you are totally right about our country not excisting without immigrants, the only difference is when my great ,great, great, great grandpa came to the U.S from germany he did not make demands or expect americans to speak German, he learned to speak english just like every other non english speaking immigrant did. He did not raise the german flag over the american flag like they did at a texas school this year. That is what eats me up, I have no problem with someone wanting to better their life, but dont come over here and say we are unfair and racist. Maybe i am a simple minded redneck, but it pissed me off when they raised the mexican flag over the american, as a veteran it hits me hard that someone living illegal in my country, that so many have fought for, would disgrace our flag like that. If you want to be here and reap the benifits of our country, and get your little piece of that pie, respect our country, our people, our flag, and our ways. And for the jobs that most illegals work here in america, are usually jobs that us lazy americans dont want to do, but not all of them. My mom was recentlly denied a job at wells fargo because she was not bilingual, what kind of crap is that? just think about this, If we were to flood into mexico by the millions and start demanding they speak english and raise the american flag over the mexican flag and they had press 1 for spanish 2 for english, they would be doing the same thing we are right now. (sorry to get off the subject about taxes)

You’re right. It is odd to complain about illegal immigrants using SSNs. If you’ve got an SSN it means that 1) you’ve got a job and 2) you are paying SS taxes at least– just what ‘High TaxPayer’ was complaining about. And, as you note, not filing income taxes works in favor of the legal residents of the nation.

I’m not sure your story counts as seeing it first hand as the story’s punch really depends upon accepting as true a part of the story that you made up– the part about ‘knowing’ that the old man had never paid taxes. You don’t provide evidence for the new social security number year after year and the many dependents either. And of course it is also possible that these people do in fact have multiple dependent.

I don’t mean to be rude but did you read the damn post or did you stop at the first sentence?

I’ve known a lot of Hispanic folk and I can’t imagine any of them writing what you just wrote. I don’t mean the content. I mean the style. You write like a white boy– quite possibly one with a red neck.

Plus… um… you didn’t read the post very carefully.

I wish you would have provided enough information that I could find that news story.

At any rate, I don’t doubt that people cheat on taxes. Nor do I doubt that companies and rich folk are the big cheaters. That is what I’d expect. But what is the connection to immigrant labor?

I don’t base much of anything on people being honest, and I don’t think this is any exception. Certainly people will try to beat taxes. I don’t know that the connection between “immigrant labor” and “cheat rabidly on taxes” is as strong as you imagine. At any rate, cheating on taxes is not easy and penalties are high if you get caught.

The Center for Immigration Studies article I cited states that immigrants represent a positive 7 billion in Social Security and Medicare taxes so talking about making that ‘dependency ratio’ worse doesn’t make sense. In those areas, there is no dependency ratio. Just the opposite.

Yes, employers can dodge OSHA regulations but only small employers can pull it off. Larger organizations get watched. I speak from experience, having worked in an industry for 12 years or so where virtually everyone short of large commercial contractors dodged– ignored– the regulations simply because OSHA rules make doing business brutally expensive. This in not, though, a phenomenon peculiar to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

And yes, you can get away with paying less than minimum wage, less for insurance, bonds, and healthcare. However, that doesn’t change the income into the business which translate into taxes that must be paid by the employer.

I think your assumption that employers bury illegal payrolls in other business related expenses is wrong. A business could certainly bury some of the payroll in expenses to cheat taxes, as I rather cynically assert that most businesses attempt to do anyway. However, burying money on a large scale is not easy. Consider a framing contractor– as my experience tells me that the industry is heavy on illegal at least in part of the country– with four employees. Each employee is paid 5 an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week– all low estimates IMO. In a year that works out to 57,600 dollars. A framing contractor can’t hide that kind of money. A framer pays for, pretty much, nails. The general contractor pays for everything else. (Again, in the area I worked.) This all assumes that work is steady and all that, but you get the idea. Even $30,000 couldn’t be hidden. In other industries with more expenses it might be easier. Still, writing off business related expenses requires receipts, which a cheating employer isn’t going to have. It is very risky business. A restaurant can’t ‘buy’ $30,000 in food it doesn’t sell, pay $1500 a month in electricity when the bills show $1000, or argue that it operates profitably with half the staff similar restaurants require. Hiding large sums of money is going to raise red flags. I don’t think it is going to be quite as rampant as you imagine.