WHERE YOUR TAXES GO - ILLEGAL ALIENS (original email with my response below)

Attributed to the LA Times, June 2002:
1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County). (All 10 from the Los Angeles Times) Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare.

See... http://www.cis.org/ Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration. The cost of illegal immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University]. The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE. 29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

------------------ my response to the sender -----------------------------
I've researched this by reading from a lot of different sources. This email has been forwarded, added to and revised repeatedly, resulting in these alleged "facts" being distorted and taken out of context. From what I can see, the original sources were a hodgepodge of conservative bloggers and the testimony of Heather Mac Donald (a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute for Policy Research) before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims last year. I assume because of the Manhatten Institute's reputation as a right-wing, libertarian think tank, the bloggers decided to erroneously attribute these statistics a more respected and palatable source, the newspaper The L.A. Times. The newspaper went through each statistic, showed any citations from their newspaper (almost none except for quoting Ms. MacDonald) and then tried to verify or refute each "fact."
You can see the results here: http://opinion.latimes.com/immigration/2006/05/according_to_th.html and here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/taxes.asp (where some of the facts from your email are shown to be true--like the number of Spanish-speaking radio & TV stations in certain markets).

I like Chuck Colson's response to the email, especially about how we need to be careful to try to understand this issue using reason and our intellect, and not with our prejudices and emotions. Or, as he puts it, "see that the immigration debate generates light instead of heat."http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ChuckColson/2006/06/09/defending_the_strangers_in_our_midst#cooliris

Steve