This article below is copied and pasted from the web.
The subject was brought to my attention through reading the blogs of Anthonylemons and After The Vote
There is an excellent and important link at the end of this article.
NationalBy Isaac Garrido -
The U.S. economy would collapse if the flow of Latin American immigrants is stopped, Inter-American Development Bank officials said as they released a report Wednesday on the money immigrants sent home.
According to the report, called "Sending Home Money: Leveraging the Development Impact of Remittances," 12.6 million Latin American immigrants in the United States will send about $45 billion to their home countries this year.
IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, a bank that promotes private investment, commissioned Bendixen and Associates, a U.S. independent polling and research firm, to conduct a survey of immigrants.
The firm also did interviews with focus groups of remittance senders living in New York, Los Angeles and Miami and recipients in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Haiti.
The total estimated income of Latin Americans in the U.S. for 2006 is about $500 billion, and according to the report, 90 percent of that stays in the United States.
Donald F. Terry, manager of IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, said that, if the U.S. government stops immigration, the United States economy would collapse, as the source of dynamism and growth for the U.S. economy would be lost.
"There is a match. There is a development imbalance, and there is demographic imbalance. Latin Americans need jobs; the United States needs workers. The equation is very obvious," Terry said.
"Young people who come from Latin America come to find work here because of the dynamism of the U.S. economy, but they contribute to the dynamism of that economy," Terry said.
The report showed the number of Latin American immigrants who send money home on a regular basis has risen from 61 percent in 2004, to 73 percent in 2006, and the average amount sent went from $240 to $300 in the same period.
According to the report, the states where more money is sent to Latin American are California with $13.19 billion; Texas, $5.22 billion; New York, $3.71 billion; Florida, $3.08 billion; Illinois, $ 2.58 billion; New Jersey, $1.87; Georgia, $1.73 billion; Arizona, $1.37 billion; North Carolina, $1.22; and Virginia, $1.11 billion.
Pollster Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen & Associates, said that if the wishes of some persons in the U.S. Congress became true and the flow of legal or illegal immigration were cut off, the American economy would collapse.
Bendixen pointed out Latin American immigrants' contributions to sectors such as agriculture, construction, tourism and service industries and highlighted the contribution they made to both the U.S. and their home countries.
The report said that Mexico will be the major recipient of remittances this year, getting $20 billion, but blocking immigration at the border could change that.
"The authorities might achieve the process to be harder, but they will never be able to stop it," Bendixen said.
The report also showed that immigrants are increasingly using banks and credit unions to transfer money.
In 2004, international money transfers companies such as Money Gram and Western Union did 78 percent of remittance transactions. During 2006, the use of wire services has decreased to 63 percent.
The study found that bank use rose from 8 percent in 2004 to 19 percent in 2006.
Bendixen and Associates did Spanish-language telephone interviews with 2,511 Latin American immigrants May 3-25. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percent points.
To read the entire study, click below:
http://www.iadb.org/news/docs/remittances_EN.pdf
4 comments:
Back in the day, European immigrants needed jobs too, only they came to the US, learned the English language, and became citizens. Asians come to the US, learn the language, and become citizens. Blacks were brought to the US, taught to speak,and were made citizens. Why is it so difficult for these Mexicans to simply obey the laws of the land they so eagerly want to work in? If they cannot comprehend immigration law, how will they manage to follow the rule of any other? They can argue this every which way, but the bottom line is illegal immigration is ILLEGAL.
Lexcen, This study has been pimped extensively by corporate lobyists. As in all data the way it is presented makes a difference. The two primary points not mentioned are that as the US market floods with what are now considered 25 million illegal immigrants (more than 10% of the workforce) wages decrease across the board. Since a great portion of the revenues are shipped out of the country it is as if we moved jobs necessary, in the US economy (an economy must sustain minimum labor gains), to another country. Call it outsourcing in-house. The benefits are entirely reaped by the financial markets and not by the whole of society.
Probably the most important thing not mentioned is the additional costs to the public of this type of labor. Since most are willing to work without insurance, without contracts and at significantly inferiore wages they have no reserves in times of difficulty. This means that these individuals then weigh on the public sector at a certain time in their US experience.
Quotas on immigration exist for a reason, labor markets are fluid, just like water, put too much water on even the most beautiful paradise and it becomes a body of water and when the water receeds, a desert. It may be the source of oil in the next 1000 years as the paradise decays under the mud left behind but it is still destroyed.
It is somewhat interesting to see the corporation, so strongly against the socialist movement of labor unions, pimping international socialism.
Thanks everybody for your comments.
This is such big issue that I wanted to get a discussion going first before I commented.
Here are my observations:
1.The title refers to collapse of the US economy if illegal immigration stops. I smelt the bullshit straight away. The US economy is the backbone of the world economy, I can't see it collapsing because a source of cheap labor is stopped.
2.Who benefits from illegal immigrants? Obviously those corporations who employ them - probably at below the minimum wage.
3.How do you survey illegal immigrants? It's not as if they are going to come out of the woodwork and fill out surveys giving personal details to anyone, are they?
4.How do you calculate the total income of illegal immigrants? I bet the government would like it's share of taxes out of the estimated $500 billion earned by illegals. Even if this figure is true, wouldn't the IRS be kicking themselves for missing out on its share?
5.How do they come to the calculation that 90% of the illegals' income remains within the US?
6.The banks are doing good business out of this. They would support this survey wouldn't they?
7.10% of the population of the US is illegals. This is incredible. Either the illegals are distorting the labor market by more than 10% (vis the percentage of total US population that is actually in the workforce) and it becomes apparent that illegals have a much wider impact than just 10%. Or, they are active in illegal activities (theft,drugs,prostitution,extortion)
to support themselves. This is disturbing.
It seems to me that the only "collapse" that is inevitable is the collapse of Law and Order.
Lexcen This is the cool part that may be different here than elsewhere, the corporations pay the taxes on the illegals most employers will even help the illegal gain false documentation. Right now Wendys is being sued by a group of illegals over this matter because the company had promised they would make them legal. If the company does not pay the taxes they are open to defrauding the IRS, big time penalties. That is why raising the minimum wage is such a sticky problem for companies. They have to risk IRS infractions to continue employing illegals including risking Federal employment law infractions.
Most think that people against illegal immigration have something against immigrants, that is not the case, it is simply that the numbers must be controlled to a feasible percentage to avoid collapsing the local economy.
I have been an immigrant, I went through all the paperwork and crap in Italy, my wife is a legal immigrant here in the US, again money, paperwork and time. It appears that the laws only apply to those who want to obey them. As the general public comes to grips with this we can have serious problems. This is why I say, while the Religious fanaticism in the world is a problem there is a deeper more important problem to be taken on here. I would not like to see 300 million angry and frustrated Americans who no longer believe in law and order.
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