I just got a forward in my email last night. It talks about illegal immigration. Ordinarily, I just delete these things, but every once in awhile, I get a bee in my bonnet and have to reply. The forward:
Having spent three weeks in a hospital in Naples, Florida with my wife I couldn’t help noticing what was going on in the hospital and I had a lot of time to talk to the doctors and nurses about what I had observed. Below is a commentary from an ER Doctor. Do you think this might be a big reason our health care system and our social security system are so screwed up? Do you think this might be a big reason our taxes keep going up? Who do you think these people are going to vote for?
From a Florida ER doctor:
“I live and work in a state overrun with illegals. They make more money having kids than we earn working full-time. Today I had a 25-year old with 8 kids – that’s right 8; all illegal anchor babies and she had the nicest nails, cell phone, hand bag, clothing, etc. She makes about $1,500 monthly for each; you do the math. I used to say, “We are the dumbest nation on earth.” Now I must say and sadly admit: WE are the dumbest people on earth (that includes ME) for we elected the idiot idealogues who have passed the bills that allow this. Sorry, but we need a revolution. Vote them all out in 2010. ”
— REMEMBER —
IN NOVEMBER 2010, WE HAVE A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO CLEAN OUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE AND ONE-THIRD OF THE SENATE!This is an insult and a kick in the butt to all of us…
Get mad and pass it on – I don’t know how, but maybe some good will come of this travesty.
If the immigrant is over 65, they can apply for SSI and Medicaid and get more than a woman on Social Security, who worked from 1944 until 2004.She is only getting $791 per month because she was born in 1924 and there’s a ‘catch 22.’
It is interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890. Each can also obtain an additional $580 in social assistance, for a total of $2,470 a month.
This compares to a single pensioner, who after contributing to the growth and development of America for 40 to 50 years, can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement.Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees!
Consider sending this to all your American friends, so we can all be ticked off and maybe get the refugees cut back to $1,012 and the pensioners up to $2,470. Then we can enjoy some of the money we were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years. And not to receive a increase for 2010 Vote them all out of office…….
Please forward this to every American to expose what our elected politicians have been doing for the past 11 years to over-taxed Americans.
SEND THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW.
And, my reply:
Actually, not so much, folks.
The average family of nine (Mom plus eight kids) in Florida has to make less than $3800 a month to qualify for food stamps. That family will receive about $1026 in food stamps a month. (Source) The average family of eight in Florida has to be making less than $1,300 a week to get WIC (Source). This year, a person on WIC can expect to get a bit under $50 per person a month (Source). And from here: “In general, Florida children who are in families of four with incomes below $20,000 are eligible for Medicaid. Each Medicaid-eligible child costs Florida $1,661 per year, on average, compared to the average costs per adult Medicaid enrollee of $6,554.”
So, $1500 a month for each of eight children sounds pretty unlikely to me. I’m not quite sure if that WIC figure is per person in the family. That seems likeliest, to me, so counting for that, the average family of nine in Florida is getting just about $1500 total in food aid, not counting medical benefits, which would vary depending on the health of their children. But, assuming that $1600 figure is correct, eight kids equals about $12,800 a year for this hypothetical family with eight kids, which breaks down to a bit over a grand in medical aid a month, bringing our grand total to about $2500 a month in aid for a family with eight kids and one adult. That’s a whole heck of a lot less than the $12,000 a month posited by this little story.
As to the social security claims — the average social security benefit is just about a grand a month, with the average SSI payment being about $500 or so a month. This is of course based on and limited by lifetime incomes and current incomes. (Source — Assuming I read that right.) You can read about refugee rights and benefits here, and here, but basically, they get the exact same medicaid and welfare assistance as any US citizen, with the exact same kind of payouts, which may or may not be more than a person would make on Social Security.
In the interest of semantics, I’d like to point out that comparing a retiree’s social security benefits to a refugee’s or an immigrant’s (illegal or not) welfare is basically comparing apples to oranges. These are two different systems, and their pay-outs and eligibility are determined in completely different, and non-comparable ways. Comparing the two is bad logic.
The current population of the United States is a bit over 304,000,000. There are about 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US. (Source). That would mean that the percentage of the American population made up of illegal immigrants is just about 4%. Granted, illegal immigration is a problem, and our system needs to be reformed. According to Wikipedia, one of the bigger motivators for illegal immigration is the fact that we have an estimated three-year backlog (over a million requests) of green card requests (Source). We need to reform that system.
The actual question becomes how, and the actual answer does not involve “throwing out all the bums” in Congress, or, my personal favorite that I hear suggested in these sorts of rants, shooting everyone who crosses the border. It does involve sitting down and taking a serious look at the problem, and developing human, humane reforms to the situation. We’re the United States of America. We’re supposed to be better than these kinds of mindless, untrue, hate-filled rants. We’re the richest and supposedly the best country in the world. We can do better than this.
These kinds of email forwards are almost always completely untrue and untrustworthy sources of information. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one that held up to even a cursory fact-checking. Please, before you pass these things along, spend a few minutes with Google and get the truth.
(Edited to add: This post’s formatting has been altered to make it more clear which part is the email forward, and which part is my response.)
(Image from here.)
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I see a lot of these forwards and most of the time I just pass them off as cute little pieces of baloney. But I do see one thing that to me seems to have become a common thread in our soceity.
I’ve often wondered why some people can so horribly rude and unfriendly when they come in the resturant. It seem odd to me that they would come in here and bring their families with them and just be a bunch of crotchety old farts with no manners.
Logic would suggest that they can’t be like that all the time, right?
I also see people come into the resturant and act so totally stupid that you can’t possibly believe that they were able to drive themselves around that day.
After seeing this kind of behavior, several things have occured to me.
One of which is that people seem to use up their daily allowance of civility, intelligence, and decency while they are at work.
I believe this because I can’t honestly think that a person would act that way at their job and still have a job, tho I know that some do.
I seems to me that their jobs tax their brains so much that they simply can’t be bothered to put up with the simple considerations that come with human interactions once they leave their job.
I’ve also come to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with out soceity.
It seems to me that way back when, when only the father had a job and the mom stayed at home with the kids, that most people still managed to pay their bills and afford their homes and what not. I understand that there was still homelessness and poverty but that is to be expected of any time frame.
But.. How has our civiilzation improved by having a two income household?
Did prices go up because a family had more money to spend and thus things got out of hand?
Or did that extra money lead to children with no respect for having a proper budget in life which in turn lead to an increased poverty rate as their homes were foreclosed upon?
I understand that there are alot of factors to this issue most of which I don’t know about but could probably understand if I had the time to learn about it.
It also seems to me that we lack certain educational qualities.
Why do so many kids today have to go to an alternative education system to complete highschool?
I don’t really consider myself to be smarter than others but I never had any real trouble with my school work. I can tell that after highschool I lost my sense of a goal orientation and that I didn’t really know what I wanted to to, but I see that as having worked to my advantage since I now know what I want to do and am working towards it as a goal.
I think that’s what we all need. A clear cut set of goals to aim towards.
You have to think of your end game as being this:
I want to retire at 70 and live for another 20-30 years or so without a job and wiithout diapers.
Once you know your desitnatin you can map our your route of least resistance.
College, degree, job, diversified retirement fund, with sub catagories like spouse, home, children, and a few nice things.
What this all wraps into is that people seem to have lost this goal in life mostly do to what I think is a lack of direction from their parents and their schools.
I think to fix this, we need to start in the schools and teach children how to plan their lives.
I don’t know about other schools but I know that mine did very little to actually prepare me for a college setting, in fact the only things that worked out well for me in college was my math and science courses. English was pointless as they didn’t teach me how to write a college paper. In fact they were even wrong how to actually contruct all but the most basic of sentences.
My history courses were for the most part boring when they could have been so interesting.
It’s only now that I can actually look at history and really appreciate it.
Perhaps I’m just tired, it has been a long day. But what I think we really need to do is to stop kidding ourselves. We need to take a hard look at our world and make some hard choices that a lot of people won’t like. I’m reminded of the zombie plan. We set up one safe haven comprising the best of all people both in skills and genetics and build a new society from there, while at the same time leaving pockets of “bait” scattered around the country, because for every problem that they face it will be one less that we have to put up with. But that will never happen. Perhaps, someday in the far flung future things will change out of sheer momentum. But without a strong catalyst, our world will stay the way it is, for a long, long time.
Thank you for helping to debunk this annoying bit of email that seems to keep landing in my spam folder.
Hey, good to hear from you! I was just thinking about you and LJ the other day.
Usually I just ignore these email forwards, but this one just chapped me for some reason. I’m losing patience for the hateful and ignorant, I think.
I’m glad to see you’re still working with a full head of steam. I still follow you via my google reader. I dig the layout, too!
[...] an example from my own blog: A Bit on Illegal Immigration. Scroll down to my reply to the email forward I’m fact-checking in the post, and you’ll [...]
This article is bullshit, it is based on stereotypes. I want to see where you got your Information. If you look at the governments statistics the people who receive welfare the most are African Americas, and Whites. So get your facts.
I’m sorry, but what? When you say the article is bullshit and want to see where I got my facts, are you referring to the email forward that I was debunking? Or are you referring to my response to the email? Because in my response, all my sources are linked in red. Admittedly, I did my own math for the “4%” number, but I’m pretty sure I did the math right, there.
WHO TOLD YOU THAT LIE? STAND IN A WELFARE LINE AND THEN WE`LL SEE IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THAT LIE.
They are not facts.. they are just charts. This doesnt tell me the percentages of people who obtain any of the programs you have listed.
I guess I don’t see how race is particularly relevant to the numbers.
The gist of the email forward is that illegal aliens are making ludicrous amounts of cash off our welfare system. If the data then shows that no one is making ludicrous amounts of cash, then the race of the people who aren’t making that cash is kind of irrelevant, isn’t it?
It’s also worth noting that the person in question’s race isn’t mentioned in the email forward. She’s only referred to as an “illegal alien.” Since the email forward is supposedly set in Florida, one could possibly assume the lady is Cuban, but I still don’t see how that matters.
The only way I could see how that might be relevant is if you’re arguing that some people are making that kind of money off the American welfare system because they’re illegal aliens, but that argument defies good sense. In order for illegal aliens to claim welfare benefits, they would have to fake citizenship. If a hypothetical family of illegal aliens managed to fake the proper citizenship papers well enough that they got into the welfare system, they would still be receiving the exact same benefits that real American citizens do, so they still wouldn’t be making that kind of money off the system.
However, that then bleeds into the issue of welfare fraud, which is a whole different kettle of fish, and one I didn’t tackle in this post.
did you ask if she was an undocumented immigrant??? because in order to obtain welfare you do need a valid social security. so i dont know how u know she was illigal.
Hmm. I think we’re suffering from a miscommunication, here. I didn’t ask anyone anything. The first part of the post is quoted from an email that was forwarded to me by my relatives. I didn’t write that, I only quoted it. The second part of the post is my response. I didn’t address the nationality percentages of welfare recipients, because it didn’t seem pertinent to debunking the original email. The forwarded email states that illegal aliens make large amounts of cash off the American welfare system. By showing that no one, regardless of citizenship, makes large amounts of cash on welfare, I think I’ve shown that the email forward is highly suspect, at best.
My guess would be that the original email forward is completely false, totally made up. However, that I can’t prove, so I only dealt with the numbers and figures mentioned in the forward.
YOU DON`T KNOW A THING ABOUT FURRY. THERE ARE SOME DAMN DOWNRIGHT FURIOUS HARD WORKING AMERICANS IN THIS COUNTRY AND THEY ARE NOT BLIND AND MIISFORMED LIKE SOME LIKE SOME OF YOU. THEY KNOW WHATS GOING ON.IT`S EASY TO LEAD PEOPLE LIKE YOU DOWN THE WRONG PATH BECAUSE YOU ARE DUMB AND BLIND LIKE SHEEP. YOU`LL FOLLOW ANYONE.BAAAAAAA!
You said, here, “PEOPLE THAT COMMENTED TO MY POST AUTOMATICALLY THOUGHT I WAS SOME RACIST WHITE PERSON.” and here, “THIS BIT OF INFO. IS FOR ALL YOU IGNORANT IDIOTS WHO RESPONDED TO MY COMMENTS CALLING ME A WHITE RACIST.”
If you come to someone else’s blog, and make a big rant that sounds just exactly like what every racist white trash Tea Partier has to say about the issue of illegal immigration, you can’t really be surprised when the people at that blog call you racist white trash. We can’t see you; we don’t know you. We have no way of knowing your ethnicity or background or anything about you other than what you tell us. If you don’t want to be called racist white trash, don’t talk like racist white trash. If you don’t like the people who moved in near you, well, I’m sorry to hear that you’re stuck living near them. (No, really. I’ve been in that position, and it’s a crappy place to be.) However, it seems to me that the problem isn’t that you live near Mexicans, it’s that you live near assholes. Assholes come in every color. Trust me, I’ve met enough of them to know.
That being said, I stand by my position. Illegal immigration is a problem, and it needs a solution. But, it’s not the problem the media and conservative republicans trying to win elections makes it out to be. I know the problem is ten times worse in the border states than it is in the rest of the US. I’m also pretty sure that the majority of illegal aliens are otherwise decent people, trying to make a living, or escape bad circumstances. Are there bad apples crossing the border illegally? Yes, sure. But that doesn’t mean we should be inhumane, hateful SOBs to everyone. Whatever solution we come up to the problem of illegal immigration should be human, and humane. It’s wrong to punish good people for the deeds of a few bad ones, and wrong to punish American citizens just because they share the skin color of a few lawbreakers.
This entry has generated more angry comments and attention than anything else I’ve ever posted. If you scroll up from the CAPSLOCK OF FURY, there’s another commenter, Michael, who all sorts of confused/upset over this post. (Mostly confused, I think.) My webhost’s referrer logs indicated that this post has gotten linked to all over the place, too, but I haven’t checked any of the links out yet to see what anyone is saying.
Apparently, brown folks really upset the hell out of some people.
Maybe Mexicans are just attracted to white trash?
You, sir, win one (1) internets.
ARE YOU REFERRING TO ME AS WHITE TRASH? REFER TO MY LATEST BLOG MR. OR MS. HIGH I.Q., I WENT TO COLLEGE AND GRADUATED WITH HONORS PERSON BEFORE YOU ASS- U- ME.
What blog? You haven’t linked to a blog anywhere? Do you mean your comments?
Whoah! Is it just me or did somebody read the cracked article on the different types of failed blog arguments?
That dude is seriously messed up.
Nice to know you’re getting some wide spread exposure but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
Meh, the CAPSLOCKer is clearly having a bad life, and looking for someone to blame. It’s way easier to foist all your problems and blame off on someone else than it is to face up to the fact that either you made some bad decisions in life and are having to deal with them, or you just have crap luck and are having a bad life as a result.
ANOTHER LOOSER!
And again, you can’t really call my brother a loser when he’s responding, rightly, to what looks like a typical Tea Party rant posted by a typical Tea Party ass. What you posted comes off as completely supportive of all the awful things the very racist Tea Party espouses.
Wow…didn’t know my forward was going to generate such interest. That came from Patty and I know how you feel about her and Jim’s politics! But, it’s always good to debate. I guess I feel pretty lucky to live where I do…everyone is soooo white here…lol.
Immigration, illegal or otherwise, is one of those really polarizing topics right now, and there’s so much misinformation about it floating around out there about it. Nationwide, illegal immigration isn’t that much of a problem. In the border states, though, it’s a pretty serious issue, mostly due to the drug cartels’ violence bleeding across the border. Something does need to be done about that.
I don’t have a problem with Jim and Patty. They’re nice people. I don’t even mind that they’re conservative — their entitled to their opinions, same as me.
I do object to purposeful ignorance, though. The people who quote Fox News like it’s gospel truth, when it’s been shown again and again that Fox News lies constantly really get on my nerves. Tea Partiers who repeat what their corporate sponsors tell them to say, senators and representatives who blatantly lie to their constituents, people who blame all their problems on the scary brown people … that’s annoying.
I don’t know if those figures are correct, but what I do know is that something needs to be done. Yes, America was built on immigration, however, it was built on LEGAL immigration. America is still has the highest number of allowed immigrants in the world. We can’t keep taking everyone in. Why would you want to keep taking in uneducated, unskilled, and criminal types? This is why we have a naturalization process. I am IN NO WAY stating that all Mexican people are this way, but the ones coming over here are. They are lawbreakers just by being here. Hence “ILLEGAL immigrants.”
And yes, this DOES present a security issue. It is not just Mexicans slipping across our borders.
From what I understand, the naturalization process is actually part of the problem. The backlog is so mind-bogglingly immense, and the process is so very difficult, that it drives a lot of people to come here illegally. That’s part of what leads me to think that reform and amnesty might, over all, be the cheaper and more efficient way to tackle this problem.