When Facts Don’t Cooperate

A guy named Daniel Greenfield writes a column http://tinyurl.com/q89c5uw claiming that illegal immigration is one of the factors responsible for gun violence in major U.S. cities and that granting amnesty to illegal immigration would cause gang and gun violence to increase so significantly in major cities that their economies will collapse and that a “ripple effect” would extend to suburbs and entire states.

He describes what will happen to New York if amnesty is granted:

“Before long, the marginal gangs will swell to monstrous sizes controlling entire neighborhoods. Anyone who can will flee and the city will once again become what it was.”

He adds, “The same process will take place in most major American cities.”

His proof is that crime increased in major cities after the 1986 amnesty.  The cause of increases in crime after 1986, argues Greenfield, is that an influx of illegal aliens after the amnesty took jobs that poor Americans would have otherwise taken.  As a result of lesser available jobs, the jobless Americans took to crime.

Greenfield’s problem is that the data don’t support him.  First of all, the economy was booming during the 80s, and the unemployment rate fell steadily from the mid-80s through 1990 all over the nation and in every demographic.  Second, the number of murders in Chicago, which had been falling during the 80s decade, continued to fall after 1986 and only increased in the early 90s during a mild recession. Then after the mild recession, murders in Chicago continued to decline where in 2013 the number of murders was considerably less than in 1986 despite the influx of millions of illegal aliens.

In NBER Working Paper No.12518, authors George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger and Gordon Hanson examine the effect of immigration on crime.  The authors point out that even without increased immigration, most of the unemployment and increase crime among black men is not related to immigration.  The authors claim that for black men, a 10 percent immigration induced increase in supply of a particular labor pool skill group appeared to cause a nearly 1 percentage-point rise in incarceration rates.  And this was written by George Borjas, a well known anti-immigrant fanatic (who is also an immigrant himself, and he hates irony to boot). So even a well-known anti-immigrant fanatic concludes that immigration has a miniscule effect on crime.

The actual facts don’t support Greenfield’s claims.

People Using Rubenstein's Bull Shit

This is how it works.  The Center for Immigration Studies makes a bullshit report [sic] pretending to get data from a legitimate source but misstating the fact.  Then a yahoo like Edwin Rubenstein cites the CIS report as fact in one of his bullshit reports [sic].  Then people can cite Rubenstein's reports and pretend it's fact.  The only way to check the actual data is to carefully analyze Rubenstein's claims and carefully analyze his sources.  It takes a lot of work so most people don't challenge it.

Someone named Jeff Stewart writes a column dated April 16, 2014 available exclusively on the VDare website entitled “Tax Day: Americans Pay—Illegal Aliens Get Fraudulent Refunds”.  The article claims that illegal aliens fraudulently receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC”) is widespread and, in fact, that a lot of “thieving” is perpetrated by illegal aliens with respect to the EITC.  Stewart claims that 40 percent of illegal aliens use the program (i.e. EITC).  While Stewart provides no evidence of his own to support these claims, he does link to other reports.

One of the reports that Stewart links to is a Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”) report dated April 2011 entitled “Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children”.  This link appears after the claim that illegal aliens do “much of the thieving” with respect to the EITC.  But the link doesn’t provide any support for that claim at all.  A section of this report includes a graph showing that a certain percentage of households are “eligible” for the EITC.  A figure is given for native households (29%), all immigrant households (44%) and Hispanic immigrant households (59%). 

A note indicates that this graph does not measure the use of EITC.  It only measures eligibility. The source of the information comes from the 2009 Census Bureau Current Population Survey.  So basically, Stewart’s first link does not support his claim that illegal aliens are “doing much of the thieving”.  His link doesn’t address illegal aliens’ use of EITC at all.

Stewart’s next link is a 2001 (not a typo) report from Steven Camarota of CIS.  Stewart claims that Camarota found [sic] that 40 percent of illegal aliens use the EITC.

This report from Camarota actually claims that 49% of Mexican immigrants are eligible to receive the EITC. It doesn’t even address the immigration status of the people.  The estimate is taken from the 2000 [sic] Census. The Census estimated use of the program by income and number of dependents in the household. The Census does not ask for immigration status and the fact that many Mexican immigrants are illegal aliens and therefore not eligible for the EITC was not taken into consideration in calculating the estimate.  There is no evidence in Stewart’s link to support his claim that 40% of illegal aliens use the EITC.

A third link that Stewart provides is associated with his claim that other analysts [sic] have found “rampant” abuse of the EITC by illegal aliens.  The link he provides is to Edwin Rubenstein’s 2009 article entitled “The EITC and Illegal Aliens”.  Rubeinstein claims that illegal aliens are among the chief beneficiaries of the EITC.  Like Rubeinstein’s subsequent report and a 2004 article on the subject, Rubenstein’s report falls short of substantiating Rubeinstein’s and Stewart’s claims.  Rubeinstein’s primary support for this is the 2001 Camarota report previously mentioned.

So at the end of the day, Jeff Stewart has provided absolutely no evidence to support his claims about the use of EITC by illegal aliens.

Other more reputable analysts argue that the majority of EITC overpayments are NOT a result of fraud on behalf of illegal aliens.

According to a February, 2011, report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), more improper payments seem to be a result of questionable child eligibility than the use of fraudulent social security numbers by illegal aliens. A recommendation to ensure that individuals have a valid Social Security Number is estimated by the TIGTA report to save only $1.1 billion over five years.  Another recommendation to ensure that taxpayers comply with the law governing child eligibility is estimated to save $5.6 billion.

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains that EITC errors occur primarily because of the complexity of the rules surrounding the credit.  Most of the errors are mistakes, not fraud. EITC overpayments sometimes can result from the complexity of the EITC.  One example is provided involves divorced parents both claiming the same child as a dependent to get the EITC.

Immigrant Labor

On August 1, 2012, William Gheen, head of the anti-immigrant political action committee Americans for Legal Immigration (“ALIPAC”), wrote a rant http://tinyurl.com/blqgauv about how he insisted that American workers deliver consumer goods that he purchased at Home Depot. It’s hard to miss the irony that the head of an organization called Americans for Legal Immigration discriminates against immigrants. It's also ironic that an anti-immigration leader who purports to honor the rule of law encourages employers to discriminate based on national origin in violation of Federal law. I digress. In response to that tirade, I write of my own experiences.

I went to Home Depot one time to buy a kitchen sink. Yeah, that’s right. Home Depot has everything a homeowner needs including the kitchen sink. Home Depot has a very liberal returns policy. They’ll take almost anything back without question. Knowing this I was careful to buy a product that looked like it hadn’t been already opened or tampered with. I don’t want to get something that had been returned and restocked without all the necessary parts and instructions. We also got the pipes and putty and everything else we needed to complete the project.

 When I opened the box, I, as usual, looked for some instructions. I didn’t find any. I figured that was the industry norm for sinks. It’s a sink for cryin’ out loud. What do you need instructions for? You put it in that big hole on the kitchen counter, you inbred moron. So I didn’t think anything of it. After doing the measurements I proceeded to install the sink. When I removed the old sink, I noticed that there were some clips that held the sink in place. I didn’t think twice about it. I just figured I’d use the same clips for the new sink. But the new sink had a different configuration such that the old clips would not work.

So we went back to Home Depot. We inquired of an American employee who then called the resident plumbing department expert, another American. We explained the situation and showed him the model that we bought. He recommended that we use some clips that were displayed in the sink section. So we got those and went back home. The clips didn’t seem to fit. I figured that the guy at Home Depot would know what he was talking about so I tried every way to Sunday to try and figure out how those clips were supposed to be affixed.

 I went to the manufacturer’s website to try to get more information. They had an instructional video, and they had something else that intrigued me: a set of instructions for the model of sink that I had purchased. I went to the box to look to see if any instructions were included. I didn’t find anything. I looked at the PDF of the instructions that I had downloaded. The clips in the pictures in the instructions looked a little different than the clips that the American plumbing expert at Home Depot sold me.

 So I called the manufacturer. “Where can I get these clips?” I asked. I was told that the clips were supposed to be included in the box with the sink along with the instructions. The manufacturer offered to mail to me the parts that I needed. We went back to Home Depot to see if we could get the right clips. We didn’t want to have to live without a kitchen sink for two days while we waited for the clips to arrive in the mail. This time we talked to the manager. We were pissed. They took the right clips from another box and gave them to us. They’ll probably sell that other box without the clips to some other sucker.

 By this time, I had had it. A fun Saturday home project resulted in so much frustration as a result of the complacency of American workers. We considered getting someone to finish the installation. We called Home Depot. They said that they would charge us $500 to have someone, probably an American, install the sink. That was unacceptable.

 So we went to the immigrant community. Someone we know has a fiancé who has a mom who goes to a church where there are a lot of immigrants. One guy from Bolivia named Miguel is a licensed plumber. Miguel was available to stop by that evening. He took a look at the situation and gave us a quote of $120. Giddy Up! The next day he installed it. We gave him $200 because he was a nice guy. 

The next spring we had an issue with an outdoor faucet so we called him again. He had to cut into the drywall to get to the pipe, cut out the old faucet and replace it with a new one. He charged us $150, parts included. He even cleanup up all the dust that resulted from cutting into the drywall.

There was another time when strong winds from a storm blew off some siding. The spot that was blown off was way up at the top. I didn’t have a ladder that would get me anywhere near that. No problem. We contacted someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew an immigrant who could do the job. I watched the guy do it. He was diligent. The first thing he did was go up and check out the scene. He didn’t carry with him the siding pieces that had been knocked off. It took him about 15 minutes to do the whole job. I don’t remember how much he charged, but I do know that, despite a hurricane and some very violent weather that knocked out electricity and uprooted trees all over the region, no siding has been blown off our house since. 

We know a young, red-headed, freckle-faced American man whose father owns an HVAC company. He’s the ex-fiancé of a former co-worker of someone we know. Our next door neighbor’s A/C broke down during the recent heat wave. We recommended Johnny. Unlike William Gheen, we don’t discriminate. We chose the best recommended professional at the best price.

Edwin Rubenstein Still At It

In April, 2011, The Social Contract Press announced the release of a report by Edwin S. Rubenstein. In introducing the report, The Social Contract Press claims that millions of illegal aliens are prepared to celebrate a cash windfall from the Internal Revenue Service in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC”). It is claimed that illegal aliens are among the chief beneficiaries of the EITC, that illegal aliens receive the EITC at greater rates than legal immigrants.

“Defrauding the American Taxpayer – The Earned Income Tax Credit” (the “Report”) is purported to be an update. Rubenstein had previously released a report two years earlier as well as an article in 2004. Like the previous report and the 2004 article, this report falls short of substantiating the claims.

Rubenstein makes various claims about the EITC. He claims that the EITC contributes to overpopulation by providing a “strong incentive” for low income people to have children; it “destroy[s]” high-wages jobs; it exacerbates the “obscene gap” between the rich and poor in the United States; it erodes incentives for employees and may have even caused The Great Recession. But I am going to focus this analysis on the claims about illegal immigrants. The evidence he presents to support his claims will be analyzed below.

Billions in Improper EITC Payments: That some EITC payments are improper is true. According to a February, 2011, report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), “the IRS estimates that 23 to 28 percent of EITC payments are issued improperly each year, which equated to $11 billion to $13 billion in EITC improper payments in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009.”

Reading the TIGTA report reveals that the majority of improper payments seem to be a result of questionable child eligibility. A recommendation to ensure that individuals have a valid Social Security Number is estimated by the TIGTA report to save only $1.1 billion over five years (i.e. $220 million per year), a merely fraction (less than 2%) of the total $11 - $13 billion in estimated improper payments.

Outreach Groups: Rubenstein claims that outreach groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (“CBPP”) offers tips with respect to how immigrants can receive EITC payments for years when they didn’t have a valid Social Security Number. He offers this as proof that illegal aliens receive EITC. Unfortunately, Rubenstein provides no documentation. He could have so easily provided reference to a specific document or practice in which the CBPP practices this act. But he doesn’t.

Rise in EITC Claims: Another piece of evidence Rubenstein uses to substantiate his claim is that after 1997, when the law was changed rendering those without valid Social Security Numbers ineligible for the EITC, the total number of tax returns claiming the EITC rose. He concludes that the only reason for the rise was that illegal aliens using ITINs (Individual Tax Identification Numbers) continued to receive the EITC. But Rubenstein’s own chart on the first page of Part 2 of his report shows a sudden halt in the growth of EITC claims and payments in the late 90s. Between 1995 and 2001 the growth rate of EITC claims is totally flat despite having risen rapidly between 1985 and 1995.

But an increase in EITC claims would not have been a surprise in the late 1990s. The government passed welfare reform in 1996 which dramatically changed welfare. It was expected that many long time welfare recipients would enter the workforce, many with low paying jobs, thereby increasing the number of EITC claims.

2001 CIS Report: In a 2001 report, the Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”), estimated that 49% of Mexican immigrants are eligible to receive the EITC (page 36). The CIS report admits that the figures “almost certainly over-state program use”. The estimate is taken from the 2000 Census. The Census estimated use of the program by income and number of dependents in the household. The Census does not ask for immigration status and the fact that many Mexican immigrants are illegal aliens and therefore not eligible for the EITC was not taken into consideration in calculating the estimate. In other words, it is just assumed that illegal aliens receive the EITC.

Nevertheless, Rubenstein embraces the admittedly overstated estimate as if it were a hard fact declaring that “households headed by illegal Mexican immigrants are more than three times as likely to receive EITC than households headed by a native-born American.”

Trend Among States: Another offer of proof comes from Rubenstein’s presentation that “states with large illegal alien populations have above average fractions of federal tax returns claiming the [EITC].” He shows a chart illustrating the estimated percent of population of illegal immigrants and the percent of federal tax returns claiming the EITC. His only problem is that his own chart doesn’t support his assertion. California, the state with the largest illegal immigrant population, had 16.54% of federal tax returns claim the EITC. The national average was 17.01%. Arizona with the largest per capita illegal alien population came in at 17.49%, barely above the national average.

States with the highest percent of federal tax returns claiming the EITC are located in the South. States like Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and the Carolinas have significantly higher rates of EITC claims than other states.

In sum, Rubenstein fails to prove the claim that millions of illegal aliens receive the EITC or that illegal aliens receive the EITC at greater rates than legal immigrants and native households. The previously mentioned TIGTA report seems to suggest that some illegal aliens may be benefitting from the EITC. The Social Contract Press’ claims that millions of illegal aliens receive the EITC and at greater rates than legal immigrants and native born Americans is patently false.

The Worst Yet From Edwin Rubenstein

Edwin Rubenstein makes a habit out of producing economic analyses that are peppered with spin, faulty logic, unsupported economic theories and outright lies. But this one takes the cake. This is the most dishonest column he’s written to date.

His most recent column was to dispute a report by the Cato Institute that reported that immigration yields significant economic gains to Americans: http://tinyurl.com/yl7aem5 Here Edwin Rubenstein takes on the task of arguing that immigration is not good for the economy.

His first deceptive spin is found in his comments on the workforce.

An average 650,000 native-born dropouts were unemployed last year—10.1% of their labor force. That’s the good news. The bad news: the vast majority of uneducated natives—over 10 million—were too discouraged even to look for work. Labor force participation for them was a measly 38.4% compared to 61.3% for their foreign-born counterparts.

Rubenstein wants his readers to think that the labor participation rate among uneducated native born Americans is low because they’re too discouraged to look for work. This is not the case. There are several reasons why people are not included in the workforce. Yes, some are too discouraged to look for work. Others are homemakers raising children. And it should not surprise that many uneducated Americans are not in the workforce actively seeking work because they’re getting an education. This is the primary reason why the labor force participation rate is the lowest among uneducated people: school attendance. Rubenstein doesn’t want his readers to understand that. He tries to inflate the unemployment of the uneducated and undereducated and blame it on immigrants.

This type of deception is typical Rubenstein and is present in most of his writings. But later on Rubenstein goes off the deep end:

Stricter border controls would tend to create labor shortages. But eventually, market forces would kick in: wages would rise, more native-born Americans would enter the workforce, employers would invest in productivity enhancing equipment. That would be good for most workers, although profits might take a hit.

If the supply of illegal aliens were to suddenly dry up, employers would respond in two ways. First they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and safer working conditions. At the same time, employers would look for ways to substitute capital for these suddenly more expensive native workers. Labor scarcity stimulates capital investment.

Here Rubenstein makes two points. The first is that employers would offer higher wages if the supply of labor were reduced. This is true.

But what is the real effect on wages? George Borjas (a real economist by the way) estimated that the effect of immigration on high school dropouts’ wages is less than 5%. http://tinyurl.com/yg9y7gu So in the absence of immigrants the wages of high school dropouts would increase 5%. So the guy making $10 per hour would make $10.50 per hour theoretically. That’s chump change.

Studies have shown that merely graduating from high school can increase a worker’s earnings potential by as much as 40%. That’s real money. Anti-immigration fanatics are always whining about how immigration affects wages of the uneducated. If they really wanted to help these people, then they’d be encouraging them to get out of bed in the morning and go to school.

The second point that Rubenstein makes is that in the absence of workers, businesses will invest in capital. Rubenstein makes the claim that “labor scarcity stimulates capital investment”. This is what I was talking about when I said that this one takes the cake. This is the most ridiculous claim that Rubenstein has ever made.

The exact opposite is true. Capital compliments labor and labor compliments capital. Workers make equipment productive, and equipment makes workers productive. In layman’s terms, labor helps capital earn more money and vice versa. Thus, it’s not surprising that capital investment follows labor. The United States has an ample supply of labor. Well educated healthy human beings in the prime of the lives. For decades foreign interests have been investing in U.S. companies.

Take shovels. A ditch digger using his hands can only dig so fast. Providing him a shovel will increase his productivity. The shovel alone, without the worker, accomplishes nothing. The same is true with a Mauldin 1550C paver, a McCullough chainsaw or a meat packing plant. Businesses are going to build a meat packing plant near areas of labor or they’re going to encourage laborers to relocate near their investment.

Rubenstein provides some examples to support his contention:
Real world examples of capital replacing well-paid labor abound. Automated switches have replaced most telephone operators. Cars are increasingly produced by robots guided by few workers rather than labor-intensive assembly lines. Thanks to serve-yourself gas pumps, we have fewer attendants but more gas stations.

What Rubenstein ignores is that automated switches replaced some telephone operators because using automates switches was cheaper. I can guarantee you that if it were cheaper to hire workers to rout telephone calls, then PacBell would be hiring right now. The same thing with robots on assembly lines. They were implemented because they were cheaper than labor-intensive assembly lines.

Take the shovel example. The increased productivity that a shovel yields is more than the cost of the shovel. If one could hire a guy to dig a hole at less than the cost of a shovel, then I mean come one, why buy the shovel?

California agriculture was at the forefront of mechanization during the 1960 to 1975 period—roughly from the end of the Bracero program which allowed the importation of Mexican farm workers to the onset of mass illegal immigration. Today, the harvesting of fruit and vegetables in California's Central Valley is among the most labor-intensive activities in North America

The reason it’s a labor-intensive industry is because the businesses find it cheaper to use labor than to develop mechanization to do the work. It’s that simple.

Hick Columnist Writes Hit-Piece About NCLR

http://tinyurl.com/ygzzn4o

In a recent hit-piece, a hick columnist repeats some oft-made comments about the National Council of La Raza (“NCLR” or “La Raza”).

He claims that La Raza calls for 'Reconquista', and the establishment of 'Atzlan'. He claims that La Raza’s motto is “For the Race, everything, outside the Race…Nothing!” Then he compares La Raza to the KKK and suggests that if it were a white organization that its leaders would be jailed.

I’ve heard these accusations before. I didn’t pay much attention to them until now. The fact that these accusations are widely held among anti-Hispanic fanatics is just one more example of how a lie repeated over and over again is considered a fact. An angry internet columnist or talk radio host makes up a lie. It gets posted on the internet and then referenced in a series of blogs and posted on the websites of anti-Hispanic hate groups. Before long it’s accepted as truth.

NCLR has been the victim of so many of these rumors/lies that it has dedicated a webpage to addressing the falsities: http://www.nclr.org/content/viewpoints/detail/42500/

Does La Raza support a reconquista? No. NCLR has never supported this.

Is La Raza’s motto ““For the Race, everything, outside the Race…Nothing!”? No. This statement is not and has never been the motto of NCLR.

Can “La Raza” be translated as “The Race”? While it is true that one meaning of “raza” in Spanish is indeed “race,” in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings. As noted in several online dictionaries, “La Raza” means “the people” or “the community.” Translating “La Raza” as “the race” is not only inaccurate,it is factually incorrect. “Hispanic” is not a race. Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.

What about the KKK? Isn’t a group that a group that works for Hispanics just like the KKK which was a group that worked for white people? The KKK is notorious for oppressing non-whites by intimidation, promotion of discriminatory laws and even murder. NCLR doesn’t seek to take rights or benefits from any other group, and it doesn’t seek to oppress or murder people of other ethnic groups.

The fact is that the truth doesn’t matter to many anti-Hispanic fanatics.

Illegal Aliens at Fault for the Current Recession

A lot of finger-pointing is going on with respect to the current recession. Democrats are screaming that Republican George W. Bush caused it. Republicans are screaming that it was caused by Democrats or that Democrat Obama is making it worse. I hope that somewhere economists are objectively looking at the facts to find the real causes so that future generations can learn from our mistakes.

Par for the course, anti-immigration fanatics are blaming illegal aliens for the cause of the current recession. The latest attempt is by William Campenni, an unemployed engineer, who is angry at illegal aliens for his plight: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33821

Campenni concedes that other factors contributed to the collapse of the credit markets including low interest, lowered standards, securitized mortgages, Democrats, the Community Reinvestment Act and Alan Greenspan. But this financial guru informs his readers that these factors “could not have brought about a collapse of the magnitude that ensued.” No, what caused the mortgage meltdown were banks offering mortgages to illegal aliens.

Campenni claims that few sub-prime mortgages went to poor people. Instead most sub-prime mortgages that went into foreclosure went to illegal aliens, those who intended to exploit illegal aliens and minorities who lost their jobs to illegal aliens. He bases this claim on the fact that a lot of foreclosures were in areas that are believed to have large concentrations of illegal aliens (in other words, areas with high concentrations of Hispanic people).

Campenni continues his argument that therefore illegal aliens are responsible for the current recession because the mortgage meltdown was the event that got the ball rolling. Even the defaulted prime mortgages are the fault of illegal aliens because those homeowners wouldn’t have lost their jobs but for the defaulting loans of illegal aliens.

First of all, the loans to illegal aliens who used an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (“ITIN”) rather than a Social Security Number were not no-document or low-document loans. These loans were subject to more scrutiny than other sub-prime loans, and borrowers were required to show that they were creditworthy and that they paid taxes.

But the actual facts are hard to come by. No actual data has been kept on the rate of foreclosure of loans to illegal aliens. However, two journalists over the past two years have independently tried to find out.

The first was a Wall Street Journal article from October 2007: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119188674981652816.html?apl=y&r=332625 The second was a Los Angeles Times article from October 2008: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/06/local/me-immighome6

These journalists made inquiries of lenders, the Hispanic National Mortgage Association and real estate professionals. All sources were unanimous in reporting that loans to illegal aliens had a noticeably lower foreclosure rate than other mortgages.

One response to this would be that those articles are outdated. The most recent is a year old. The rate of foreclosure for those mortgages could have increased. The foreclosure rate certainly could have increased over the past year. We don’t know because data is not collected for those types of loans.

Another response might be that those articles are not based on reliable statistical data that the journalists merely made inquiries. Unfortunately we don’t have accurate statistical data on this issue. William Campenni bases his assumptions on the fact that a lot of foreclosures were in areas where a lot of spicks live.

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.”

UnFAIR Deception

FAIR president Dan Stein has a website “Stein Report” that has been dispersing anti-immigrant hate and skewed statistics for years. This one really caught my eye today.

http://www.steinreport.com/archives/012757.html

Stein Report claims that an LA Times article spills the truth [sic] about illegal immigration and crime.

Studies from the early 20th century though today have almost unanimously found that immigrants in the U.S. have a lower crime rate than natives. The anti-immigrant fanatics have claimed that the studies lump legal and illegal immigrants together and that if data were available for illegal immigrants only it would surely show that illegal immigrants have a higher rate of crime than other groups. Nevertheless, no one has been able to come up with any data to prove this assumption.

Stein found a comment in the L.A. Times that he is trying to pass off as evidence that illegal immigrants have an unusually high inclination to commit crimes.

“Nationwide, about 12% of all inmates checked were here illegally and had prior criminal convictions.”

Stein flunky Jack Martin writes, “The significance of that statistic is that it demonstrates the disproportionate involvement of illegal and deportable aliens in crime.”

“… illegal aliens …appear to be jailed about three times their share of the population.”

JACKPOT!

Is it true? Could it be? Did they finally come up with proof that illegal aliens have a higher propensity to commit crimes?

Not necessarily.

The article was about a new program implemented by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) called Secure Communities. Secure Communities is a process for ICE to determine if an individual in local custody is a potentially removable criminal alien. The program checks the immigration status of inmates in local jails.

According to the Secure Communities website, ICE deploying the program across the nation beginning by focusing on sites that represent the highest concentrations of the most dangerous criminal aliens. The map below shows where the program is currently deployed and where they intend to expand it in the coming years.

http://www.ice.gov/secure_communities/deployment/

As one would expect, ICE is beginning this program in localities believed to have high concentrations of illegal aliens. Jurisdictions like Helena, Montana and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with low populations of immigrants, are not included.

So Stein Report takes crime data collected in communities that have high concentrations of illegal aliens and compares it to the percentage of illegal aliens nationwide and concludes that the data support the contention that illegal aliens have a higher propensity to commit crime.

The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Virginians

In June 2009 the Federation for American Immigration Reform (“FAIR”) released a report that purports to present an estimate of the cost of illegal immigration to the state and local governments of the Commonwealth of Virginia. FAIR has put out these types of reports in the past, and I’ve never paid much attention to them.

FAIR is not an economic think tank, and it’s publications are not scrutinized by other economists. In contrast, college professors and professional think tank organizations produce serious economic papers which are subject to review and criticism by peers and other professionals. If these people produce reports that have blatant factual misstatements or outrageous assumptions, then they will lose their credibility in their profession. What FAIR produces will be embraced by the anti-immigrant community, and its validity won’t be scrutinized by any professional. For that reason I haven’t paid much attention to reports generated by FAIR.

But lately FAIR has been producing reports for various states claiming outrageous costs to the states as a result of illegal immigration. So for that reason I decided to look at one of the reports. As I expected, it’s outrageous. Some assumptions conflict with basic economic principles that have been proven centuries ago. Other assumptions show either blatant ignorance of Federal and State tax laws or outright deception (I don’t know which would be worse).

The report estimates that illegal immigrants cost the state $1.7 billion per year. Most of this ($1.56 billion) is a result of providing K-12 education for the children of illegal immigrants. The rest is for health care and incarceration.

What the calculation does not consider are the contributions made by illegal aliens in the form of goods and services produced and taxes paid. FAIR assumes that whatever work currently done by illegal immigrants would be done by legal workers if the illegal workers were not available. This is a false assumption that the number of jobs are stagnant, that adding new workers automatically creates unemployment. This was proven false centuries ago. The number of jobs is not a fixed number. The workforce in the United States has doubled in the past 50 years, yet the rate of unemployment has not increased as a result. Workers are also consumers. As the number of workers increases, the number of consumers also increases. The new workers added to an economy also purchase boots, clothes, food, housing, transportation, furniture and recreation. So FAIR’s assumption that there would be no change in economic output or tax revenue in the absence of illegal workers is false.

In calculating the cost of illegal immigration, the report makes some assumptions. First of all, it includes many legal immigrants in the illegal population. Northern Virginia includes a large population from Central America. Temporary Protected Status was extended to illegal aliens from several countries in Central America as a result of a hurricane and an earthquake. FAIR includes these individuals as “illegal” even though they are legally permitted to reside and work in the United States. FAIR also includes in the calculation children of illegal aliens who were born in the United States (i.e. United States citizens).

FAIR estimates that the cost of education as a result of illegal immigration is $1.56 billion per year. Of this figure $1.1 billion is for educating American citizens who have illegal immigrant parents. Only $456 million is with respect to actual illegal alien children.

Most children in school are members of young families. The parents are not in their peak earning years. Even those parents that do have higher incomes don’t pay enough in taxes to cover the costs of educating their children. The cost of education in the United States is spread out over a lifetime. A young family will have children in school meanwhile paying little in real estate taxes which fund most public schools. The cost to the school district almost always exceeds the amounts paid in taxes by the students’ families. However, the families and the students after graduation will be paying taxes will be paying taxes for decades. The end result is that the students’ families more than pay for the K-12 education of the children.

My neighbor is a flight attendant. She has two children in school. The estimated cost of their education is somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 per year based on estimates of the local school district. My neighbor pays probably about $3,000 per year in real estate taxes. Five years from now both those children will have graduated. However, my neighbor and her children will continue paying taxes for decades to come.

FAIR’s calculation only includes the snapshot. It doesn’t include the fact that today’s illegal immigrants and their children will be working and paying taxes for decades after their children have graduated. Using FAIR’s methodology, one would conclude that all families with school age children are a drain on society. Over the long run, that’s not true.

Economists consider education as an investment. The children are educated, and as a result, have higher incomes that lead to them paying higher taxes in the future. The net result is increased tax revenues over the long term. Studies have found that merely obtaining a high school diploma can increase one’s earnings potential by 40%.

Taxes: FAIR also makes some false assumptions when calculating taxes paid by illegal immigrants. As noted above, FAIR assumes that any taxes paid by illegal immigrants would have otherwise been paid by legal workers because any jobs held by illegal immigrants would be held by legal workers in the absence of illegal workers. Centuries of studies have proven that this assumption is false.

FAIR also claims that illegal aliens are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC is a credit for Federal tax purposes and does not affect state taxes. Furthermore, illegal aliens are NOT entitled to the EITC. IRS Publication 596 clearly states that in order to be eligible for the EITC, the filer must have a valid SSN and must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien for the entire year. If filing jointly, then the spouse must have a valid SSN. Publication 596 is clear that persons using the ITIN (“Individual Taxpayer Identification Number”) are not eligible to receive the EITC.

As a result of the false assumptions used by FAIR, the cost of illegal immigrants to Virginia is vastly overstated. In just a few minutes of review, I was able to identify several material errors in assumptions that, conveniently for FAIR, resulted in the estimate to be grossly overstated. It is my contention that FAIR intentionally used false assumptions to create the impression that the impact of illegal immigrants is greater than it actually is.

Yet Another Deceptive Report From Edwin Rubenstein

A new report was released by Edwin Rubenstein on April 14, 2009. The report, entitled “The Earned Income Tax Credit and Illegal Immigration”, purports to document how illegal immigrants receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (“EITC”).

On May 13, 2004, Vdare.com published a short article by Rubenstein on the subject of the EITC and illegal immigrants. This new 51 page report contains no new data. It’s just embellished to make it appear to be based on an actual academic study of actual facts and data.

In his 2004 article, Rubenstein claimed that 39% of illegal immigrant households receive the ETIC making it the most compelling reason for illegal aliens to file tax returns. In the 2004 article Rubenstein conveniently left out the fact that illegal aliens are not entitled to the EITC regardless of their children’s immigration status or their spouse’s immigration status. But Rubenstein doesn’t let actual facts stop him from spreading his propaganda.

In his latest report, Rubenstein seems to be unsure whether or not he thinks illegal aliens may be entitled to receive the EITC. On page 7, he admits that the EITC is only available to people with valid Social Security numbers, i.e. not illegal aliens. He claims that illegal aliens are able to obtain money through the EITC by using counterfeit Social Security cards, identity theft and other scams. But he writes on page 12 that the Internal Revenue Code does not prohibit illegal aliens from receiving the EITC if they meet the eligibility requirements.

One of the requirements of obtaining the EITC that the filer be a U.S. citizen or resident alien for the entire year, or a nonresident alien married to a U.S. citizen or resident alien and filing a joint return. An illegal alien by definition cannot meet any of these requirements. So Rubenstein claiming that illegal aliens can receive the EITC if they meet the eligibility requirements is either a bold faced lie or a result of patent ignorance.

IRS Publication 596 clearly states that in order to be eligible for the EITC, the filer must have a valid SSN and must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien for the entire year. If filing jointly, then the spouse must have a valid SSN. Publication 596 is clear that persons using the ITIN (“Individual Taxpayer Identification Number”) are not eligible to receive the EITC.

On page 24, Rubenstein goes on to claim that nearly 40% of households headed by illegals from Mexico are eligible for EITC. In other words, Rubenstein lied. Illegal aliens cannot legally get the EITC under any circumstance.

Rubenstein claims that a disproportionate share of illegal alien households receive the EITC using “bogus” SSNs to get the EITC. He explains:

“Most illegal aliens have fraudulent Social Security cards. Their favorite target: young children. Social Security Numbers assigned to infants are stolen from medical paperwork and used to file returns. The fraud can go undetected for years – until the child looks for a job as a teenager.”

[Note: Rubenstein’s footnote to support this claim is a url to a CNN transcript. The url comes up “Page Not Found”.]

On page 14, Rubenstein presents a graph showing the percent of illegal aliens from Mexico that used various means-tested programs in 2000. The information came from a report issued by the Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”) in 2001. The data that CIS used did not distinguish illegal Mexican immigrants from illegal Mexican immigrants. Instead, CIS estimated the number of illegal Mexican aliens based on year of entry, age, educational attainment, welfare use, and citizenship of spouse. In other words, as usual for a Rubenstein and CIS report, the information reported about illegal aliens is based on absolutely no actual data or evidence, only conjecture.

Based on this, Rubenstein concludes that households headed by illegal Mexican immigrants are more than three times as likely to receive EITC as households headed by native-born Americans.

Most of Rubenstein’s report is filled with mostly irrelevant information. He cites some reports from the General Accountability Office (f.k.a. General Accounting Office) estimating a considerable amount of fraud with respect to the EITC. It includes a diatribe about how the EITC constitutes taxing the rich and giving a handout to the poor.

What really shows the degree of Rubenstein’s lunacy is his claims of all the evils that the EITC causes. One is population growth: people decide to have children so they can get a couple thousand dollars through the EITC. EITC also depresses wages for low-skilled workers. And EITC, along with immigration, is responsible for the income gap between rich and poor in the U.S.

But Rubenstein takes the cake when he suggests that the EITC is responsible for the current credit crisis and economic downturn. It’s funny to see him explain it. You see, some people who receive the EITC get Refund Anticipation Loans (“RAF”s). These RAFs are high interest, high fee loans that enable people to get their hands on their tax refunds a little sooner. According to Rubenstein, the widespread availability of RALs made poor borrowers easy marks for sub-prime mortgage “hucksters”. The resulting defaults have pushed the entire economy to the brink of collapse. He doesn’t really explain exactly how RAFs have caused this, but then again, Rubenstein rarely presents facts to support his claims.

To summarize, Rubenstein’s report is based on a lie and an estimated, based on no facts or data, from 2001 CIS report mixed with a whole lot of B.S. That’s it.

That leads one to question how he gets away with this or why he would take the time to write up such a juvenile document. The real purpose of the report is for use as a citation. People can now cite this report in blogs, columns and debates. “According to a comprehensive study by Edwin S. Rubenstein, 39% of illegal immigrants obtain the Earned Income Tax Credit.” Most people won’t even read this report past the first couple of pages. Even fewer will actually inquire as to its validity. But like the sham CIS reports, it can now be used as a source when the propaganda is spread