Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Here’s ITEP saying they pay $11.64 billion in state and local
taxes (bottom of p. 1): https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/immigration2016.pdf

Here’s the IRS saying they're estimated to pay $9 bil payroll taxes: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/20-I...20Taxation.pdf

Here’s a somewhat dated (2009) Pew analysis showing undocumented immigrant households earn far less than median income: https://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/04/...united-states/

It’s inarguable that, on average, this demographic cannot afford to pay much for health care coverage. It’s silly to even debate that. The debate is whether, in the same way we subsidize health care for poor citizens with similar incomes, we should also for non-citizens. Given the benefits undocumented immigrants provide in terms of performance of labor people born here won’t do at reasonable cost, and the decrease in cost of goods and services this passes on to consumers, economically it’s a no brainer to subsidize care for undocumenteds. Given the fact that it’s inhumane to deny care and in most cases unlawful, the reality is, we’re already subsidizing care for these people in an inefficient manner. Doing it in an organized fashion would probably be cheaper.

But, we will never hear such clarity on this, because folks like Ty and those on the Right want to frame it as a debate about who deserves what, which makes it a wedge issue.

You can be remarkably thick. By raising the question of whether immigrants should be "almost entirely subsidized," *you* are the one who raised the question about who deserves what, adopting framing used by the right wing. My point is that I *don't* want that debate or wedge issue. Nor am I the one who asked the candidates that question, or who complained that their answers were bad politics. I don't think it should be a leading issue for Democratic candidates, but they are speaking to the issue because Democratic partisans (who are more likely to vote in the primaries) are reacting to what conservatives have done with this issue, and are staking out the opposite side and demanding candidates do the same. It's a little case study in polarization.