provides the following articles/links. Unfortunately this material actually requires reading..which is probably the most significant obstacle in trying to get any 'true-believer' into a little mind-expansion.
Report - Southern Poverty Law Center
Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States
March 12, 2007
Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States
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Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.
These workers, though, are not treated like "guests." Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who "import" them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.
Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won't take up their cause.
Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:
* routinely cheated out of wages;
* forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
* held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
* forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
* denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: "This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery."
Congressman Rangel's conclusion is not mere hyperbole — and not the first time such a comparison has been made. Former Department of Labor official Lee G. Williams described the old "bracero" program — the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the United States during and after World War II — as a system of "legalized slavery." In practice, there is little difference between the bracero program and the current H-2 guestworker program.
The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today's guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their work visas expire, they must leave the United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy.
This report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the country. The abuses described here are too common to blame on a few "bad apple" employers. They are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards or the protections of the free market.
The H-2 guestworker program is inherently abusive and should not be expanded in the name of immigration reform. If the current program is allowed to continue at all, it should be completely overhauled. Recommendations for doing so appear at the end of this report.
http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLCguestworker.pdfOp-Ed: Immigration's Roman Circus
Roberto Lovato
TomPaine.com
Mar 01, 2007 12:00 AM EST
Sadly, the theatrics of the immigration debate take place within parameters as illusory as those of a digital Coliseum created for a movie or TV show. Right-wing Republicans—and some "pragmatic" Democrats and even "immigrant rights advocates"—say a flood of "criminal aliens" necessitates a multibillion-dollar "enforcement" program administered by the Department of Homeland Security and companies like Halliburton, Boeing and others feasting on the immigration-industrial complex. Left completely outside of the immigration arena are inconvenient facts, such as the results of a recent study by the Immigration Policy Center that showed that 18- to 39-year-old immigrant men of all ethnic groups are five times less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. citizens. Neither is there any discussion of how the cost of the proposed 700-mile wall could be much greater than what Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Calif., and Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., bargained for when they voted for the wall last year—perhaps as much as 25 times greater, for a total of more than $49 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Even further beyond the very narrow borders of the current policy debate is the possibility that U.S. war policy in places like Colombia or its failed (and bipartisan) trade policies in Mexico and throughout the hemisphere will feed the endless cycle of social displacement and economic deprivation that drives people from the periphery to the core of the empire. Truth continues to be the first victim of the theatrics and gamesmanship of the ongoing immigration wars between the ships of the "left" and "right," ships that float on a fake sea for all to see.
The barbarians of the story, immigrants, are voiceless and chained to the deepest, quietest part of the immigration policy arena. These are the players who must again enter dramatically with a powerful roar of millions, as they did in 2006, if they are to alter the rules of the game played out in Washington, local and state legislatures and our television sets. Only then will a more realistic debate become possible, one that includes legalization and drops guest worker plans, funding for walls and the tragic, family-destroying political theater of raids. Perhaps at that point we can begin to consider how immigrants, moved to leave home because the epic failure of our foreign policies, comprehend what Edward Gibbon, historian of the decadence of the Roman Empire, called "the fairest part of the earth."
If immigrants themselves don't display something like the power of last year's truly spectacular marches, then we might as well skip the policy debate on C-SPAN in favor of a more dramatic and realistic rendering of the prevailing attitude on Capitol Hill towards immigration policy. That would be an episode of the HBO miniseries, "Rome," in which Brutus, friend and then foe of Caesar, declares, "Plebs love to see their betters fight. It's cheaper than theater and the blood is real."
© 2007 TomPaine.com. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/llr/vol9/lipman.phpThe Taxation of Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal, and Without Representation<*>
Francine J. Lipman<**>
B. Taxing Undocumented Immigrants
1. The IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN)
a. The IRS Requires a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
Because the U.S. government classifies undocumented immigrants as resident aliens, they are subject to the same federal income and employment taxes and filing and withholding requirements as U.S. citizens. Under the Code, every taxpayer must have a unique and permanent number.<131> Consequently, undocumented immigrants must obtain a TIN.<132> The IRS has used a TIN system to improve its “ability to identify and access database records; to match information provided on tax and information returns, statements, and other documents with the proper taxpayers; and to provide better customer service to taxpayers.”<133> For most non-business taxpayers, Social Security numbers (SSNs) serve as taxpayer identification numbers.<134> However, because undocumented immigrants are not eligible to work in the United States, they cannot obtain valid SSNs.<135>
b. The Problem: Unauthorized Workers Are Not Eligible To Obtain SSNs
SSNs have been issued to workers since the implementation of the 1935 Social Security Act.<136> The initial purpose of the number was to provide employers and the U.S. government the means to report or track Social Security earnings for purposes of payroll tax and retirement benefits calculations.<137> In the 1960s, computerization allowed the IRS and private businesses to rely on SSNs as a method of accumulating, sorting, and tracking information.<138> Despite persistent Congressional concern about unauthorized workers, the government issued Social Security cards to unauthorized workers until the early 1980s, and kept only internal records regarding their unauthorized status.<139> Beginning in 1982 and 1984, Social Security cards issued to unauthorized workers were marked “Not Valid for Employment,” and temporarily authorized workers received cards marked “Valid Only With INS Authorization.”<140>
In an effort to stop unauthorized workers from being hired, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.<141> This Act, among other things, required employers to have all new employees prove their identity and work authorization with specific documents.<142> Congress listed the Social Security card as an acceptable document evidencing proof of work authorization.<143> As a result of this mandatory obligation, there is now widespread use of counterfeit Social Security cards among unauthorized workers, making “it more common and easier than ever for undocumented workers to enter and function in the U.S. labor market.”<144>
In 1996, the Social Security Administration (SSA) began limiting its issuance of SSNs to individuals who are U.S. citizens, and alien individuals legally admitted for permanent residence or under another immigration category authorized for employment in the United States.<145> In response to this void, the IRS introduced a new taxpayer identification number for use by individuals who are not citizens or nationals of the United States and are not eligible for SSNs.<146> Qualifying individuals must apply for and use the newly created TIN on all their tax returns.<147>
............and Lest We Forget...
Report: War and Occupation in Iraq
Chapter 11: Other Issues
Cost of the War and Occupation
By Global Policy Forum and partners
April 2007
For the United States, the conflict has been extremely expensive – far more so than policymakers first estimated. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels announced prior to the war that the cost would be around $50 billion,<3> but as of December 2006 Washington had actually had spent approximately $400 billion in direct government appropriations for the conflict. Clearly, these budget costs will continue to rise far further in 2007 and beyond.<4>
US federal war costs are buried in complex Pentagon budgets, but we know that they have risen from about $4 billion per month in 2003 to more than $8 billion per month in late 2006.<5> In fiscal year 2006 alone, Iraq war spending may have been as high as $120 billion and estimates suggest that 2007 spending could reach $170 billion.<6> To these costs must be added the budgets for Iraq reconstruction grants, the costs of building up Iraq’s military forces, the cost of secret intelligence operations, and more.
Future costs of the Iraq conflict will depend on the number of troops deployed, the nature of the military operations and the length of the conflict. With Washington sending 20,000 or more additional troops in the first half of 2007, spending will certainly increase substantially and could rise beyond $12 billion per month in 2007. So the budgetary cost may approach $600 billion by the end of 2007 and could eventually approach $1 trillion.
The US Federal budget figures, large as they are, greatly under-estimate the true cost of the war. Economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz point out that the budgeted costs do not account for the economic effect of military deaths and injuries (over 3,000 US soldiers have died and more than 23,000 have been wounded<7> ) for which death benefits, life insurance and medical treatment will be paid for long into the future.<8> Nor does it include the increased costs of armed forces recruitment, or demobilization costs. A real assessment of the costs, Bilmes and Stiglitz argue, should also take into account a wide array of other costs, ranging from the replacement and depreciation of military equipment<9> to macroeconomic costs such as higher costs of oil, interest paid on the national debt<10> and other long term negative impacts on the economy.<11> Bilmes and Stiglitz put the estimated total cost in a range from $1-2.2 trillion, an estimate they made prior to delivering the paper in January 2006.<12> But in a later version of the paper, published after about nine months, they concluded that the costs were running much higher and that a $2 trillion estimate was “low.”<13> The Iraq Study Group report, released in November 2006, used a $2 trillion figure as definitive.<14>
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These enormous and upwardly-spiralling war costs soak up precious national resources that could be spent on schools, hospitals, transport, alternative energy and many other citizen priorities. Since the war is financed by Federal budget deficits, future generations will eventually be required to pay the bill.
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