Undocumented workers and racism

Today I was deleted from the friends lists of an aunt and uncle of mine. This is not a post to complain about petty facebook or family politics. No, this is a post to lay out some facts about racist attitudes that are all too common in the US today.

My aunt posted a comment about undocumented workers and how we should close off our borders because they are taking jobs away from Americans, not paying taxes, and receiving benefits paid for by tax payer money. Lets take a look at these claims.

First of all there are approximately 14 million "officially" unemployed people in the US but this doesn't include those who have been unemployed for so long that they have stopped receiving unemployment benefits or those who are dramatically under employed, working part time jobs at very low wages while they are looking for full time employment. If we add those numbers in we reach a figure closer to 31 million. There are 11.2 million illegal immigrants, from all nations, in the United States. So, if we assume that everyone of those illegal immigrants has a job, which would be a false assumption, and we deported all of them tomorrow we would still have a huge unemployment problem. Furthermore many illegal aliens that do find employment in the US wind up working as migrant farm workers. These are jobs that have been filled by immigrants for years and years, why? Because Americans don't want these jobs. But lets assume that all of the undocumented migrant workers left tomorrow and US citizens decided to fill those positions. US citizens would probably demand higher wages for the same work so we can count on food prices going up. If we stop buying the food that would have been picked by the undocumented workers because of the price increases then the production of that food will simply move to another country where labor is cheaper. This of course will cause some US farms to close and this of course will cost jobs in the US. So, we have an unemployment problem in this country that isn't going to be fixed by shutting down our borders and if we did it could cause further economic issues because of a lack of cheap labor. Throw that myth out the window.

Illegal aliens are often accused of not paying taxes and I'm not sure how people think this happens. Have you ever bought something at a store and been asked to prove that you are a legal resident of the US and told that if you aren't you don't have to pay sales tax? Do you think undocumented workers get special pay checks that don't have taxes taken out of them? In fact a recent study showed that illegal immigrants paid over $11 billion in taxes in the US last year. So while illegals pay billions and we get angry at them major corporations pay nothing and no one wants to kick them out of the country.

As far as receiving benefits go, I am again confused as to how people come up with this idea. Illegal immigrants are fully aware that they are in the US illegally and they want as little contact with the federal and state governments as they can manage. Very few government provided benefits are available to illegal immigrants, for example illegals are ineligible for food stamps unless at least one member of the household is a US citizen but even if they can over come this barrier many wouldn't apply for fear of being discovered and deported. While illegal immigrants are able to get emergency medical care, no one should be asked to prove their immigration status before receiving medical treatment to save their lives, they aren't eligible for medicare or social security even though they may pay considerable amounts into both systems. In fact, far from costing our country money study after study have shown the net positive impact illegal immigrants have on our economy and some have even claimed ending illegal immigration would severely damage our economy.

So illegal immigrants aren't the reason so many Americans are out of work right now, they are paying taxes, and they aren't costing us tons of money by collecting government benefits, in fact they are actually helping our economy. Surely though they must be filling up our prisons? Well no. Studies have shown that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than us natural born citizens. So if they aren't causing all of these problems that we are blaming them for why do so many people seem to hate illegal immigrants?

When you say the words "illegal immigrants" I would be willing to bet money that many, if not most people immediately have an image of a Latino person pop into their head. This is pure and simple racism. There are over 42 million Latinos in the US but there are only 11.2 million illegals here. Statistically this means that the vast majority of Latinos that you might come in contact with every day are not here illegally and yet I know too many people who assume every Latino they see is undocumented. They see a Latino working at a restaurant and automatically think they took that job from an "American". They see a Latino waiting in line for food stamps and automatically assume they are an illegal and taking advantage of the system. They see a Latino attending college and automatically assume that person shouldn't be there. This is nothing more than racism and we need to realize that we may have more of a race problem than we have an immigration problem.

In the 1930's Hitler accused the Jews of being responsible for Germany's economic problems. He said that Jews were taking jobs that should be going to "Germans". He said that the Jews were destroying German society. This was wrong then, and it is wrong when it happens in this country as well. My aunt and uncle may not want to talk to me now, but if anyone expects me to sit back and listen to their racist comments without speaking up they are sadly mistaken.