Obama Fought The Law..

[GMDino]

(05-27-2015, 04:48 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: There is..... Choose either open borders or a welfare state.   You can't have both... So either cut benefits or secure the border.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Do-undocumented-immigrants-really-exploit-welfare-295925551.html

Quote:Do undocumented immigrants really exploit welfare?

Pennsylvania Senate Bill 9, a proposed law that the state Senate summarizes as requiring “identification of lawful presence in the United States as a prerequisite to the receipt of public benefits.” That is to say: It insists upon checking that people applying for welfare are legal residents, not undocumented immigrants.

Seems like common sense, doesn’t it? We want to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of tax dollars. And while that’s a particularly familiar refrain from Republican politicians, SB 9 is a bipartisan measure: A majority of the Democrats in the state Senate have signed on, too. After all, nobody likes freeloaders, right? The notion that people are coming into the United States outside of the legal immigration process, not paying taxes, and still receiving public benefits is hard to stomach.

I’d certainly be banging my fist in favor of that bill, if the problem it addresses were actually real. That’s the sticky part, though: Undocumented immigrants receiving welfare benefits they haven’t paid for sounds like a real problem.

But it’s not.

That’s been hard for me to wrap my head around. Before I researched SB 9, I was under the misapprehension that undocumented immigrants all get paid in cash under the table and, thus, don’t pay any taxes.

Wrong. As the saying goes: That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.

Noncitizens don’t have Social Security numbers, but lots of noncitizens do earn United States income: foreign investors, for instance, as well as legal resident aliens. And the IRS gets to tax that income. Ever since 1996, the IRS has provided numbers called ITINs—individual taxpayer identification numbers—to noncitizens who apply for them. And the IRS has nothing to do with enforcing immigration, so millions of undocumented immigrants—who want to pay taxes honestly because they’re hoping someday they’ll be allowed to become citizens—have been assigned those numbers through their employers.

That’s the first thing to remember: The people who are so often dehumanized as “illegals” do, in fact, pay income tax in large numbers.
Here’s the second thing: You already have to present some form of identification before you can qualify for welfare benefits, such as food stamps. You can show a valid state-issued photo ID, but since some people don’t have one—particularly if they’re elderly or very poor—the state is able to accept alternate identification via some combination of birth certificate, Social Security card, utility bills, local library card, etc. Senate Bill 9 would do away with those alternatives and insist on only accepting state-issued ID, despite the fact that there are actual U.S. citizens without one.
In other words: It’s just like the voter-ID laws that swept the country earlier this decade, but for food stamps instead of voting.
And just like those voter-ID laws, it’s a solution for a problem that only exists as a rhetorical talking point, not as an actual reality.
The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary, Stephen Goss, explained in November to the Daily Beast: “Unauthorized immigrants contribute positively to the financing of Social Security not only in terms of their own contributions, but in the succeeding generations when they have children on our soil that are citizens from day one.”

Currently, the Social Security Administration estimates that undocumented immigrants pay $15 billion per year into the system—“with no intention of ever collecting benefits,” Goss told CNN. The Congressional Budget Office agrees, saying that whatever impact undocumented immigrants have on welfare fraud is “modest” at best.

So the vast majority of undocumented immigrants pay taxes like good Americans, yet don’t ever pull any benefits out. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make in order to live in this country.

When you put it that way, doesn’t it seems bizarre and nasty that politicians are constantly picking on them?

One of Senate Bill 9’s sponsors, state Sen. Pat Stefano (R-Fayette), points out that Pennsylvania has, in fact, been cited for paying out benefits to undocumented immigrants. In January, the state agreed to pay the federal government $48.8 million to settle a dispute over having paid improper welfare benefits between 2004 and 2010.

Of course, that one-time fine covering seven years’ worth of violations is less than one-tenth of one percent—less than one thousandth—of Pennsylvania’s annual budget which, this year alone, is expected to be about $80 billion. And, structurally speaking, isn’t that what the federal government is supposed to do—enforce federal law? So why does the state need to spend millions of new enforcement dollars via SB 9 to add another layer of bureaucracy?

Stefano’s chief of staff, Benjamen Wren, tells PW that while “federal law already dictates who is and is not eligible to receive certain public benefits, this legislation ensures that Pennsylvania allocates these benefits in accordance with pre-existing federal laws governing the benefit programs our state administers.”

But Pennsylvania already has requirements that comply with federal law. It’s just that, in a system so large, you can’t eliminate every single mistake.

Wren is quick to add that SB 9 “provides compassionate exceptions to its tough restrictions”—that is, it threatens jail time only to adults, not minors, who violate the law. In addition, even undocumented kids are allowed to get measles vaccinations and go to school. Oh, and the bill would exempt seniors who are Medicare-eligible, as well as disabled Pennsylvanians who are receiving SSI or SSDI. Also, Wren says, SB 9 would “allow every person in Pennsylvania access to emergency medical care, necessary immunizations, and disaster relief.”
So, to recap, this bill exempts a whole lot of people who already receive benefits, it exempts children, it reiterates a federal law that’s already been around for nearly 20 years—and it’s got immigrant advocacy organizations fuming. (“The system is already built to deny undocumented immigrants benefits,” says Erika Almiron, executive director of the Philadelphia-based group Juntos.)

What’s the real deal, then? Why do we need this bill?

Well, it’s simple, really. The only way SB 9 makes sense is if you want to score cheap political points by flexing your muscles, bully-style, at an easily maligned group in America—undocumented immigrants—that isn’t empowered to stand up for itself.

I had to wonder: Since Sen. Stefano seems so concerned with that fine Pennsylvania had to pay the feds—so committed to our fiscal responsibility—does he also favor closing other budgetary loopholes? For instance: Pennsylvania is the only state with fracking that doesn’t impose a severance tax on the oil and gas companies. But no: The senator doesn’t support any additional taxes on fracking, though every other state does it, and though it’s been estimated that taxing natural gas and oil extraction could bring $1 billion per year into the state’s coffers.

Then again, poor, disenfranchised, non-English-speaking minority communities don’t have slick lobbyists and don’t make large campaign contributions.

Read more: http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Do-undocumented-immigrants-really-exploit-welfare-295925551.html#ixzz3bKoaJIH8