Re: "If the net cost to the treasury is...."
Aren't Social Security 'trust fund' fundings officially "off budget"? So the (estimated by CBO/OMB/SS Admin.: tens of $ billions) paid into SS by working illegals, but never collected on by them (because they use phony SS numbers for those FICA payroll deductions <g>) would not be accounted for in the Treasury numbers... that would be an extraneous factor (a 'benefit', at least as far as Social Security recipient's interests go) to be considered.
(And, IMO, that would be one of the larger financial considerations that should be looked at in any attempt at a 'comprehensive' assessment of illegals' economic impact....)
Re: "Its rather about the inaccuracy of (and perhaps even the dangers of) saying that someone is imposing a cost on us, when its really the government imposing the cost...."
A) True... (insofar as that one thing goes). But, it assumes that the government can be held '100%' responsible for situation. (Some things might be beyond government's effective total control... even the Soviets could not effect total control of all factors in society, no matter how hard they tried.) Still... you are correct that the government, and it's policies, should be held accountable for the costs/benefits that are directly attributable to their actions.
B) As I've argued --- 'costs' are but one side of the ledger. There are also potential economic gains to be measured. (For example: GNP growth rates are tightly correlated with demographic considerations.) Ready availability of young workers 'juices' the GNP growth rates --- witness the ongoing demographic collapse in Japan (oldest society of all the developed nations, producing the slowest economic growth rates among it's peer nations. Also, perhaps not accidentally, a nation with extremely restrictive immigration rules).
Same demographic considerations playing out in various European countries (falling population in Italy... would be near totally stagnant populations in Germany/France were it not for immigrations rates that are 'high' by European standards, but 'low' by American ones). Whereas positive population growth rates & 'young' pops. in, particularly, India and China, are correlated with some of the world's highest GNP growth rates.
Obviously, other factors then just population growth play into the final economic results (education, infrastructure, governance, etc., etc.), but my point was that there are *costs* and there are *gains* too to be considered. |
