The debate over immigration reform, sure heat up this summer, has now hit PA thanks to the efforts of an anti-immigration reform group called NumbersUSA.
As first reported by Tim McNulty of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the ad began airing Sunday and is primarily aimed at the Pittsburgh media market. According to the report, Pennsylvania is one of only eighteen states where the ad is, or will soon be, airing.
The Pittsburgh buy is focused on major network news broadcasts and totals in the range of $25,000 this week in the Pittsburgh market.
The thirty second spot attacks recent Congressional efforts at immigration reform as a threat to unemployed citizens.
“Why is Congress talking about giving 33 million new work permits to foreign job seekers,” a narrator asks. “That’s like putting the entire population of Canada in line for American jobs.”
“The politicians call it immigration reform. What kind of reform brings in more foreign job-seekers when what 20 million Americans need is more jobs?”
NumbersUSA is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and was founded by Robert Beck in 1997. Its website states that “Those who need to refer to NumbersUSA with a short, descriptive modifier should call it an ‘immigration-reduction organization’.” The group notably took credit for torpedoing the 2007 attempt to change the nation’s immigration system.
The organization is well-known and has been criticized by some on the left. The Southern Poverty Law Center identified them as part of a D.C. “Nativist Lobby”. During the last immigration debate in the mid-2000s, the Wall Street Journal went as far to state that NumbersUSA was part of a wide-ranging effort to enforce population control.
The group prominently displays a message on its website saying, “‘No’ to Immigrant Bashing.”
Loading ...
6 Responses
The immigration bill under consideration now in the Senate would create 33 million new legal workers within the first decade. 20 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed. 50 percent of recent college graduates cannot find jobs that are worthy of the debt they incurred to get their diplomas.
No classification of worker would be safe for these newly arrived immigrants which would work for little pay and displace Americans. Any one who thinks differently is uninformed.
Well, fdsa, I don’t know from Media Matters. I’m just a taxpayer who doesn’t like subsidizing lobbyists.
When ICE finds illegals in a workplace and requires them to be replaced, there is no difficulty finding unemployed Americans to do the job. Why would our congress give preference to foreigners who broke our laws over unemployed Americans? It’s crazy!
Who is Financing NUMBERS USA?
Here is the answer. Only THOUGHTLESS people who have no MIND of their own follow Numbers USA and others like them.
HERE ARE THE FACTS, Educate Yourself 🙂
GET THE TRUE FACTS NOT POLITICAL SPIN & LIES.
How Legalization and Citizenship Helps the Economy
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2013/04/16/60592/infographic-how-legalization-and-citizenship-helps-the-economy/
National and State-by-State Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/report/2013/05/17/63295/national-and-state-by-state-economic-benefits-of-immigration-reform/
The Economic Effects of Granting Legal Status and Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/report/2013/03/20/57351/the-economic-effects-of-granting-legal-status-and-citizenship-to-undocumented-immigrants/
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/05/23/2052391/111-economists-want-immigration-reform/?mobile=nc
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION RESEARCH FOUND THAT UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT ADD TO THE ECONOMY & GDP NOT TAKE FROM IT. HERE IS THE LINK 🙂 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/03/the-real-problem-with-immigration-and-the-real-solution
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently published a dynamic analysis of how immigration reform might affect GDP and projected that such a reform would increase GDP growth by 0.9% each year. Over a decade this would reduce the projected federal deficit by $2.7tn without raising taxes – largely through present taxation on more workers and rising incomes.
The Cato Institute commissioned a study by professor Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda of UCLA that projected $1.5tn in economic growth (pdf) in response to an immigration reform similar to the Senate plan and conversely should the United States take the advice of those who would deport all “illegal immigrants” the GDP would fall $2.6tn over the decade.
Economic Benefits of Reform:
Immigrant populations will increase the size of economic opportunity by creating new businesses and expanding the scope and quantity of economic production. These activities translate to positive affects on the broader economy. When reform was first introduced in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed President George W. Bush’s proposed immigration overhaul. The CBO, as Ezra Klein notes, found that modernizing the system would increase federal revenue by $48 billion while costing only $23 billion in increased public services — before even considering the broader economic benefits. There is general consensus across the ideological spectrum that the economic benefits to immigration reform will be a boon for the U.S. economy.
Factoring in broader economic benefits, research from the left-leaning Center for American Progress finds reform would add $109 billion additional tax revenue, create 121,000 jobs due to increased consumer spending, and add $832 billion in U.S. GDP over 10-years. Further, an analysis from the right-leaning American Action Forum illustrates that benchmark immigration reform would raise the pace of economic growth by nearly a percentage point over the near term, raise GDP per capita by over $1,500 and reduce the cumulative federal deficit by over $2.5 trillion. Think tanks compete with numbers and ideas. Finding two on as far on the opposite side of the spectrum as Center for American Progress and American Action Forum in agreement on an issue is a rare occurrence. The data and facts supporting immigration reform simply do not lie.
Immigration reform would generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional net tax revenue over three years,” the letter says. “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scored the bi-partisan 2012 comprehensive immigration reform bill that was proposed in the Senate as increasing federal revenues by $15 billion over the 2008-2012 period and by $48 billion over the 2008-2017 period.”
Studies from groups across the political spectrum have proven the economic and fiscal benefits of comprehensive immigration reform. By requiring illegal immigrants to register with the government, pay fees and back taxes, and correct their status, we can drastically expand our tax base. A report by the Center for American Progress found that passing comprehensive immigration reform would generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional net tax revenue over three years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scored the bi-partisan 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill that was proposed in the Senate as increasing federal revenues by $15 billion over the 2008-2012 period and by $48 billion over the 2008-2017 period.
In addition to expanding our tax base, economists have proven that comprehensive immigration reform would also increase wages for native workers, thereby boosting tax revenues generated by all workers. The CATO Institute found that forcing undocumented immigrants to get right with the law by registering with the government would boost the incomes of U.S. households by $180 billion in 2019, which would also lead to increased government revenues, without increasing tax rates.
Just like our budget deficit, immigration reform is an issue that we cannot afford to ignore. Bipartisan proposals that are tough, fair, and practical have garnered support from across the ideological spectrum in Congress, as well as from President Bush and the current administration. Comprehensive immigration reform would clearly help us reduce our deficit and debt, and would do so without raising tax rates.
US economy largely unaffected by illegal immigration
WASHINGTON — A study released Wednesday concludes that illegal-immigrant workers do not drain jobs or tax dollars and have a neutral impact on the U.S. economy.
Because illegal immigrants occupy a small share of the work force — about 5 percent — and work low-skilled jobs at lower wages than other workers, their overall influence on the economy is trivial, according to the report, sponsored by the Migration Policy Institute, a pro-immigration think tank in Washington.
“The fate of the U.S. economy does not rest on what we do on illegal immigration,” said Gordon H. Hanson, author of the report and economics professor at the University of California-San Diego.
Illegal immigrants contribute a tiny 0.03 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, with that gain going to employers who save money on cheap labor, the report says, while their cost to the economy is 0.10 percent of GDP, which mainly comes from public education and publicly funded emergency health care.
The net impact at minus 0.07 percent of GDP means that illegal immigrants have an essentially neutral effect on the economy, Hanson said.
The report does not factor in the spending or entrepreneurship that illegal immigrants contribute to the economy, said Marc Rosenblum, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
Where illegal immigrants do have a substantial impact, Hanson added, is in specific labor-intensive and low-skilled industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and cleaning services, where the share of native-born workers has dropped precipitously.
Because the U.S. has dramatically raised the education level of its adult population in the last 50 years — going from about 50 percent of all working-age adults without a high school diploma in 1960 to just 8 percent today — the native-born, low-skilled work force has shrunk, while employers continue to require low-skilled workers.
This leaves room for illegal immigrants to take such jobs at a low cost, the report says.
Illegal immigrants now account for 20 percent of working-age adults in the U.S. who don’t have a high school degree.
While the influx of illegal immigrants is one of the factors keeping low-skilled wages stagnant, the biggest losers in the current system are legal low-wage workers, both native and foreign born, who compete with the illegal immigrants, Rosenblum said.
Meanwhile, employers reap higher profits because of lower labor costs and more productive businesses.
The solution to this imbalance, proposed by the Migration Policy Institute, is to provide more visas and legal channels for unskilled workers to enter the U.S.
Today, low-skilled workers must have a green card — effectively requiring them to have close family members in the U.S. — or obtain a temporary work visa.
“We really need to approach migration control comprehensively by both strengthening enforcements and creating legalization mechanisms that will control the unauthorized population and improve the economic outputs that we get from immigration,” Rosenblum said.
A bipartisan immigration bill pending in the Senate would strengthen the Social Security trust fund by adding millions of workers to tax rolls, and provide a boost to the overall economy, according to an analysis Wednesday by the Social Security Administration.
The finding came in a letter to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who requested the analysis, from Stephen C. Gross, chief actuary for the agency.
It could provide a boost for the immigration bill, which has been attacked by some conservatives as overly costly, as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to take up the legislation for amendments and votes beginning Thursday. Meanwhile, a separate dispute loomed as religious leaders warned that adding a gay rights provision to the immigration legislation could cost their support.
Gross’ analysis said the immigration bill would boost Social Security’s coffers by more than $240 over the coming decade and add $64 billion in new tax revenues to Medicare. It also would increase the size of the economy by a full percentage point by 2017, and increase employment.
Gross wrote that the overall effect of the bill on the long-range trust fund balance “will be positive.”
Social Security has long-term financial problems because, as more people retire and live longer, there will be relatively fewer workers paying into the system. In 1960, there were 4.9 workers paying Social Security taxes for each person getting benefits. Today, there are about 2.8 workers for each beneficiary, a ratio that will drop to 1.9 workers by 2035 under current law, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office.
The actuary’s letter suggests the immigration bill would slow this trend. Under the bill, there would be nearly 6.6 million more workers paying Social Security taxes in 2024, the actuary projects. That same year, there would be an additional 683,000 people getting benefits. That’s nearly 10 additional taxpayers for each new beneficiary.
The Social Security analysis is the first government analysis to quantify economic impacts from the far-reaching bill authored by Rubio and seven other senators, both Democratic and Republican. The legislation came under attack earlier this week in a disputed report from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which claimed the bill would cost $6.3 trillion over 50 years as newly legalized immigrants consume government benefits without paying an equal amount in taxes.
The Social Security analysis doesn’t attempt to determine the overall cost of the bill. That figure will be provided by the Congressional Budget Office, which has not yet released its projections.
But the analysis does measures some impacts of the bill, which aims to secure the border, create new avenues for workers to come legally to the U.S., ensure employers don’t hire workers here without legal status, and give a path to citizenship to the millions already here illegally.
The analysis finds that of about 11.5 million immigrants here illegally who would be eligible under the bill, around 8 million would apply for and be granted legal status. Many would immediately become taxpayers, but the bill prevents them from receiving government benefits for over a decade.
Mexico was the second-largest export market for U.S. goods in 2011, according to the office of the U.S. trade representative. U.S. trade with Mexico totaled $500 billion in 2011.
This is whats holding up Immigration Reform, The Lobbyists for CCA Corrections Corp of America, That makes Billions$$ on putting the poor food pickers in jail. They dont want reform since their beds will be empty. They get $120 / $ 145 a day for each poor undocumented food picker, CHECK IT OUT>
Sen. John McCain has changed his views on immigration over the years. For instance, the Arizona Republican first supported and later opposed a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He is also the fourth-highest recipient of campaign donations from Corrections Corporation of America.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, both Kentucky Republicans, are other notable recipients of that company’s campaign donations, according to Center for Responsive Politics data.
“The private prison industry is responsible for 16% of federal prisoners in the U.S. and makes a substantial portion of its profits from detention centers for illegal immigrants,” the group said.
“Illegal immigration creates a pool of potential prisoners and there’s some incentive to them wanting to have input on those policies,” Gans said.
In one case last year, lobbyists representing CCA were paid $60,000 to monitor “issues pertaining to the construction and management of private prisons and detention facilities,” according a federal lobbying disclosure report.
Corrections Corporation of America spent $970,000 last year to lobby Congress and the U.S. Marshals Service on a variety of issues
@tommyd, bring it to Obama’s attention at your next Media Matters meeting (another 501(c)(3) org)
This outfit solicits tax-deductible donations on its website, indicating it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, but these ads seem to attempt to influence legislation, which 501(c)(3) orgs are not allowed to do. Maybe they think the IRS is so spooked about the 501(c)(4) investigations it can get away with this.