Edwin Rubenstein on Poverty

http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/090921_nd.htm

If Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average income of those in the room skyrockets. In addition, the number of wealthy individuals increases. But is anyone better off? What if a poor man walks in? The average income of those in the room plummets. The poverty rate increases. But the wealth of the individuals in the room hasn’t changed.

Edwin S. Rubenstein writes a column in which he considers it “bad news” that the presence of poverty-stricken immigrants causes the U.S. poverty figures to increase. What Rubenstein blatantly fails to understand is that whether someone is poor in the U.S. or poor in Cambodia has no effect on the wealth of people in the U.S.

Another thing that Rubenstein blatantly fails to understand is that immigration is one of the most effective poverty reduction methods available. A poor immigrant who comes to the U.S. can increase his or her income by 1,000% easily. This dramatic increase in income not only boosts the immigrant’s standard of living but also that of the family members both in the U.S. and back home. Immigrants send tens of billions of dollars in remittances to their families every year improving the quality of life of their family who stayed in their home country.

More Outrage from FAIR

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/healthcare_09.pdf?docID=3501

Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has a new report out this month. The report is a typical FAIR propaganda piece that attempts to persuade readers that anything other than an all out assault on illegal aliens in our country leaves the nation vulnerable to terrorists.

FAIR has several recommendations that the current administration should implement including the following:
- Require use of E-Verify system
- Development of secure identification system through state drivers’ licenses
- Encourage local police to apprehend illegal aliens
- Increase emphasis on workplace enforcement
- Cancel proposed amnesty for illegal aliens
- Secure the U.S. Mexico Border
- Establish an electronic database that matches entries with exits thereby identifying those who overstay their visas

FAIR claims that the travel, hospitality and education industries have influenced the current administration to ease anti-terrorism efforts so that they can make higher profits. FAIR also blames it on the influence of pro-immigrant groups.

Pardon me, but when did an anti-immigrant group become an expert on counter terrorism techniques? And would someone please explain to me how apprehending and deporting a bunch of busboys, dishwashers and carpenters makes us more secure. I mean come on.

I understand that in an environment with unlimited resources that authorities could better protect the people if every visitor was assigned a team of five highly trained commandos to track his or her every move and ensure that he or she left when the visa expired, check every inch of every piece of luggage and every package that comes across the border and subject every human being to a daily rectal exam.

But the fact is that 100% security is just not possible in a world with limited resources. We have to decide how best to allocate those resources in order to best protect the nation. And allocating resources towards chasing down and deporting millions of illegal aliens the majority of whom only wish to work and live peacefully is not in the nation’s best interest.

2009 List of Lies

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tobar7-2009sep07,0,503680,full.column

Los Angeles Times Writer Hector Tobar discusses a new chain email that he has repeatedly received. It’s the latest anti-immigrant/anti-Hispanic propaganda that’s being spread around. The email is entitled “Just One State” and purports to describe the adverse effects that illegal immigration has on the State of California. After receiving the email multiple times, Tobar decided to investigate the facts [sic].

Not surprisingly, the email was filled with what Tobar described as “for the most part of meaty exaggerations and spicy conjecture, mixed in with some giblets of truth.” Some of the facts [sic] were resurrected from the fictitious 1st Quarter 2006 INS/FBI report.
Below is Tobar’s assessment of the facts [sic] contained in the email:

1. "40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying
taxes. . . . This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working
without a green card."
The source of this information seems to be a 2005
study by the Economic Roundtable on the informal economy in Los Angeles County.
Its findings were reported in The Times and other papers.
But the
chain-mail's author more than doubled the figures in that study, which estimated
that 15% of the county workforce was outside the regulated economy in 2004.
Illegal immigrants getting paid in cash, it said, probably made up about 9% of
the workforce.
A later Economic Roundtable report, by the way, credited
immigrants with keeping the local economy from shrinking in the 1990s.
2.
"95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens . . . "
We
traced this "fact" to a 2004 op-ed in The Times by Heather Mac Donald of the
conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Mac Donald said "officers"
told her about the warrants. She conceded that there were no such data in
official reports but suggested the LAPD "top brass" was hiding the truth.
I
called the LAPD's press office, which contacted the department's Fugitive
Warrant Section. Officers confirmed that the statistics in item No. 2 and No. 3,
which follows, don't exist.
3. "75% of people on the most wanted list in Los
Angeles are illegal aliens."We traced this figure to something circulating on
the Internet under the name "the 2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report
on Undocumented Immigrants." The "report" contains similar figures for Phoenix,
Albuquerque and other cities. But it isn't an actual government document. The
INS ceased to exist in 2003, after the Department of Homeland Security was
created.
There's something really disturbing about a work of fakery meant to
tarnish an entire class of people. You wonder what kind of person would pen such
a thing.
4. "Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal
alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers."
Once
again the "statistic" more than doubles the actual figures. According to a 2006
story in The Times, there were 41,240 Medi-Cal births to "undocumented women" in
the county in 2004. They accounted for 27% of all births.
5. "Nearly 35% of
all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here
illegally."
This time the author more than triples the actual figure.
Authorities project some 19,000 of the 172,000 inmates in the California prison
system in the 2009-10 fiscal year will be illegal immigrants. That's equivalent
to 11%.
A study published last year by the nonpartisan Public Policy
Institute of California actually found that U.S.-born men in California are 10
times more likely to be incarcerated than foreign-born men. You can take that
statistic with as many grains of salt as you wish.
6. Over 300,000 illegal
aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
This information
apparently comes from a 1987 article in which The Times visited a sampling of
properties across the county and looked for unauthorized garage conversions. The
story concluded that 200,000 people lived in such dwellings.
The story made
no effort, however, to determine immigration status. I'd like to point out that
just living in an "illegal garage" doesn't make you "an illegal." You might just
be a starving artist, or a guy who recently lost his job.
7. "The FBI
reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens
from south of the border."
This is another "fact" spun from the 2004 op-ed
by Heather Mac Donald, whose article refers to a single Los Angeles gang and the
conjecture of an unnamed federal prosecutor.8. "Nearly 60% of all occupants of
HUD properties are illegal."
Annie Kim, a spokeswoman for the Housing
Authority of the city of Los Angeles, called this statement "an urban legend."
The source of the information may be an Associated Press report from earlier
this year. It quoted a government study that found that 0.4% of residents of
federally funded public housing are "ineligible noncitizens." Half of those, or
about 0.2% of the total, are illegal immigrants.
9. 21 radio stations in L.
A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak
English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
These facts are close to the actual
numbers, though the language figures are deceptive.
An annual census survey
asks people if they "speak a language other than English at home." According to
the most recent report, 3.7 million county residents speak Spanish. But more
than half of those Spanish speakers answered that they also speak English "very
well." Only one in 10 Spanish speakers said they don't speak any English at all.
Obviously, the ability to speak a language other than English, or the desire
to listen to Spanish music, doesn't make you an illegal immigrant or a threat to
U.S. democracy. It's a slur against Los Angeles, really, to find these items on
a list of "problems" caused by illegal immigration.
The authors of the chain
e-mail and the phony government report fear what Los Angeles has become -- a
multilingual, multiethnic city with multicultural tastes.
They search for
information to persuade others to be afraid, but the actual numbers don't quite
add up to the big monster they think is out there.So they make the numbers
bigger. Or they just make them up. And they spread them around until all that
fear and anger turns into a big hate.

Tabor ponders, “There's something really disturbing about a work of fakery meant to tarnish an entire class of people. You wonder what kind of person would pen such a thing.”