should give you am idea of how to curb abuses by illegal immigrants - someone gave them a step by step of lying on government forms

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You quoted me three times, and replied to each. which reply (after each of my quotes) was I to take as not intended as a response?

I'll put up a big sign reading "Not a Direct Reply to Another Poster!" next time

My main response to you in that bit was that you can't realistically say "services for legal citizens only" unless you want everything in the US government to become the Inquisition. Is vetting 300,000,000 people really worth it just to catch the 10 to 20 million who aren't supposed to be here? It is cheaper by magnitudes for the government to just let them have services than it is to try and deny it to them. Not to mention the number of jobs that would need to be added to the public sector to really start investigating that many people.

Too many illegals to deport you say? Why is that?

I thought we were in a thread where (regardless of the whole militarization thing) people were concerned about growing police power . But then I remember that people are never really concerned about growing police power, only police power kicking down their door rather than the door belonging other human being they don't care about (hence why no one ever comments on SWAT kicking down doors until they kick down the wrong door). EDIT < Not a Direct Reply to Dreadclaw

There could be as many as 20,000,000 Illegals in the US (no one really knows since you can't really call for hands and start counting). Not to mention trails and inquiries into asylum claims, anchor babies, illegals married to legals, etc etc. You're not going to be able to deport that many people in a realistic fashion without creating the Gestapo in the process. That's why this conversation in this thread is a little ironic XD EDIT: And really this is before we start talking about the economics and politics of illegal immigration, where businesses love cheap labor, and politicians don't want to be too hard on a potentially significant future voting block.

"Deport them all" is as much a fantasy as "ban all the guns." Neither thing is remotely possible in the real world.

Also how did we get here from the militarization of police? I just realized what thread we're in.

The power of friendship!

The Drug Lords will just cut their prices

Its already been explained why that won't work.

You might make the case for what you are claiming 100 years down the road

You really think that if there is demand on the market, which really would there even be an argument for legalization catching steam like it is if there wasn't, it'll take 100 years for a company to catch on and start supplying? I think CEO's are aholes but I don't think they're idiots.

 Deadshot wrote:
This is one of the few times I actually appreciate British/Northern Irish police. British police do not carry weapons or conduct drugs raids armed with flashbangs and military grade weaponry. The average drug raid has a small hand-held battering ram and tasers and are only fired when faced with threat. Armed RESPONSE teams are available in RESPONSE to major threats such as automatic weapons. And any example of extreme force and the resultant harm to the baby and threats against the family would be immediately investigated by every newspaper and politician and their mothers and the cops hung out to dry and to face the angry mobs.
Here in NI we see a little more heavy-handed due to the sectarian tensions. For example, last December during the flag protests (where Loyalists [to the British Crown and Westminster] protested the Irish Republican Sinn Fein government's decision.to only fly the British flag on City Hall on designated days instead of 365 days), police patrolled in ones or twos, with one armed with MP5s. And the police almost universally use armoured Land Rovers, but its.

Thats how our SWAT times started, to deal with what would now be termed "domestic terrorists" aka Black Panthers and similar organizations, bank robberies, and similar hostage situations.

We have a combination of three things going on:
*No knock warrants driven by trying to seize drugs before they were flushed.
*Keeping up with the Jones' and a massive amount of cheap military/semi military equipment through grants from the HS and old military gear.
*The profit motive that allows the government to seize assets "involved" in the drug trade.

Also although I have no knoweldge of this being a real factor, I'll accept open borders and drug money have allowed many in that trade to have a higher level of firepower then the old days, although thats kind of contravened by the 30s.

 Frazzled wrote:
Thats how our SWAT times started, to deal with what would now be termed "domestic terrorists" aka Black Panthers and similar organizations, bank robberies, and similar hostage situations.

Too add, there's also the influence of various major riots throughout the last century. LA, Detroit, Chicago. Used to be cities planned on bringing in significant military assets to help restore order. People found this both distasteful and a little bit infeasible for logistics reasons. Many of the earliest SWAT like units (as in units actually equipped with heavier armor and gear) started as Riot responders.

EDIT: There's also the Kent State incident, a significant blast for many who wanted the military to never be involved in domestic disturbances of that nature.

 LordofHats wrote:
My main response to you in that bit was that you can't realistically say "services for legal citizens only" unless you want everything in the US government to become the Inquisition. Is vetting 300,000,000 people really worth it just to catch the 10 to 20 million who aren't supposed to be here? It is cheaper by magnitudes for the government to just let them have services than it is to try and deny it to them. Not to mention the number of jobs that would need to be added to the public sector to really start investigating that many people.

That strawman has escaped again. No one talked about vetting 300 million people except you. What was being talked about was not allowing illegal immigrants to access public services. All services in any given country are for legal residents and/or citizens only

 LordofHats wrote:
I thought we were in a thread where (regardless of the whole militarization thing) people were concerned about growing police power . But then I remember that people are never really concerned about growing police power, only police power kicking down their door rather than the door belonging other human being they don't care about (hence why no one ever comments on SWAT kicking down doors until they kick down the wrong door). EDIT < Not a Direct Reply to Dreadclaw

We're talking about the militarization of police, you are correct. I don't think anyone advocated that ICE get MRAPs, Class 3 armour, and M4s to round up illegal immigrants. But why let facts get in the way of your strawman again

 LordofHats wrote:
There could be as many as 20,000,000 Illegals in the US (no one really knows since you can't really call for hands and start counting). Not to mention trails and inquiries into asylum claims, anchor babies, illegals married to legals, etc etc. You're not going to be able to deport that many people in a realistic fashion without creating the Gestapo in the process. That's why this conversation in this thread is a little ironic XD EDIT: And really this is before we start talking about the economics and politics of illegal immigration, where businesses love cheap labor,

It's almost as if I covered this already and you managed to ignore what was said. Conversations are usually easier when you read and respond to what is being said.

 LordofHats wrote:
and politicians don't want to be too hard on a potentially significant future voting block.

The only way that these people could be a voting block is if they are granted citizenship. As most of them are here illegally and for a prolonged period the only thing they should be granted a lifetime ban from entering the United States

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What was being talked about was not allowing illegal immigrants to access public services. All services in any given country are for legal residents and/or citizens only

And how exactly are you going to deny it to non-Citizens? They can get fake IDs and information to apply for these services, so unless you want to vet everyone you can't create a system they can't get into. Any system to deny a service requires checking whatever criteria for the service is needed. This means vetting the American population to see who is legal and who isn't in some way, and doing that to over 300,000,000 people doesn't make any fiscal sense just to deny 10 to 20 million.

EDIT: For numbers, at most this means a system designed to block access for 7% of the population in the United States from getting services.

It's almost as if I covered this already and you managed to ignore what was said. Conversations are usually easier when you read and respond to what is being said.

I could say the same to you

The only way that these people could be a voting block is if they are granted citizenship. As most of them are here illegally and for a prolonged period the only thing they should be granted a lifetime ban from entering the United States

That's what you think, and it makes sense maybe if you ignore the reality that we can't make them disappear. Politicians being politicians, they recognize that giving illegals citizenship is going to win whichever party did it the Hispanic vote for decades (in much the same way the Civil Right's Act switched the voting trends of the Southern states and Blacks). Right now, they see more value in arguing over amnesty than actually granting it, but neither of them wants to remove the possibility of some day being able to push amnesty through and winning those votes. And it's not just the illegals become legal who will vote for them. Legal residence from South America will likely join step as they're already closely related to the illegal immigration issue in many ways.

 LordofHats wrote:
And how exactly are you going to deny it to non-Citizens? They can get fake IDs and information to apply for these services, so unless you want to vet everyone you can't create a system they can't get into. Any system to deny a service requires checking whatever criteria for the service is needed. This means vetting the American population to see who is legal and who isn't in some way, and doing that to over 300,000,000 people doesn't make any fiscal sense just to deny 10 to 20 million.

EDIT: For numbers, at most this means a system designed to block access for 7% of the population in the United States from getting services.

Checks on IDs, removing provisions for illegals to access services when they declare themselves as illegal immigrants, prosecuting people fraudulently using SSNs, prosecuting people mis-using tax regulations for people here on temporary visas, and any number of similar measures is not vetting the American population. Do not be so obtuse.

 LordofHats wrote:
I could say the same to you

You could but, like a lot of your comments, it would be inaccurate

 LordofHats wrote:
That's what you think, and it makes sense maybe if you ignore the reality that we can't make them disappear. Politicians being politicians, they recognize that giving illegals citizenship is going to win whichever party did it the Hispanic vote for decades (in much the same way the Civil Right's Act switched the voting trends of the Southern states and Blacks). Right now, they see more value in arguing over amnesty than actually granting it, but neither of them wants to remove the possibility of some day being able to push amnesty through and winning those votes. And it's not just the illegals become legal who will vote for them. Legal residence from South America will likely join step as they're already closely related to the illegal immigration issue in many ways.

Any comparison between amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Civil Rights Act is a gross distortion that twists facts and history.
Yeah, immigration is a poorly disguised attempt at establishing a compliant voting block. That has been apparent for a very long time. It benefits certain politicians. It does not benefit the country.

Interesting debate here, one I've had many a time with friends - I'll add that I'm a cop in the UK.

From a UK perspective - though I suspect the motivation is similar in other western countries such as the US/Canada etc - the 'militarization' of police isn't a long-term insidious plan. As an organisation we tend to be not so great at adapting to change and being pro-active about future issues...pretty much like most large organisations.

Most of the equipment, training and doctrine that you're seeing employed by armed/SWAT officers in the West has been very much reactive in nature, as a few people have mentioned already. A good example of this in the US and in the UK is the change in policy with regards to 'active shooters' - initially the first officers on the scene would try and contain the shooter and wait for specialist teams and negotiators to deploy. That approach was shown as pretty futile as the shooter is just going to keep shooting people until he is confronted by police at which point he either gets shot by police or he shoots himself. So policy now for active shooters is to confront them and stop them as quickly as possible. Incidentally, in the US this has led to patrol officers being given training on CQB tactics which is very much militaristic in nature, and often patrol officers are being given rifles and carbines to carry with them in their vehicles in case such an incident occurs. Same in the UK for our Authorised Firearms Officers - nowadays they are trained to respond much more aggressively in certain situations (such as active shooter incidents) because the previous approach was costing lives. It might not look as good but it is more effective.

Now, this is very much a 'militarisation' of police - however, at the same time, the police are there to protect people and they were (rightly) drawing a significant amount of criticism because they were not trained or equipped to adequately deal with these kinds of incident. This is where we see the classic 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' dilemma that I've noticed the police often get faced with.

It's also worth bearing in mind that we rely on the media for information with regards to a lot of incidents, and the media are very selective in what they report. Which is understandable in a way as they can't report everything, however they do like a juicy story and a lot of the times they're not too fussy about the fine details. Whenever armed police in the UK shoot someone there tends to be a media frenzy and a reminder of the various incidents when police have shot other people over the years....however they usually fail to mention the thousands of incidents where firearms officers are deployed and no shots are fired.

Bit of an old link but revealing nonetheless:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statistics-on-police-use-of-firearms-in-england-and-wales-2011-12

I would submit that using firearms in 5 out of 12 550 incidents is pretty damn good. I'd also be willing to bet good money that the 5 shooting incidents garnered a lot more media attention and criticism than the 12 545 incidents that were resolved by officers peacefully.

I would suspect it's a similar situation in the US. For every SWAT operation where somebody gets shot there are many that are resolved peacefully. But the media isn't going to report about a SWAT operation where nothing interesting happened, so those get pushed into the background a bit. A brief Google shows not a lot of information is available on statistics pertaining to SWAT teams, though I did find this https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223855.pdf which has limited data but at least it's something.

With regards to 'no-knock' warrants - typically they will be used in drug enforcement operations. And the reason they are used is so that we can get our hands on evidence that will help us bring about a successful prosecution. The police will do this because those drugs are illegal, and we are there to enforce the laws that the government sets. There's really not much point in complaining about the police doing this because we don't make the laws - the government does. That's a state of affairs that needs to be addressed at a much higher level. My own personal opinion on the current drug laws in the UK is that they are nonsensical, ineffective and need some radical changes (that's a discussion for another thread!) but that cannot and does not have any effect on how I do my job.

Another point I've noticed folks commenting on is how rarely cops get prosecuted for shootings or similar incidents. Whilst I am very much in favour of prosecuting cops who are genuine bad eggs or who are grossly negligent, the difficulty here is that - in my experience at least - as a cop you're often going into situations about which you know very little, with information that's at best second-hand, and that usually involves dealing with persons who have mental health issues or are under the influence of drink or drugs...often they have a combination of all three going on. These are chaotic situations where people will both intentionally and unintentionally present false information, will act in an extremely erratic manner and can vary their behaviour radically from one second to the next. I accompanied a guy up to hospital one night who was crying away and very upset as he had a bad cut to his head from a bottle...ten minutes after we get in to hospital he went from crying and asking me to help him to gouging open the wound on his head with his bare hands and trying to smear blood all over my face, while at the same time screaming about how he was HIV positive (he wasn't, and we found out later he smashed the bottle over his own head).

My point is that it is ridiculously easy to make a mistake in these kinds of situation. Sometimes you make the wrong decision full stop.....other times you'll make what would have been the right decision but you base it on information that's inaccurate....other times there is no right decision. Throw in the fact that you have to make this decision very quickly - often in a split-second - and add the various other contributing factors, which can range from 'it's very poor visibility and I can't see exactly what it is that guy is taking out of his pocket but the dispatcher told me the person who phoned 999 said she saw a guy with a knife' to 'it's 0500 on my last night shift and I've been delayed every single shift so far and have averaged about three hours sleep a day'....it's extremely easy to make a wrong decision, in the same way that a GP can mis-diagnose a patient or a surgeon can err during an operation. Prosecuting someone for making what they honestly thought was the right decision is morally questionable and apart from anything else is just going to encourage people to never make any decisions. Most police - certainly the vast majority of the ones I know and work with - are genuinely good people who are committed to their job. But at the end of the day we are still people and we can still make mistakes, same as everyone else.

On a final note - we, the police, do not exist in a vacuum. Police officers are not cloned at a factory, tucked away somewhere until they are of suitable age and then let loose on the streets. We grow up, watch TV, go to school and are generally a reflection of society, and in the UK we enforce laws that are enacted by politicians elected by the public. We usually end up having to try and cope with the people and situations that society has failed, yet we usually take the blame for not being able to magically fix them. Police reform by itself is probably not going to achieve much without matching reform throughout society in general.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Checks on IDs, removing provisions for illegals to access services when they declare themselves as illegal immigrants, prosecuting people fraudulently using SSNs, prosecuting people mis-using tax regulations for people here on temporary visas, and any number of similar measures is not vetting the American population. Do not be so obtuse.

It's not obtuse to point out this is already law save the provisions about declared illegals (and really, revoke those and they'll never declare so that's a does nothing change). ID's can be forged, information faked, taxes lied about and people legal or otherwise get away with these things for decades for lots of reasons. It's easy to claim that it's easy. It's also easy to see its not that easy.

Any comparison between amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Civil Rights Act is a gross distortion that twists facts and history.

Not really. At least, not in comparison to how the political parties would view the effects of such a thing. If amnesty were granted, it would be the biggest shake up for the electorate since the Civil Rights Act at least. The ramifications would be huge.

I don't compare it to the Civil Rights Act to say we should grant Amnesty, I compare them because the political parties in the US know how the CRA effected voting trends back in the 60's and they know that Amnesty will produce a similar effect. Give people what they want and they vote for you. Give something they want desperately, and their kids and grand-kids will vote for you too.

It does not benefit the country.

Defining illegal immigration as having no benefits ignore the mountains of research that have gone into the issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/do-illegal-immigrants-actually-hurt-the-us-economy.html?pagewanted=all

Earlier this month I met Pedro Chan at his small apartment above an evangelical church in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. Chan, who shares the place with three others, is short and muscular. He has a quiet voice and a patient demeanor that seems to have served him well on his journey to New York. In 2002, he left his Guatemalan village for a long trip through Mexico and, with the help of a smuggler, across the Texas border. In 2004, he made it to Brooklyn, where his uncle helped him find work on small construction crews.

Deep thoughts this week:

1. Illegal workers do undercut the salaries of millions of Americans.

2. But they boost the income of nearly everyone else.

3. Why don’t people know this already?

4. Oh, yeah: politics.

It’s the Economy

Adam Davidson translates often confusing and sometimes terrifying economic and financial news.

These days, Chan helps skilled (and fully documented) carpenters, electricians and stucco installers do their jobs by carrying heavy things and cleaning the work site. For this, he earns up to $25,000 a year, which is considerably less than the average entry wage for New York City’s 100,000 or so documented construction workers. Chan’s boss, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that unless he learned a specialized skill, Chan would never be able to move up the income ladder. As long as there are thousands of undocumented workers competing for low-end jobs, salaries are more likely to fall than to rise.

As Congress debates the contours of immigration reform, many arguments have been made on economic grounds. Undocumented workers, some suggest, undercut wages and take jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. Worse, the argument goes, many use social programs, like hospitals and schools, that cost taxpayers and add to our $16 trillion national debt. Would deporting Pedro Chan and the other 11 million or so undocumented workers mean more jobs, lower taxes and a stronger economy?

Illegal immigration does have some undeniably negative economic effects. Similarly skilled native-born workers are faced with a choice of either accepting lower pay or not working in the field at all. Labor economists have concluded that undocumented workers have lowered the wages of U.S. adults without a high-school diploma — 25 million of them — by anywhere between 0.4 to 7.4 percent.

The impact on everyone else, though, is surprisingly positive. Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, has written a series of influential papers comparing the labor markets in states with high immigration levels to those with low ones. He concluded that undocumented workers do not compete with skilled laborers — instead, they complement them. Economies, as Adam Smith argued in “Wealth of Nations,” work best when workers become specialized and divide up tasks among themselves. Pedro Chan’s ability to take care of routine tasks on a work site allows carpenters and electricians to focus on what they do best. In states with more undocumented immigrants, Peri said, skilled workers made more money and worked more hours; the economy’s productivity grew. From 1990 to 2007, undocumented workers increased legal workers’ pay in complementary jobs by up to 10 percent.

I saw this in action when Chan took me to his current work site, a two-story office building on Coney Island Avenue. The skilled workers had already installed wood flooring in a lawyer’s office and were off to the next job site. That left Chan to clean up the debris and to install a new toilet. As I looked around, I could see how we were on one end of an economic chain reaction. Chan’s boss no longer had to pay a highly skilled worker to perform basic tasks. That lowered the overall cost of construction, increasing the number of jobs the company could book, which meant more customers and more money. It reminded me of how so many restaurants operate. Without undocumented labor performing routine tasks, meals, which factor labor costs into the price, would be more expensive. There would also be fewer jobs for waiters and chefs.

Earlier that day, I was reminded of another seldom-discussed fact about immigrant life in the United States. Immigrants spend most of the money they make. Chan had broken down his monthly expenses: $400 a month in rent, another $30 or so for gas, electric and Internet. He sends some money home and tries to save a few thousand a year in his Citibank account, but he ends up spending more than $10,000 annually. That includes the $1,400 or so he pays the I.R.S. so that he can have a taxpayer I.D. number, which allows him to have a credit score so that he can rent an apartment or lease a car.

There are many ways to debate immigration, but when it comes to economics, there isn’t much of a debate at all. Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants — those here legally or not — benefit the overall economy. “That is not controversial,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. Shierholz also said that “there is a consensus that, on average, the incomes of families in this country are increased by a small, but clearly positive amount, because of immigration.”

The benefit multiplies over the long haul. As the baby boomers retire, the post-boom generation’s burden to finance their retirement is greatly alleviated by undocumented immigrants. Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told me that undocumented workers contribute about $15 billion a year to Social Security through payroll taxes. They only take out $1 billion (very few undocumented workers are eligible to receive benefits). Over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund.

The problem, though, is that undocumented workers are not evenly distributed. In areas like southern Texas and Arizona and even parts of Brooklyn, undocumented immigrants impose a substantial net cost to local and state governments, Shierholz says. Immigrants use public assistance, medical care and schools. Some immigrant neighborhoods have particularly high crime rates. Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told me that these are also areas in which low-educated workers are most likely to face stiff competition from immigrants. It’s no wonder why so much political furor comes from these regions.

Undocumented workers represent a classic economic challenge with a fairly straightforward solution. Immigrants bring diffuse and hard-to-see benefits to average Americans while imposing more tangible costs on a few, Shierholz says. The dollar value of the benefits far outweigh the costs, so the government could just transfer extra funds to those local populations that need more help. One common proposal would grant amnesty to undocumented workers, which would create a sudden increase in tax payments. Simultaneously, the federal government could apply a percentage of those increased revenues to local governments.

But that, of course, seems politically improbable. Immigration is one of many problems — like another economic no-brainer: eliminating farm subsidies — in which broad economic benefits battle against a smaller, concentrated cost in one area. As immigration reform seems more likely than at any time in recent memory, it’s important to remember that it is not the economic realities that have changed. It’s the political ones.

One of the most striking things about the above is that illegal immigrants are often paying taxes, not just sales tax but taxes to the IRS as well and to social security;

Over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund.

 LordofHats wrote:
It's not obtuse to point out this is already law save the provisions about declared illegals (and really, revoke those and they'll never declare so that's a does nothing change). ID's can be forged, information faked, taxes lied about and people legal or otherwise get away with these things for decades for lots of reasons. It's easy to claim that it's easy. It's also easy to see its not that easy.

It is obtuse to even suggest that ensuring that fraud does not occur is tantamount to vetting 300 million Americans. And your pithy response that fraud will occur regardless does not merit an in depth response.

 LordofHats wrote:
Not really. At least, not in comparison to how the political parties would view the effects of such a thing. If amnesty were granted, it would be the biggest shake up for the electorate since the Civil Rights Act at least. The ramifications would be huge.

Granting voting rights to those who broke the law to get here, and who should have absolutely no right to vote would be a massive shake up. But to pretend that it is similar to the Civil RIghts Act is a distortion and is not an accurate comparison. Those fighting for civil rights were US citizens, who had historically suffered a great many injustices, and were asking for their lawful rights. Illegal immigrants are demanding special treatment above legal migrants

 LordofHats wrote:
Defining illegal immigration as having no benefits ignore the mountains of research that have gone into the issue.

Really?
http://www.illegalimmigrationstatistics.org/illegal-immigration-a-113-billion-a-year-drain-on-u-s-taxpayers/

A study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that illegal immigration now costs federal and local taxpayers $113 billion a year. The report, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers, is the most comprehensive analysis of how much the estimated 13 million illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children cost the federal, state and local governments
The cost estimates are based on an extensive analysis of federal, state and local spending data. The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers examines dozens of government programs that are available to illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children, both legally and fraudulently. The report provides detailed analysis of the impact of illegal immigration on education, health care, law enforcement and justice, public assistance, and other government programs.

The report also accounts for taxes paid by illegal aliens about $13 billion a year, resulting in a net cost to taxpayers of about $100 billion. However, the study notes that government at all levels would likely have realized significantly greater revenues if jobs held by illegal aliens had been filled by legal U.S. residents instead.

Federal spending on illegal aliens amounts to $29 billion, finds Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers. The lion’s share of the costs of illegal immigration is borne by state and local taxpayers an estimated $84.2 billion. In 18 states, expenditures on illegal aliens exceeded the size of those states’ budget deficits in FY 2009.

Among the key findings of The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers:

The $113 billion in outlays for services and benefits to illegal aliens and their families represents an average cost to native-headed households of $1,117 a year. Because the burdens of illegal immigration are not evenly distributed, the costs are much higher in states with large illegal alien populations.
Education for the children of illegal aliens represents the single largest public expenditure at an annual cost of $52 billion. Nearly all of that cost is absorbed by state and local governments.
The federal government recoups about one-third of its share of the costs of illegal immigration in the form of taxes collected. States, which bear a much greater share of the costs, recoup a mere 5 percent of their expenditures from taxes paid by illegal aliens.
Granting amnesty to illegal aliens, as President Obama and others propose, would not significantly increase tax revenues generated by current illegal aliens. However, over time, amnesty would dramatically increase public costs as newly-legalized aliens become eligible for all means-tested government programs.

Arizona’s annual cost of illegal immigration is $2.5 billion.
“The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers provides a definitive response to the question of whether illegal aliens are a net benefit or a net drain on government coffers,” stated Dan Stein president of FAIR. “The report examines virtually every federal, state and local government program to determine the impact of illegal immigration on the bottom line. That bottom line $113 billion a year, and growing makes our nation’s failure to control illegal immigration one of the largest preventable burdens borne by American taxpayers.”

“If political leaders in Washington and state capitals want to understand why the American public is demanding enforcement of our immigration laws, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers, provides 113 billion good reasons,” Stein concluded.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/immigrationnaturalizatio/a/caillegals.htm

In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.

Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.

"California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle class tax base," stated Dan Stein, President of FAIR. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become."

The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians focuses on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants to the tune of about $1.1 billion. The enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants over the intervening ten years is due to the rapid growth in illegal residents. It is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide.

"Nineteen ninety-four was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration. Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens," said Stein. "Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy.

"Nothing could more starkly illustrate the very high costs of ‘cheap labor' than California's current situation," continued Stein. "A small number of powerful interests in the state reap the benefits, while the average native-born family in California gets handed a nearly $1,200 a year bill."

The Federation for American Immigration Reform is a nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization advocating immigration policy reforms that would tighten border security and prevent illegal immigration, while reducing legal immigration levels from about 1.1 million persons per year to 300,000 per year.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/6/20041206-102115-6766r/

Illegal immigration costs the taxpayers of California — which has the highest number of illegal aliens nationwide — $10.5 billion a year for education, health care and incarceration, according to a study released yesterday.

A key finding of the report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said the state’s already struggling kindergarten-through-12th-grade education system spends $7.7 billion a year on children of illegal aliens, who constitute 15 percent of the student body.

The report also said the incarceration of convicted illegal aliens in state prisons and jails and uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to illegal aliens each amounted to about $1.4 billion annually. The incarceration costs did not include judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes committed by illegal aliens that led to their incarceration.

“California’s addiction to ‘cheap’ illegal-alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state’s shrinking middle-class tax base,” said FAIR President Dan Stein.

“Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become,” he said.

California is estimated to be home to nearly 3 million illegal aliens.

Mr. Stein noted that state and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but do not match expenses. The total of such payments was estimated in the report to be about $1.6 billion per year.

He also said the total cost of illegal immigration to the state’s taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas, such as special English instruction, school meal programs or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal-alien workers were added into the equation.

Gerardo Gonzalez, director of the National Latino Research Center at California State at San Marcos, which compiles data on Hispanics, was critical of FAIR’s report yesterday. He said FAIR’s estimates did not measure some of the contributions that illegal aliens make to the state’s economy.

“Beyond taxes, these workers’ production and spending contribute to California’s economy, especially the agricultural sector,” he said, adding that both legal and illegal aliens are the “backbone” of the state’s $28 billion-a-year agricultural industry.

In August, a similar study by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said U.S. households headed by illegal aliens used $26.3 billion in government services during 2002, but paid $16 billion in taxes, an annual cost to taxpayers of $10 billion.

The FAIR report focused on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994, Mr. Stein said. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants at about $1.1 billion a year.

Mr. Stein said an enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants in 10 years is because of the rapid growth of the illegal population. He said it is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide.

“1994 was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration,” he said. “Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens.

“Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy,” he said.
Mr. Stein said that the state must adopt measures to systematically collect information on illegal-alien use of taxpayer-funded services and on where they are employed, and that policies need to be pursued to hold employers financially accountable.

http://cis.org/High-Cost-of-Cheap-Labor

Executive Summary
DHS
This study is one of the first to estimate the total impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion.

Among the findings:

Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.
Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).
With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social services.
On average, the costs that illegal households impose on federal coffers are less than half that of other households, but their tax payments are only one-fourth that of other households.
Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access them.
If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.
Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status -- what most illegal aliens would become -- can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.
Although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77 percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.
The fact that legal immigrants with few years of schooling are a large fiscal drain does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a net drain -- many legal immigrants are highly skilled.
The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.
The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the National Research Council, which also found that immigrants' education level is a key determinant of their fiscal impact.

It should be clear by now that anything the illegal immigrants pay into the system is dwarfed by what they take out

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Checks on IDs...

What sort of IDs? Passports?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

...removing provisions for illegals to access services when they declare themselves as illegal immigrants...

So? Such an illegal alien would simply not declare that they were illegally in the US.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

...prosecuting people fraudulently using SSNs...

Most illegal aliens are paid in cash, and so do not file taxes; or use SSNs. And the people that pay them aren't exactly above board.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

...and any number of similar measures is not vetting the American population. Do not be so obtuse.

Actually, all three of the measures you brought up, and I cited, would necessarily involve vetting the American population; legal and otherwise.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

It should be clear by now that anything the illegal immigrants pay into the system is dwarfed by what they take out

Which is in turn dwarfed by what it would cost to kick them out of the US.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

It is obtuse to even suggest that ensuring that fraud does not occur is tantamount to vetting 300 million Americans.

How can you check if someone has a right to services without checking them out?

And your pithy response that fraud will occur regardless does not merit an in depth response.

It will always happen regardless because no system is perfect, no human incorruptable, and there will always be someone clever enough and willing to find a way to cheat. Its not about will it happen but will the reduction of occurances be worth the cost to achieve it. I find it illinformed to for a moment believe that any system we could develop to reduce the number of immigrants in our system would be worth its cost.

But to pretend that it is similar to the Civil RIghts Act is a distortion and is not an accurate comparison. Those fighting for civil rights were US citizens, who had historically suffered a great many injustices, and were asking for their lawful rights. Illegal immigrants are demanding special treatment above legal migrants

You got in before my edit. Recheck the above for my clarification of my intent with that comment.

Really?

I never claimed there were no negative consequences to them, merely that defining their presence as solely negative is to black and white to be anywhere near true.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

It is obtuse to even suggest that ensuring that fraud does not occur is tantamount to vetting 300 million Americans.

That's right, ya only gotta check the brown ones, right? Right?

Face it, your country runs on illegal labour. So efficiently so that my government has set up a program to legalise the process (the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. If a Canadian waited less than five minutes for his Timmy Ho's in the morning, it because it is crewed by hardworking middle aged Filipino ladies, over here on the TFWP.)