Latin America: Week in Review, United States
Judge Hears Arguments Over Georgia Immigration Law; Promises Ruling By July 1
June 21, 2011 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story — A U.S. federal judge on Monday heard arguments for and against Georgia’s tough new immigration law. Georgia’s law, which has similar language to Arizona’s controversial legislation, permits police to question criminal suspects about their immigration status and if they are in the U.S. illegally, they can be detained and transferred to federal authorities. Another facet of the law makes it illegal to knowingly harbor, transport and entice illegal immigrants into the state. Omar Jadwat, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the law is unconstitutional because immigration is a federal responsibility, not a state one. Georgia’s assistant attorney general, Devon Orland, countered by claiming that the state’s legislation simply mirrors federal immigration law and is designed to assist the federal government. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Thrash said he would rule on the matter by July 1.
Read More From The Chicago Tribune.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms is expected to resign due to a scandal surrounding the “Fast and Furious” operation in which illegally purchased guns ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
- A journalist, his wife, and their 21-year-old son were shot to death Monday inside their home in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
- Mexican drug cartels allegedly control the pipeline system of Mexico’s state oil monopoly, according to a newspaper report released over the weekend.
Caribbean
- Iran and Cuba together have forced more journalists into exile over the past year than all other countries combined, a survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
- The dissident Ladies in White expressed support for Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega against the criticism of Spanish conservative lawmaker Teofilo de Luis of the Popular Party, about the prelate’s role as mediator in the process of freeing political prisoners that began last year.
- The Dominican Churches Social Service, has opened a Cholera Attention Center in the community of Boom Repos in Port-au-Prince, a center funded with about $250,000 provided by South Korean and Canadian cooperation entities, the Dominican institution announced Sunday.
Central America
- France began proceedings Monday to extradite former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega to Panama, after receiving consent from the U.S.
- A soccer player in Honduras’ first division league was shot after being attacked in an apparent robbery attempt.
- Around 2,000 inmates at five prisons in El Salvador are suffering from vomiting and diarrhea due to food poisoning.
- Costa Rica introduced its new National Broadband Strategy, which plans to provide broadband services to even the most remote areas of the country.
Andes
- Relatives of inmates in Venezuela’s El Rodeo prison complex are anxious, desperate and angry as they seek information after clashes between rival gangs and government troops.
- Ecuador’s total foreign debt in April was $14.07 billion, up 3% from $13.67 billion in the same month of 2010, the central bank said.
- Four more people have been murdered in Villa del Rosario, a city in Colombia’s Norte de Santander province near the border with Venezuela, marking the third massacre in the area in less than three weeks, officials said.
Southern Cone
- Chile’s controversial HidroAysén hydroelectric project in Patagonia was halted by an appeals court in Puerto Montt after opponents of the project filed a legal injunction.
- A 6.5-magnitude quake hit northern Chile on Monday, but no injuries or damage have been reported.
- A lawyer for the Foundation of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo said that there should have been greater controls over the group’s funds after Sergio Schoklender, former financial manager of leading Argentine human rights group, was accused of mismanaging money intended for a housing program for the poor.
Image: Lost on Lake Brazos @ Flickr.
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5 Comments
I AM NOT SAYING DONT CLOSE THE BORDERS. I AM SAYING STOP THE IGNORANCE & HATE.
Read this whos to blame for our economy, its NOT the POOR MIGRANTS.
300 BILLION$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ are not paid in taxes by USA CITIZENS, WHO CHEAT ON THEIR TAXES THAT’s A TRILLION$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ EVERY 3.3YEARS.
DONT BLAME THE POOR, STOP CHEATING AND OUR NATION IS OK. :):)
What the hell happened??? Lets BLAME THE FOOD PICKING, , DISH WASHING, LAWN MOWING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS. YEAHHHHHH
Before you Scream and show Ignorance and Hate at least read the Immigration Law regarding Undocumented Immigrants.
UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT CRIMINALS. Its a Civil Matter.
The whole thing is perplexing to people who don’t understand that being an illegal immigrant in and of itself is not a crime. The most pervasive comments made in news stories about Secure Communities go a little like this: “Illegal immigrants are what they’re called — they’re considered criminals by mere definition. Illegals who broke a bunch of laws to enter and live here should be subjected to immediate arrest and deportation — that’s fair for everyone.”
That’s not accurate, but a lot of people have that same misunderstanding — even law enforcement professionals.
During a teleconference last month on the troubles that Secure Communities is bringing to local law enforcement agencies, a few sheriffs on the call commiserated about their misunderstanding of immigration violations.
“I was always told it was a felony federal violation of law and was always under the impression that turning over any illegal immigrants (to ICE) was mandated by federal law — and so did my employees,” said Sheriff Ed Prieto of Yolo County, Calif. “But after we met with the Mexican consulate in Sacramento we learned it’s not. Then I started looking into how many of our people are being deported before trial and I became very uncomfortable contacting ICE for nonviolent offenders.”
Kane County, Ill., Sheriff Patrick Perez said that “90 percent of law enforcement officers believe (just being an illegal immigrant) is a crime, but I learned after talking to an immigration judge that it is just a civil offense.”
Sara Dill, a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and a member of the ABA’s Criminal Justice Council, explained it to me this way: “States are seeking to criminalize what is only a civil violation in federal law.” Dill said that failing to get a permit for home construction is one example of a civil, not criminal, violation. “Putting illegal immigrants in a criminal context confuses merely being present in the United States without authorization with crimes such as falsely claiming citizenship or identity theft, which are crimes under federal law.”
Everyone knows that of the universe of illegal immigrants, some have committed nonviolent and violent crimes — and everyone believes these should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
But believers of following “the letter of the law” cannot continue equating all illegal immigrants living in this country with criminals, who have plenty of civil rights of their own. That’s not the American way.
TO ALL YOU LAZYYYYY FREE LOADERS WHO SIT AND WAIT FOR THE GOVERNMENT HANDOUTS AND LIVE ON OUR TAXES, YES THE SOUTHERN STATES, GET OFF YOUR LAZZZY BACKSIDES, GET TO WORK AND BUILD YOUR OWN LIFE INSTEAD OF BLAMING OTHERS FOR YOUR OWN FAILURES.
IDEA: GO TO THE MIRROR AND SLAPPPP HARD THE PERSON YOU SEE BECAUSE YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE , WHAT WILL IT BE?? IF YOU WANT TO $UCC$EED, GET DR NAPOLEON HILLS BOOK, THINK & GROW RICH AND $$$UCC$EED.
If you are an American citizen, don’t let anyone tell you that you are downtrodden.
We still live in the greatest country in the world. The United States is the great experiment in positive thinking; our entire system of government is based upon faith in the inherent goodness of the individual. It was a revolutionary idea more than 200 years ago when the Declaration of Independence was first signed. Borrowing from the greatest thinkers in history, our founding fathers established a form of government of the people that is today the model most imitated around the world. Economic and political conditions ebb and flow, but as long as we have a democratic society that celebrates the individual, we can achieve anything in life we desire. All you require to be successful in the United States is the desire to achieve success and the determination to stick with it until you reach your goals.
THE UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS ARE PAYING MORE TAXES THAN YOU THINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IMMIGRANTS AND TAXES:
Q: “Is it true that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes and drain our economy?”
A: As Ben Franklin said, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Like the rest of us, unauthorized immigrants pay taxes on their property and anything they buy. More than half of them have taxes taken out of their paychecks, but because our immigration system is dysfunctional, these taxes are paid under false Social Security numbers. We need a new regimen in which we know who is paying taxes and can ensure that no one is getting a free ride. The only way to do that is to pull unauthorized immigrants out of the shadows and get them on the right side of the law.
Three state-level studies have found that unauthorized immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in benefits. In Iowa, unauthorized immigrants pay an estimated $40 to $62 million in state taxes, while they and their employers contribute an additional $50 million to $77.8 million in federal, Social Security, and Medicare taxes from which they will never benefit. In Oregon, unauthorized immigrants—who are not eligible for any state benefits—pay between $134 million and $187 million in taxes each year. Finally, in Texas, the State Comptroller found that, without unauthorized residents, the gross state product in 2005 would have been $17.7 billion less.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Undocumented immigrants are an important component of the U.S. economy. They meet the labor demand in sectors in which they do not directly compete with U.S.-born workers. The great majority of migrant workers are taxpaying, hardworking, and law-abiding people who are integrating into U.S. society.
The economics of immigration, Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration and someone who enjoys bipartisan support for his straightforwardness, said that by 2007, the Social Security trust fund had received a net benefit of somewhere between $120 billion and $240 billion from unauthorized immigrants.
That represented an astounding 5.4 percent to 10.7 percent of the trust fund’s total assets of $2.24 trillion that year. The cumulative contribution is surely higher now. Unauthorized immigrants paid a net contribution of $12 billion in 2007 alone, Goss said.
Previous estimates circulating publicly and in Congress had placed the annual contributions at roughly half of Goss’s 2007 figure and listed the cumulative benefit on the order of $50 billion.
The Social Security trust fund faces a solvency crisis that would be even more pressing were it not for these payments.
Adding to the Social Security irony is that the restrictionists are mostly OLDER AND RETIRED WHITES from longtime American families. The very people, in other words, who benefit most from the Social Security payments by unauthorized immigrants.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Would Boost the Economy & Help ALL American Workers: As opposed to the mass deportation, enforcement-only approach, addressing and fixing the immigration system in a wholesale manner will be a boon to the U.S. economy and all U.S. workers. That is why both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win created The Labor Movement’s Joint Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda conducted a 2010 report for the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center that found that “Unlike the current enforcement-only strategy, comprehensive reform would raise the ‘wage floor’ for the entire U.S. economy—to the benefit of both immigrant and native-born workers.” According to the study, granting legal status to undocumented immigrants and creating flexible legal limits on future immigration flows would generate enough consumer-spending to support 750,000-900,000 jobs. The report also found that the mass deportation approach would reduce GDP by 1.46 percent annually, amounting to a loss of $2.6 trillion over 10 years.
MYTH: Immigrants take jobs from Americans.
FACT: Immigrants create new jobs, and complement the skills of theU.S. native workforce.
MYTH: Immigrants drive down the wages of American workers.
FACT: Immigrants increase overall economic productivity and have no significant effect on overall wages for American workers.
MYTH: Immigrants will cause massive, unnecessary population growth
in the United States.
FACT: As the baby boomer generation begins to retire and the U.S.fertility rate declines, it will be necessary to replace our aging workforce with immigrants to maintain economic growth.
MYTH: Undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes.
FACT: Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes each year, often for services they will never receive.
MYTH: Immigrants come to the United States for welfare benefits.
FACT: The law forbids immigrants from using welfare services.
MYTH: The Government should just enforce the law to solve our
immigration problems.
FACT: Enforcement alone will not solve our immigration problems. The cost would be prohibitive, it would have a detrimental effect on
the U.S. economy, and it would simply push certain immigrantsfurther into the underground economy.
MYTH: Immigrants are not assimilating.
FACT: Immigrants are assimilating at much the same rate as pastwaves of immigrants.
MYTH: Immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than
U.S. natives.
FACT: Immigrants have a much lower incarceration rate than U.S. natives.
MYTH: Workers that come to the United States as temporary workers
will stay in the country once their visas expire.
FACT: Historically, migrants from Mexico worked in the United States for a few months or years, but then returned home. Border enforcement has made that pattern much more difficult.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/18/2222215/sc-illegal-immigration-bill-moves.html#ixzz1MoE9GPql
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The Undocumented Immigrants pay the exact same amount of taxes like you and me when they buy Things, rent a house, fill up gas, drink a beer or wine, buy appliances, play the states lottery and mega millions . Below are the links to just a few sites that will show you exactly how much tax you or the Undocumented Immigrant pays , so you see they are NOT FREELOADERS, THEY PAY TAXES AND TOLLS Exactly the same as you, Now if you take out 10% from your states /city Budget what will your city/state look like financially ?
Stop your folly thinking , you are wise USE YOUR WISDOM to see the reality. They pay more taxes than you think, Including FEDERAL INCOME TAX using a ITN Number that is given to them by the IRS, Social Security Taxes and State taxes that are withheld form their paychecks automatically.
Taxes, paid by You & the Undocumented are the same in each state check your state : http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/sales.html
GAS Taxes paid by you & the Undocumented are the same. Go to and check out your states tax; http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp
Cigarette Taxes paid by you & the Undocumented are the same, check this out in : http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/cigarett.html
Clothing Sales Taxes, are the same paid by you & the Undocumented Immigrant; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States
City Taxes, are the same paid by you or the Undocumented, since he pays rent and the LANDLORD pays the city : http://www.town-usa.com/statetax/statetaxlist.html
Beer Taxes, are the same paid by you or the Undocumented: http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/beer.html
TAX DATA : http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/245.html
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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 Undocumented 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.
The people of Georgia that count don’t want them in their state. The so called workforce problem will fix itself, like these sort of things always do. I’m from South Texas, I say from ’cause I left there because of the over running of the state by immigrants, I’ve seen what they do to an area. You hand wringing, feel good folks that think you want them here should go south, across the border, and live in a small Mexican community for a month. What you see is what you’re ‘gonna get here because they don’t assume American culture. They bring theirs here and live it here.
No, you don’t get a new car. If your car is insurance destroyed, you have four options. If you are not upside down on your loan, the car can be paid off and you go shopping for another car. Keep the car, and make repairs, keep the car and part it out, keep the car and sell it to a junkyard. Your insurance company decides if it’s totalled, actually their adjuster comes out and looks at your car, and decides if it is totalled. From that point forward, you have decisions to make. If you are upside down on your loan, the insurance will only give fair market value for your car, the remainder of the loan would be your responsibility.
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