Of Dollars and Cents

México del Norte
Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx

Of Dollars and Cents

Once in awhile, must every other day, immigration debate centers on money. How much do we produce and how much do we cost and the like. Adding my two cents on this, or adding fuel to the fire, here are a couple numbers.
Yes, we are expensive. It is not my affirmation, but that of o couple reliable organizations, by the names of Centro para el Progreso Americano (American Center for Progress,) and America’s Voice. Oh, but they make clear is not us the ones costing money, but anti-immigrant forces.
Here are the numbers from their last report: The economic boycott against Arizona after they approved its racist SB 1070 will cost the state just about 253 million bucks on production and about 86 million dollars in lost wages in the next two to three years; the city of Riverside, New Jersey, wasted 82 thousand dollars in lawyers’ fees and hundreds of thousands yet not accounted for on commercial revenue from people who rented houses and commercial offices to undocumented immigrants or hired them to work; Hazelton, in Pennsylvania, famous for approving the first of this kind of ordinances, lost 2 million 800 thousand dollars trying to defend it in court, and some people believe the final tall adds up to 5 million; Farmers Branch in Texas spent 4 million dollars in court defending a similar law.
Some backtracked. Hazelton and Prince William County in Virginia decided their laws and the expense was worthless, and Carpentersville, in Illinois, pulled out from the table another ordinance after the Hazelton experience.
But Freemont, Nevada, did not. They ended up raising taxes to cover the court cost to sustain theirs.

Loses and Profits

More numbers, from the other side. ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, proudly announced a few days ago that it paid several millions dollars to three police departments for their collaboration at the IFCO raid, the industrial pallets company raided in April of 2006, action which added hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to the May Day marches of that year.
In Albany, New York, they gave $2,207,000 USD to the State Police, $61,000 to the County Police and the same amount to the Guilderland Police for their help in the capture of 1181 very dangerous undocumented IFCO workers at 30 industrial workplaces.
The money came from an agreement by IFCO to pay a fine of $20,637,317 dollars for the crime of hiring up to 6,000 undocumented workers for years, from 2003 to 2006. Eleven managers with IFCO are on trial, accused of the terroristic crime of “harboring, transporting and encouraging illegal workers to stay in the United States manufacturing wood pallets.”
Now, my own numbers: 2080 working hours a year, for 4 years, 8,320. Multiply that by $7 an hour, minimum wage at the time, by 1,181 arrested workers. It comes up to $68 million 781 thousand 440 dollars in wages. And that’s not counting the unpaid overtime… IFCO agreed to pay another $2 million 565 thousand 317 dollars to the Department of Labor to compensate for that.
Now, out of those salaries, workers paid, at the national average rate of 22.6 percent, $15 million 544 thousand 604 dollars and 44 cents. And then they went shopping or gave money to their spouses to do it, and sales taxes, again at the national average rate of 5.33 percent, meant $2 million 837 thousand 523 dollars and 33 cents.
Altogether, these criminals paid over 18 million dollars in taxes. Plus housing, transportation, education and all of those things we spend our money on until we don’t have a cent left.
Now multiply all of that by 6, since IFCO had “up to 6,000 illegals,” according to La Migra. It’s over 100 million dollars in taxes alone.
The point of all these numbers is simple: just let us work and produce in peace. That’s a lot better than sic La Migra on us, and way better that Arizona-type “solutions” who only waste taxpayers’ money…