Poll: More Than Half Of Americans OK With Illegal Workers

[sabra]

http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/20779.php

Poll: More Than Half Of Americans OK With Illegal Workers


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are divided about whether illegal immigrants help or hurt the country, a poll finds. More than one-half of those questioned are open to allowing undocumented workers to obtain some temporary legal status so they can stay in the United States.

At the same time, people doubt that erecting a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border could help to fix such a complex and enduring problem, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Two-thirds do not think it would work.

"You can't go and round up 11 million people and ship them out of the country," said Robert Kelly. The Chicago lawyer is among the 56 percent of Americans who favor offering some kind of legal status. "It just isn't practical," he said.

A smaller but still significant share — 41 percent — opposes offering any kind of legal status, giving voice to a law-and-order mind-set that bristles at the notion of officially recognizing those who did not play by the rules to get here.

[judaspriestess]

1. would the attitude

be the same if it were blonde blue eyed caucasions being the illegals?

Illegals work and PAY Taxes. It sucks that they are uneducated and that is where the barrier comes in.

[DemCam]

2. yep...'twould be the same

and in fact was in the early to mid-1800 influx of Irish hit this country. There was even a party dedicated to eradicating immigrants from the country...the Know-Nothing Party. Amazing, really...and they were'nt even "illegal". Just ran across all this in Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln...A TEAM OF RIVALS.

[MrTriumph]

5. It isn't racism. Illegals hurt working Americans of of races.

x

[barb162]

6. Do you think illegals are paying federal and state income tax?

I don't.

[LostinVA]

16. Many do via the SSN numbers they get

Even though they are "fake" numbers, they are treated like real ones, and taxes are withheld, just the same as you and me. Quit ab few workers use these (much like in the movie "The Coneheads").

Ones that get paid under the table aren't, of course, just like all the "real" Americans of all colors and creeds that also get paid under the table for day labor, working on farms, on crab boats, etc.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. In fact many are.

Taxes are deducted automatically before you get paid 'over the table'. 'Under the table' cash wages may be recorded on the books as fictitious workers (with presumably a small number of fictitious workers standing in for a larger number of real workers.) The IRS would be rather dubious about a business that used labor that had no workers. Illegals pay taxes and get no direct benefit from those taxes. They of course may also use service - so the question of 'net benefit' or 'net loss' is difficult to assess.

[fasttense]

21. I agree with you barb. I've worked alongside illegals and

saw them get paid in cash. A friend who works in a large corporation says when the corporation hires "contract" workers, who are obviously illegals (no SSN etc.), the corporation cuts individual checks to each of those contract workers. She took a long look at their pay stubs, no taxes, SS, or FICA are taken out. They don't pay taxes, legal immigrants do, but most illegals do not.

[Warren Stupidity]

29. Generally that is not true.

Undocumented workers frequently are paying at least part of their taxes. Some of course aren't. The IRS requires a 1099 for contract work. They rather insist that some taxes get paid on that 1099. They may not care who exactly pays the taxes as long as they get paid.

A more likely and successful scam is to have some number of fictitious workers - enough to satisfy the IRS - either 1099 or regular W2 employees, and then some larger number of off the book real workers. The real workers are paying a share of the fictitious worker's taxes, even if they don't know it and you anecdotally see an off the book cash transaction.

[primavera]

26. Most are

Not the underground sweatshop workers, of course, but the ones who work for "respectable" US corporations do, because their employers withhold the taxes from their paychecks whether they like it or not. The sectors which rely most upon undocumented labor are the ones for which labor is the primary cost of doing business, such as agriculture, meat packing, construction, etc.. If a US corporation reported to the IRS that they had picked $1 million worth of green beans for instance, but hadn't had to hire a single worker to do it, the IRS would know immediately that they were being ripped off and would send a team of investigators to go audit and shut down the place. Not a very inviting proposition for an ambitious business. So they withold taxes from the paychecks of their employees, whether they be legal workers or not.

[doc03]

11. There you go calling everyone names that disagrees

with you. I agree you just can't round up 11 million people and send them back. There has to be a way to let them work and earn citizenship over time but the borders have to be closed or 11 million more will come in knowing that eventually they will get amnesty too. I think they should give all the illegals a reasonable period of time 90 days maybe to register for a work Visa and after that period if anyone is caught without a work Visa they get deported and the employer gets a stiff fine like $50000 per each worker. A question just how do they pay taxes other than some sales tax if they have no SS number and their employer can't claim them either? In addition to that the employer can't be paying his share of SS, unemployment and disability compensation. A friend married a woman from Columbia and she and her daughter had to wait for nearly a year to come here legally, is this fair to them or anyone else who obeys the law?

[Bridget Burke]

20. Not everybody can get in by marrying a citizen.

I can understand why your friend's wife wanted a better life for herself & her daughter. But that avenue is not open to all....

[doc03]

23. Since everyone likes to call people racist is it fair to a

black person from someplace in Africa that would like to come to America, for a better life but he can't because we already have too many people coming here illegally?

[KittyWampus]

24. Illegals work and PAY TAXES? They all pay taxes? Do those that do pay,

contribute as much as Americans and documented workers?

AFAIK, you have issued a false and unsupportable statement.

[Warren Stupidity]

31. Then you don't know much about this issue.

Perhaps you should do some research. Of course 'all' is a ridiculous assertion. So I don't think anyone is claiming that "all illegals pay taxes". Some do and some don't. The studies I've seen indicate that most pay taxes. As they are working low wage jobs generally they are only paying the FICA withholding - and they will see no FICA benefits so there is substantial evidence that SS runs a rather significant surplus that correlates to FICA payments by undocumented workers that can never be redeemded as SS benefits. Of course the net gain net loss picture is complicated by many factors. Consumption of tax funded services is the other side of this particular aspect of the picture.

Unsupportable statement?

A few seconds on google indicates that there is a huge amount of supporting evidence. For example:

"How major? No one knows. In 1990, 3.6 million "wage items," or W-2 forms, were posted to the suspense file, representing workers with $1.2 billion in Social Security contributions that year. In 1998, the latest figure available, nearly twice as many W-2s were added to the file, with nearly $4 billion paid to Social Security.

Over the eight-year period, the mystery workers were responsible for over $20 billion paid in Social Security taxes – but they got no credit for them."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17228-2001Apr14?language=printer

[FloridaPat]

3. * lgnores the laws. Now everyone wants illegals in that have broken

the law. Any laws out there anyone would like to actually enforce? We're about the only country that doesn't protect our own workers. * has been busy sending the high paying jobs overseas and bringing in tons of foreigners to work on the few computer jobs left. And if the computer programmers were from Norway, I would be just as mad. Unemployed is unemployed.

Where's the new jobs * has been promising to replace all the jobs sent overseas? Where's the training for these new jobs? The American worker is getting screwed. The current mess has a lot to do with the amnesty Reagan did. That was suppose to fix everything. Now it's worst. * isn't protecting the ports, the borders, or anything else. Here's another issue to split the country and keep people at each others throats while they destroy the country more.

[JohnnyRingo]

4. I'm in the minority, I guess

As I see Illegals, they come here, stay in camps or in the back rooms of WalMart or Home Depot, doing work when they're not seen by the public.
They stay en mass in rentals near restaurants or construction sites and work for sub-standard wages.
Many come here to work temporarily and send the cash home to their families "where a dollar goes a long way". Within a few months they send home the equivalent of a years wages...and return to live with their families to survive until next time. This doesn't make them the best of consumers by the way.

The real damage is done by the companies that hire them, driving down the base pay and working standards for all of us. They don't need health care, safety equipment, or pensions. They don't need workers comp or social security.

It sounds like a corporate dream to me, and it is. I'm not surprised to hear both parties in favor finding a way to keep them here.

The only group I hear these days interested in holding the companies accountable for hiring citizens of the US and paying them a living wage are the unions. They aren't doing "jobs Americans wont do"...they do jobs that pay less than Americans can afford to take. We can find an American to do any job for minimum wage. I don't think that's too much to ask of the corporate empire.

I'm not sure what that angle is on "paying taxes" since that requires a social security number and would therefore not be an "illegal alien".

I'll not be called a racist for my belief that giving a company the right to exploit slave labor is immoral and ultimately hurts America workers though.

[judaspriestess]

8. Ok ........

Folks I work with so so many illegals they make good money!! I don't understand this lowering of wages crap like its rampant and wide spread. My fiance is a construction superintendant he cannot find good American help... he used to complain but now he comes to the defense of "the illegals" He is always saying what good workers they are and they show up to work.

Look up the statistics of how many are registered with the IRS paying taxes with TAX ID's. There's more than you think. Albeit there are those who ARE being exploited by companies like Wal-Mart but I really don't think we would EVER get away from that.

and give me a break if it were the canadians who are typically white we would not be having this discussion. its not the 1800's and we don't ride horses to work anymore.

[JohnnyRingo]

9. Why is our govt allowing companies to issue tax IDs for illegal workers?

Why would a company admit officially that they hire them?
Why leave a paper trail of illegal hiring practices?
I don't understand that. If everything is above board, why not give the job to a documented alien....or better yet, a citizen?

When hiring an American, an employer gets his money's worth.
When hiring an illegal, he gets a bargain. Otherwise it wouldn't happen. Ever.

If a laborer needs $18 an hour to build furniture in N Carolina, and an illegal will do it for $8, the American worker has to look elsewhere.
Race doesn't factor in because that unemployed American can be Chinese, Hispanic, or Asian. (and often is)

I believe when an undocumented worker takes a job, someone has to step aside.
Unless we as a country really are near 100% employed, as Buxh claims.

That..I don't believe.

[bee]

10. My tax ID app required my ss #.

As of three days ago, you couldnt get a tax ID without one.

[LostinVA]

17. They DO get/have SSNs

[pinerow]

25. The Tresury Department issues

Taxpayer Identification Numbers...(TIDN's)...I do taxes for some undocumented people...The TIDN's allow the individual to pay whatever taxes may be owed or refunds that may be owed by the Government...they are not allowed the Earned Income Credit(EIC)and they are not allowed the Child Tax Credit...the last return I prepared had the individual owing 600USD to the IRS...that was back in February...I advised him to wait till April 17th(the 15th falls on a Saturday)...he then proceeded to take out a money order on the 10th of February and sent it right in...this is not the first time I have seen that happen...while it is true there are some unseemly folks coming across, they are by no means any more dishonest that any one else living here.

[doc03]

14. So your fiance breaks the law and hires illegal workers

Does he pay them the prevailing wage and benefits for people in that occupation. How about local, state and federal taxes, SS and Compensation. Are you in a Right-to-Work state where you can hire non-Union labor and pay them sub-standard wages?

[saigon68]

22. And when he pays them $4.00 an hour in cash

Who pays for their medical expenses, feeds them and provides schools etc for their children

ANSWER The Churches and the TAXPAYERS

[primavera]

28. Most use bogus Social Security Numbers to pay taxes

Supposedly, many will use the Social Security Number 000-00-0000, others will buy Social Security Cards from fraudulent document dealers which will usually be a real SSN, just somebody else's. It doesn't have to be terribly credible for them to get jobs with the kinds of places which favor hiring illegal aliens, the employer will take pretty much anything that gives them a fig-leaf behind which to feign innocence in the unlikely event that they're ever audited.

So they do generally pay taxes, for the simple reason that their employers would have a very hard time explaining why they had withheld taxes from some of their employees and not from others.

As for wage issues, I have the feeling there's no point in this because everyone's so convinced that illegal workers depress wages, but the academic studies out there do not bear that claim out. Look up the works of economist David Card at UC Berkeley - he's studied this issue for many years and has never been able to find evidence to support the claim that illegal immigrants depress wages. Read Sheila Croucher of the University of Miami, who has applied a variety of both econ and poli sci models in an effort to ascertain the effect of illegal labor on native workers and again has been unable to come up with any interpretation that would bear out such an effect. George Borjas of Harvard has argued that there is an effect, but even he admits that the effect is subtle and cannot be detected at the level of local labor markets; rather, he believes that it plays a role in the overall long-term, national level labor trends. Many other scholars have therefore challenged his claim that illegal workers depress wages, pointing out that, if you have to expand your analysis to long-term nationwide trends, there are so many other factors which contribute to wages and unemployment, how can he be so sure that immigration is a cause, especially when the effect he alleges cannot be measured within more micro contexts? In sum, the majority of scholarly work does not sustain the claim that illegal workers depress wages, and there are serious flaws in the reasoning offered by the one scholar who does argue such an effect exists. I know, I know, you don't believe a word of it, no one ever does.

[QC]

7. "...said Robert Kelly. The Chicago lawyer..."

I wonder if his attitude would be different if he were, say, a construction worker.

[ruggerson]

12. Perfect

It fractures THEIR base, not ours.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[murray hill farm]

15. So, build the wall already!!

And then, give amnesty to both the illegals who work here...and to the employees that have hired the illegals. this would not have continued as long as it has if it were not beneficial to the american economy. And, speaking of illegal immigrants...perhaps we should discuss this subject with native americans.

[0007]

19. That's bullshit. All the polls I've seen sez 80 to 90% of the

people want them out of the country.

[Ron Mexico]

27. And the name of the community where this poll was conducted is...

??????

I've never seen a poll even remotely in favor of illegals until today. Ever.

I don't know where this poll was taken or what specific questions were asked, but upon seeing this article, the first two things that came to mind after wondering "where" and "what questions" were:

a.) if public opinion mattered at all to politicians on this issue, we wouldn't have 11 million (one of the lower estimates I've seen) illegals in the country or be paying for social services for them, and

b.) no matter the issue, source, questions used or results, I have never have any regard for poll results being run as news on an issue like this. All it tells me is the policial bias of the people running the poll. In this case, the person who wrote the questions is pro-illegal. I'm not. However, even if the results had been 95% anti-illegal, as I am, all that would do is make me even more curious about when, where and how (what questions were asked) when the poll was taken.

I remember a few too many polls making Bush look almost tolerable, and I didn't fall for those, either. No way I'm falling for this. In the meantime, count me as part of what this article calls 41%, a number which I'm quite sure is much higher.

[coolslasher]

30. immigrants

if they are working and paying taxes, why the hell would the govt deport them?

[bluedog]

32. $500 x 11 billion = $$$ 5.5 trilllion

$500 x 11 billion = $$$ 5.5 trilllion


and some say it would cost $$$ to ship them back.......

how about this money for better schols.......health care for all..





Reasons that officials give for permanent residents not seeking citizenship include not speaking .

His legislation would provide up to $500 in vouchers to immigrants to pay for English courses and grants to groups that provide classes in U.S. history and civics. Alexander said a portion of fees collected for naturalization, green cards and other immigration benefits would pay for the vouchers.

Advocates say long lines of immigrants are trying to sign up for English as a Second Language classes, but there is little money available for groups that want to provide the classes.

Sen. Craig Thomas (news, bio, voting record), R-Wyo., cast the single vote against Alexander's proposal. He opposed shortening the wait time for naturalization and was concerned about the costs of the English classes, said aide Cameron Hardy.
Sen. Lamar Alexander's amendment is S1815.

[Warren Stupidity]

33. Now there are 11 billion illegals? This is HUGH1111

No wonder y'all are up in arms. I had no idea.