Okay, here's my first response to a spam email!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

Been on this board for years now and it's my first. Probably because I rarely GET this kind of email because of the friends I have.

First, the email, not sent to me but posted on another board I lurk and rarely participate in, by a wingnut:

I received this e-mail from a friend today:



WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT?
>
> OH! Now I understand!!!
>
> You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much?
> Read this:
>
> Boy, was I confused. I have been hammered with the
> propaganda that it is the
> Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I
> now find that to be RIDICULOUS.
>

> I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over
> again until they are read so many times that the reader
> gets sick of reading them. I also have included the
> URL's for verification of all the following facts.
>
>
>
> 1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to
> illegal aliens each year by state governments.
>
> Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77
>

>
> 2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food
> assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free
> school lunches for illegal aliens.
>
> Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
>
>
>
> 3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for
> illegal aliens.
>
> Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
>

>
> 4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and
> secondary school education for children here illegally and
> they cannot speak a word of English!
>
> Verify at:
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
>
>
>
> 5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for
> the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as
> anchor babies.
>
> Verify at
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
>
>
> 6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate
> illegal aliens.
>
> Verify at:
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
>
>
> 7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal
> aliens.
> Verify at:
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
>
>
> 8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens
> for Welfare & social services by the American
> taxpayers.
>
> Verify at:
> http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
>
>
> 9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American
> wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
>
> Verify at:
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
>
>
> 10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime
> rate that's two and a half times that of white
> non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are
> going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US .
>
> Verify at:
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
>

>
> 11. During the year of 2005 there were 4=2 0to 10 MILLION
> illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as
> many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries.
> Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and
> marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
>
> Verify at: Homeland Security Report:
> http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
>

>
> 12. The National policy Institute, estimated that the
> total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and
> $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46
> billion annu ally over a five year period.'
>
> Verify at:
> http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
>

>
> 13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in
> remittances to their countries of origin.
>
> Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm>
>
>
> 14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One
> million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The
> United States .'
>
> Verify at: http: // www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
> & nbsp;
>
> The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A
> YEAR.
>
>
> Are we THAT stupid?
>
> If this doesn't bother you then just delete the
> message. If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on
> the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal
> resident in the country including every elected
> representative in Washington , D.C. - five times a week
> for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of
> intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.

My response:

(name omitted), assuming all the numbers cited in this email are true, the one that should jump out at you is the 200B in suppressed wages.

That's the majority of the whole figure, and that's the reason the illegals are here in the first place.

That 200B is a bonanza for the companies hiring the illegals. Construction companies, restaurants, housekeeping services etc. As long as there is a huge corporate benefit from all the cheap labor and little to no enforcement or penalties for hiring them, the situation will likely continue.

There's little doubt this is a huge problem, but I find the tone of this kind of email primarily designed to whip up hostility against Mexicans, scapegoat them, and allow the reader and sender to feel good about themselves, like every problem in America is due to poor evil Mexicans stealing our jobs and money and raping our wimminz, and no one needs to look in the mirror to see if they benefit from the cheap goods or services provided from this phenomenon.

If you actually, say, read the one Lou Dobbs transcript that constitutes half the citations in the email, there's a lot of discussion of the role of employers, but you sure won't see that in the email.

But I'm sure the people who forward and eat up these kind of emails rarely click the citations and read anything, and most of them never have any kind of citation anyway.

If it allows you to be angry and rage against the Mexicans and blame them for all America's problems, great.

I'm sure you haven't forwarded this without reading the citations yourself to see if they seem factual or editing out the various ones that are dead links, right? Or read around on the websites of the non-CNN links, CIS and FAIR, both anti-immigrant lobbying organizations/think tanks? I'm not saying their data is false, but they definitely have an agenda, and reading their sites gives you an idea of how to weight the data they are presenting.

[muntrv]

1. That $338 billion is still less than the $1 trillion being spent in Iraq. BTW,

how's being in Iraq stopping undocumented Mexicans from crossing the border?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. The 1 trillion figure for Iraq is supposed to cover the entire conflict.

(around 100B a year now)

The email figure for cost of illegal immigration is supposed to be per annum.

[krispos42]

3. Locking

Links to rense.com are not allowed on DU. The tinyurl.com link at the top goes to a site that doesn't look very good, either.


Regards,
Krispos42, DU moderator