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| A starving Irish family from Carraroe, County Galway, during the Famine. National Library of Ireland, via Daisy Escorcia. |
Again, this is not all about how I defeated a stupid person. "Not a Russian Pornstar" isn't even particularly stupid, just afflicted with some dumb stereotypes that seem obviously true to her, too true to bother checking out. I'm putting it up here, for the record, because it puts together an argument I've been wanting to make for a long time.
You had to bother? The worst--the most crazy distorted number available is $116 billion. The accurate cost per Cato Institute is more like $16 billion and they don't count benefits (other than payroll taxes paid for which they get nada back). The true cost is plainly approx zero.— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 5, 2018
In fact the Cato study found it could be as low as $3.3 billion—$15.6 billion was the top of the range—and that was just by examining the flaws in the report that put it at $116 billion. But there's no reason to suppose that there are really any negative economic effects at all.
Or less. Immigration is normally always a net benefit over medium to long term. That's basic economics. https://t.co/jXh850oEeu— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 5, 2018
Nonpornstar thinks, "But I'm only talking about when it's illegal!" As if that changed the economics of it.
Illegal immigration costs a lot less than legal, since they're excluded from almost all government benefits, from food stamps to Social Security, paying income and payroll taxes with no return. https://t.co/Fz1zGTH5NS They qualify only for WIC and emergency Medicaid.— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 6, 2018
*Soc Sec— KeyEleven[NotARussianPornstar] (@key11ska) December 7, 2018
Pay what?— KeyEleven[NotARussianPornstar] (@key11ska) December 7, 2018
How do they pay taxes without a Social Security number, genius? What part of illegal do you not comprehend? What part of UNDOCUMENTED do you not comprehend? You are making making shit up. Kick rocks.— KeyEleven[NotARussianPornstar] (@key11ska) December 7, 2018
— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 7, 2018
— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 7, 2018
And if not through an ITIN that doesn't mean they're not paying; the thing is, an employer needs it on his own filing:
Ask the undocumented housekeeper who made Donald Trump's bed in Bedminster NJ https://t.co/70sTfcauEI She paid taxes through fake documents— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 7, 2018
Supplied by bosses (I'm not saying Trump knew about it, but he certainly didn't care--he's long used illegal workers and sometimes gotten caught https://t.co/e1xB4ZiuNW)— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 7, 2018
She left me alone after that.
Should add, I suppose, that I favor legal immigration because it's better for the immigrants, and everybody who migrates to this country should have the protection it affords. But we need in the first place, before the system is fixed, to regularize the situation of several million people who are "illegal" just because it's so broken—people who couldn't wait in their home countries for an invitation that might take 20 years to process, so amnesty, and as always, an expansive view on refugees and asylum seekers, especially from countries the US has wrecked, whether through the United Fruit Company or the USAF.
Also for the record, because I really am as vain as the next man, praise from Brad DeLong for last week's Brooks fisk, which he may have seen when our friend Batocchio kindly linked to it at Crooks & Liars:
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