DPS know your rights immigration presentation

Your best/worst case scenarios are incorrect.

Best case scenario is an illegal immigrant earns income and is taxed through their ITIN. Many illegal immigrants choose this route because they do not want to draw attention to themselves by breaking more laws.

Your worst case scenario of identity theft is not logical -- if they're stealing a SSN, it's either to obtain financial services like a credit card, or for an employer that demands it. In the latter scenario they will still contribute to payroll taxes since they are automatically deducted.

The most likely reason an illegal immigrant does not pay taxes is due to getting paid under the table (builders hanging out at home depot parking lots, for example). These situations involve complicit Americans so it's not a cut and dry case of illegals trying to fleece the general public.

Sometimes I feel like anything Trump says, the left has to take a FIRM opposite stance - even when he's right in cases like this.

Illegal immigration has a lot of challenges and problems wrapped up in it. Obama deported millions of people and many of the left decried that policy, so it's not quite so "left vs right" that you claim. The main problems that the "left" (and I use that phrase loosely because it certainly is not a monolithic entity) has with Trump's immigration policy are as follows:

  • spending billions on a wall is asinine when 40% of illegals arrive in the country by overstaying their visa -- the wall was a crowd exciter/campaign point. Policy-wise it's complete garbage for meaningfully solving anything

  • illegal immigrants commit less crime on average than American citizens. Trump's incendiary rhetoric about illegal immigrant crime and his new "VOICE" task force are fear-mongering and serve to further entrench xenophobia and racial bias in his followers. This leads to things like the Kansas City attacks.

  • illegal immigrants are a fact of life. As long as there are jobs, they will keep coming, because the alternative is to live in poverty with little upward mobility for their children. Worst case they are deported, or maybe prison, which is not a bad trade off for them. We can enact sound, intelligent policy with this reality in mind, or we can pretend like harsh laws and strict enforcement will be able to provide a solution. Research has shown strict immigration enforcement erodes community-police trust and decreases safety and security. Decades of a failed anti-drug war saw billions of dollars wasted and thousands of lives lost. Repeating the same mistake with the new illegal immigrant boogeyman will not end any better.

I hope that answers your questions.

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