ShareThisOh boy, did The Los Angeles Times pull a doozy.
On Feb. 2 it carried an innocuous looking screed by Ira Mehlman. In it he excoriated, without naming it, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a group of 26 top Latino organizations. More than three months ago, the group put immigration at the top of its reform priorities to press on the new Obama administration.
Mehlman thought the group should have instead used the priorities from a Pew Hispanic Center study based on public-opinion polling.
There is no confusing the 26 groups making up the NHLA. They have a long history advising presidential candidates and administrations. John Trasvina, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, heads the group.
The Pew Hispanic Center, in Washington, D.C., produces research but takes no position nor makes recommendations based on its findings.
And Ira Mehlman is simply listed as the Los Angeles office media director of the Federation for Immigration Reform, or FAIR.
For those who don't know, FAIR was founded by and is "part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site, announcing the release of a new report, "The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance."
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a reputable organization that has been fighting and exposing extremist groups since the civil rights struggle.
FAIR is hardly in the same category, nor is it a reliable (forget sensible) source to tell the Latino community what's best for it.
FAIR's ludicrous viewpoint is its business. But regurgitating old and settled issues, criticism and bitter discussion to stimulate controversy over a closed matter in a public forum is something to ponder.
Clearly we need to turn a new page in discussing immigration. It is self-evident from a study, released in January, by The Americas Majority Foundation. It definitively shows that in 90 competitive House races of 2008, where immigration was used as an issue, candidates with less restrictive positions did much better than those who favored more restrictive ways. "Immigration was a wedge issue benefiting the Democratic Party, but not the G.O.P.," the report said.
So the public has already settled the matter, and all that remains to be done is to start coming up with perspective and good proposals about what to do next.
The other guys lost. We don't have to replay their exaggerations and lies, unless of course newspaper editors never read their own papers.
That's why there's no need to regress back to the hours following the election more than three months ago to grouse about the people's choice. It's almost like arguing that John McCain really did win the election.
No he didn't. And FAIR's perspective lost decisively. Period.
There is a public need to provide a forum for those who do have something to offer. For starters, those who are interested in living in the future instead of trying to prevent it from happening would benefit from looking at "Latino Metropolis," a book by professors Víctor Valle and Rodolfo Torres. It helps put some of the history of migration into perspective. It implies how grand opportunities are forming and how global cities connect into new cross-border networks.
Visionaries are needed. That's the help-wanted sign some newspapers, Web sites and think tanks should put on their front windows. Tell the losers with their hearts of darkness they need not apply and to just keep on walking by.
Jose de la Isla, author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power," writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3(at)yahoo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
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Undocumented Immigrants pay MORE TAXES than you Think!
Undocumented immigrants paying more taxes than you think
Eight million Undocumented immigrants pay Social Security, Medicare and income taxes. Denying public services to people who pay their taxes is an affront to America’s bedrock belief in fairness. But many “pull-up-the-drawbridge” politicians want to do just that when it comes to illegal immigrants.
The fact that Undocumented immigrants pay taxes at all will come as news to many Americans. A stunning two thirds of Undocumented immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes.
Yet, nativists like Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have popularized the notion that illegal aliens are a colossal drain on the nation’s hospitals, schools and welfare programs — consuming services that they don’t pay for.
In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified Undocumented immigrants from nearly all means tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization.
The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education. Nevertheless, Tancredo and his ilk pushed a bill through the House criminalizing all aid to illegal aliens — even private acts of charity by priests, nurses and social workers.
Potentially, any soup kitchen that offers so much as a free lunch to an illegal could face up to five years in prison and seizure of assets. The Senate bill that recently collapsed would have tempered these draconian measures against private aid.
But no one — Democrat or Republican — seems to oppose the idea of withholding public services. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law that requires everyone who gets Medicaid — the government-funded health care program for the poor — to offer proof of U.S. citizenship so we can avoid “theft of these benefits by illegal aliens,” as Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., puts it. But, immigrants aren’t flocking to the United States to mooch off the government.
According to a study by the Urban Institute, the 1996 welfare reform effort dramatically reduced the use of welfare by undocumented immigrant households, exactly as intended. And another vital thing happened in 1996: the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don’t have Social Security numbers to file taxes.
One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS’ scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers.
No doubt they hope that this will one day help them acquire legal status — a plaintive expression of their desire to play by the rules and come out of the shadows. What’s more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks.
Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they’ll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers — that the Social Security administration stashes in the “earnings suspense file” — added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus.
The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year. Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children.
The non-partisan National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled immigrant families — most of whom are illegal — are factored in, they contribute on average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume. Yes, many illegal migrants impose a strain on border communities on whose doorstep they first arrive, broke and unemployed.
To solve this problem equitably, these communities ought to receive the surplus taxes that federal government collects from immigrants. But the real reason border communities are strained is the lack of a guest worker program.
Such a program would match willing workers with willing employers in advance so that they wouldn’t be stuck for long periods where they disembark while searching for jobs. The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don’t want here in the first place.
With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.
Invaders begone
Illegal aliens are criminals and parasites, one and all. Their very presence here and practically everything they do on U. S. soil is illegal. They need to be ferreted out, rounded up like cattle, punished for their numerous crimes, then booted back to whence they snuck in from with such extreme prejudice that they will never, ever think of violating our sovereignty again. Enough is enough.
The SPLC is not an "fair" or
The SPLC is not an "fair" or unbiased source. The SPLC does not recognize Brown Supremacist, or Brown Separatist, as a "hate group" while it has such classifications for Whites and Blacks. The SPLC refuses to recognize Hispanic Hate Groups, they say there is no such thing, that all Hispanic groups are "Immigrant Rights Groups", as if that has any validity.
The SPLC is a poverty pimp, they are all about who lines their personal pockets. Apparently the NCLR is doing just that, using the SPLC to do the dirty work smearing with a broad brush, every single group in America which represents ALL Americans, from ALL ethnic and national origins, not just "raza".
The REAL racists in this debate are the racist raza organizations, which seem to think that the only ones in this nation who should have the "human right" to speak on this issue are "Hispanics". They could not be more wrong.
Not all illegal aliens are Hispanic, and this issue effects every single citizen in this nation, no matter where they live, no matter what color their skin it, no matter what language they speak.
The racist Hispanic "raza" does not speak for me, a U.S. Native American Indian, but FAIR does.
We want illegal immigration stopped.
We want our border secured.
We do NOT want any amnesty, by ANY name you want to hide it under.
We want workplace enforcement.
We want E-verify.
And we want as many illegal aliens deported as we can get deported. All the criminals, all the ones using stolen social security numbers all the ones scamming on welfare, HUD, food stamps, WIC, MEDI-CAL, and every other tax-funded service they can suck off of with the aiding and abetting of MALDEF, the NCLR, LULAC, CHURLA and the rest of the "raza" traitors.
"Illegal" has to have meaning in a society
Someone please explain what is so confusing about the word "illegal"? I don't get it. Using the more pleasant sounding "undocumented worker" is cleaver and accurate but nevertheless is the definition of someone in this country illegally. Given there isn't any way around this basic Fact does it really matter how much this group pays in taxes? Does it matter that most are responsible members of the community? That they, like you and I, love their children and are dedicated hard working individuals? None of these or any other positive attributes negate the Fact that they are in the country illegally.
We need to stop talking about what to do with those currently here and decide what if any immigration policy our nation should have. Do we want to change the policy to allow more Legal migration and if so do we want to be specific about who we take in? Do we want as a nation to take in more Latinos? Let's talk about that instead of a "path to citizenship" for those who didn't abide by the law in place at the time. I would have a lot more respect for the leaders in the Latino community if they would be straight up and explain to me their position and what they believe is the correct immigration policy for this nation.