I must have missed this. And no, I doubt it's the majority of tax dollars, but it's an amount that we can quantify and should NOT be paying.

I agree with all said above, Any Pro-illegal is aiding and abetting, in my opinion. The Government needs to get Americans working and the illegal group is not helping at all, It's making things worse

Here's what I would do. Don't bash me for thinking this way :lol:.

Why not give the Illegal Immigrants some sort of Social Security Number. I know many Brasilians who uses such a number for Taxes Purposes and they do pay their taxes. That way, the so called Illegal Immigrants can pay their taxes as well.

Now I'll add some more.

America as I know, was founded by Illegal Immigrants as well. So was Brasil. Non asked the Native people permission to do any of the things they did. Now, what drives an Immigrant to the USA? Lets see, I own a company and have 2 potential employee applying for a job. Employee A is an American who just graduated H.S. and is looking for a career and Employee B is an Immigrant who also just graduated H.S. and is also looking for a career. Employee A wants $45,000 a year, but Employee B want $25,000 a year for the same job. Who would I hire, I would hire Employee B for the simple fact that he will save me $20,000 a year plus he speaks a second language.

Man good thing I'm a one person show or I would get flamed for sure :lol:. If big Corp. (Specially in constructions) stop getting Illegal Immigrants to work for them, this problem would be a little less than what it is right now. I know a lot of Americans that have baby sitters and house cleaners that are Illegal Immigrants, but as the family bonds with the Illegal Immigrants they are offered a sponsorship to get their Green Card so they can now pay their taxes. More people paying taxes, more money for the Country and then what? How will the Country use that money? Will they bail out more banks, car manufacturers, mortgage companies, insurance companies and so forth? How many of you small business owner's have gone to one of the bail out banks to get a loan? How many of you got that loan?

Brian and anyone else here, Brasil is a pretty good place to retire to :lol:.

One thing that can be said about the Californian economy and Mexicans, is that they are the economy, without them, the state would not have been what it is today... or what it USED to be before almost 2 years ago. They are willing to do the physical work where the common Caucasian won't. (Or perhaps they can't for money reasons?)

One thing I noticed before I moved away from the city is that the amount of Philippine workers were coming in and stealing our jobs, or rather, the employers were firing the local and get a boat load of cheap workers, what a load of shit. When I first moved to the city I got a job working for a trailer manufacturing outfit for oil sands in Alberta, anyways they hired 3 locals, I was one, we worked our asses of for 2 weeks and then for no reason fired us, saying we are not going to 'work out' here. We were the only locals working there if you can believe it, the rest were Philippine and Mexican Visa workers. Then we found out they we hiring more foreigners in a mixture of 30 Philippine and Mexican workers for 1 year work Visa's. I was infuriated about that for the longest time. I know we worked our butts off and did quality work, not good enough.... not good enough for the bottom line is what it was! They paid them 30% less than what we got paid.

Anyways, I hope more states follow suit with Arizona on this, as well as the Healthcare Bill crap. I am Canadian, but I know it's only a matter of time that it affects us.

What happened to the government serving us, not the other way around. If you got rid of the Feds, any given country would be far better off, and would be able to flourish, with no artificial economy either.

Here's another thing I noticed a lot. Every time I go to the Super Market, I don't see the Latinos with Food Stamps. They pay for the things they buy with Cash. I do see more and more Americans using it though (Blacks and Whites). Sorry to bring races to this, but I'm not racial since I'm a mixture of Native Brasilian Indians, African and Portuguese and my daughter is half Brasilian/half Black. So the thing with Food Stamps and Medicare/Medicaid might not be accurate. From what I know one has to provide their income to get such benefits, so I don't know how a person who can't show their income can receive the above mentioned. It would be nice to see what would happen if all the Illegal Immigrants went back. I know many Brasilians are going back to Brasil (Illegal or not). Basically they are finding harder to live here in the USA and Brasil needs people who knows how to speak English.

One other thing I forgot to mention. I also think a primary language should be used always. Example: USA's primary language is English so every thing should be in English. Brasil's primary language is Portuguese so every thing should be in Portuguese. That should slow down or stop Illegal Immigrants from going to a country. The ID thing is nice. Get pulled over and one doesn't have the proper ID, they should require their country's embassy to pay for the person to go back to their country.

Agreed. Any dollars is too much. I was directing to the folks who say they should leave because too much taxes etc etc. I know it's not perfect here, but I feel it's the best country in the world by far. If we could only figure out how to use/control our money better. (If I could only figure that myself).
As for amnesty, I'm an immigrant myself and I just hate the fact that illegals are jumping the line so to speak. That's one of the reason I think amnesty is a bad idea. It rewards the rule breakers.

we have federal anti illegal immigration laws and AZ is just trying to enforce them because of Phoenix being an amnesty city

Good point & one I was going to raise also

The US economy does to an extent survive on minimum wage earners, without the low min wage the cost of goods & services would rise proportionate to the min wage. Middle America's standard of living would erode very quickly if it were raised significantly

It's a catch 22 for the US economy, a situation that appears to encourage illegals to enter because they are almost guaranteed a job that will allow them to fly under the radar

Another thing mentioned is that they(illegals) steal jobs. How exactly does one go about stealing a job? It's always the employer's prerogative who they hire regardless of the excuses they may come up with. I think the difficult thing is trying to figure if illegal labor is an overall plus or a minus. Would the extra cost associated with products for legal labor compensate for the savings on welfare programs?

Well I don't know about food cost rising as much as a guy would first think, because as most food processors know, the cost of food is not from the cost of labor of say picking fruits and veggies, but in transportation, packaging, more transportation, processed, transported again to the super market, etc. For any food product that is procesed a bit and packed/bottled, the actual price of the food is a fraction of the end products price. We are literally eating oil. That is why I have a 100 mile diet, well majority of my food, comes from well within 100 miles from where I live, mostly within 15 miles, especially in summer. Did you guys know that 100 years ago there was roughly 1 calorie of energy to get 10 calories from our food? TODAY, that figure has reversed, to 10 calories in, 1 calorie out, where is it coming from? Oil. That's a 100 folder increase in entropy.

Rabosi, exactly, in the end I think it is costing our countries MORE hiring abroad than to hire locals. For sure.

The minimum wage worker thing doesn't fly. Why, because for minimum wage to apply you have to be working under legal status. Illegals will work for less than federal minimum wage.

Again, the issue is with illegal immigrants, regardless of where they are from.

Also, going back in History to the natives and what happened is pointless at this juncture. We are in the here and now dealing with the hear and now. Unless someone has a time machine I don't know about, going back and changing all of that is pointless to talk about.

I am sorry but regardless of what anyone feels the tax paying citizens of a country should be able to decide who can come and go in their country regardless.

You also cannot compare a tax paying business person who gets tax breaks to someone who pays no taxes yet get's subsidies and money from the government. It is in no shape or form the same.

I am also for eliminating the welfare system completely. We have unemployment which is paid into by employees. If you lose your job you should be able to draw unemployment benefits (tax free, I will never understand how a tax subsidy can be taxed again) for up to 6 months and that is it.

I am tired of unrestricted and uncontrolled money flowing out the door in all directions but the focus of this thread is illegal immigration.

You are correct. But if you took the migrant workers out of the picture, now what happens to the cost of crop maintenance (weed picking, etc), and crop picking. It goes up significantly IMHO, as you wont get Joe Shmo to put down his latte' to go out and do it with out spending some bucks on labor, or expensive machinery to do it.

Can you believe they are extending benenfits for up to 99 weeks now?? Un-freakin'-believable. You cant tell me a person can't get some kind of employment in that kind of time. Yeah, you might have to ditch that home in burbs, but bad things happen....our govt is spending more on putting diapers on all the babies in this country than they are governing.

Who works in the minimum wage bracket? I'll bet it's not white middle America

Therefore it matters little whether an illegal is paying taxes or not, it matters whether there is an entry point within the wage structure that allows an illegal to work. The lower the min wage, the greater the opportunity for an illegal...who else would do the work that they do

If for example you were to have a higher minimum wage, which narrows the differential between min wage & average wage. This would isolate the illegals to a degree, make them easier to identify (find your closest sweat shop), round up & deport. The trade off is a lesser standard of living for the lower middle class...