Steelman declares illegal immigrants cost state at least $26 million a year
State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican running for governor, says she plans to appear before a state Senate committee Wednesday and “present an analysis and testimony…that illegal workers are likely costing Missouri between $26 and $49 million every year.”
She will present her findings during a hearing of various pieces of legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration,” a release from her office said.
Aside from any policy aims, Steelman’s political angle would be to stake out a strong position against illegal immigration — a popular position with the Republican base in Missouri, but not so popular with some of the GOP-leaning corporate interests.
Steelman also is likely intending to put some pressure on her chief rival for governor, U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, who is seen as having a friendlier relationship with some of those corporate interests.
“Steelman plans to testify in support of Senate Bill 858, which would create penalties for employers who knowingly employ illegal or undocumented workers. But, the focus of her testimony will be on the amount of money that the practice of hiring illegals is costing the state.”
Steelman says her analysis is based on an assessment from the Pew Hispanic Center that estimates that Missouri in 2005 had between 35,000 and 65,000 illegal workers. She then is multiplying “an annual average wage of $25,000″ to reach an assessment “that total revenue lost to the state and federal government combined is between $243,613,125 and $449,499,375.
“The hiring of illegal workers not only costs Missourians jobs, it cheats Missouri taxpayers at the same time,” said Steelman in a statement. “It is time that we put a stop to it.”
Please join the fight to save OUR COUNTRY!!
NumbersUSA.com
BetterImmigration.com
I have a freind living in Overland MO. He said the Wal Mart at Northwest Plaza is full of Illegal Mexicans. None of them speak English.
Where is the INS and ICE?????
He tells me the Overland Police are non-responsive to complaints about Illegals living in Overland and Saint Ann????
I thought MO was leading the fight against Illegals or is Overland and Saint Ann exempt for enforcing the law????
I may have a hard time understanding things but it seems to me that for every illegal worker there is an illegal employer. Why are the employers not held accountable? If their practices are costing the state 29 million per year why is the focus always on the workers not on the employers?
Fine them once, fine them twice then jail them the third time. We’ll see how fast they quit hiring illegals and when the job market dries up we’ll be closer to eliminating the illegal employer/worker problem.
I’ll admit that immigration is not my area of policy expertise, but the methodology Jo describes Steelman using for this type of study is flawed and based on the inaccurate findings of the Pew studies from several years ago (which also suffered methodological limitations).
Seriously the methodology developed by “Steelman” sounds like it was actually devised by a freshman intern in her office. I can’t wait to see a copy myself.
Illegal immigrants who are employed by corporations are paying into social security, a plan that they will not be able to draw from. Where is all of that money? Further, immigrants all need vehicles and gas and pay the tax on these items. In addition there are a lot of landlords who rent apartments to immigrants. Imagine all of the vacant property if they were to expelled. Are you willing to start paying more in grocery stores/ What about restuaraunts?
I agree there needs to be improvements to the system. But expelling everyone is not a good fix.
Alpha Spectra (post #2)
How does your friend know those people in the Wal-Mart are illegal? Is it simply because they do not speak English? Or is it because they are latino? Maybe your friend checkerd their papers.
Having lived in another country myself where I struggled to speak the language, I hope we in America are better then using skin color or language ability to determine immigration status.
I’m glad we finally have someone who will stand up and not be afraid to tell the truth when it comes the problem of illegal immigration. Steelman seems like she’s not afraid to fight the powers that be to make sure employers are not hiring illegals to do work in the state. I’ve been undecided on who to vote for in the primary, but now I’m definately leaning toward Steelman.
Richard - Being a Latino does not mean you are an illegal. But the vast majority of illegals are Latinos. The absurd thing is that I, whose family immigrated here a century ago, have to provide all sorts of documentation to get a job or a driver’s license. But when somebody who obviously was not born here, and who doesn’t even speak English, is asked for proof of citizenship, that’s racism. And when somebody is determined to be here illegally, and some of us think that person should be deported, that is also racism.
Why not just take the Ronald Reagan approach, let’s give them all amnesty, declare them citizens and declare the problem solved for a couple decades? Whoops, doesn’t seem like the last Republican to deal with the issue had a solution that worked out well either.
Steelman’s issue here has nothing to do with her offering a solution, because that’s not what she is doing. So to everyone who wants to label her a person tackling illegal immigration think again. Steelman’s only beating a drum, stirring up conservative votes for November.
In reality, Missouri has so few illegal immigrants relative to other states we could hardly use an argument that they are “stealing” jobs from Missourians. The only thing “stealing” jobs from Missourians are the failed economic policies of the Blunt administration and the Republican-led legislature. If you really think our soaring unemployment rate is to blame on illegal immigrants, think again. Sectors that would be likely to employ illegals are not suffering relative to the high paying sectors like manufacturing and finance. There’s a clear discrepancy between what’s being said and what the data shows, at least for Missouri.
Place heavy fines and stiff penalties for the “rat” employers who cheat the system.
Set a precedent that stikes the fear of money in these un-patritoic scab employers.
Maybe, just once, Republicans can show some respect for working Missourians.