FOX NEWS Illegal Immigrant Mother of Seven Given Food Stamps, Meds, Housing, and Social Security - For 20 Years Fox News reports Maritha Nelson's $240 in food stamps has run out, leaving her $9 in cash and seven people to feed. The 50-year-old single mother, who entered the U.S. by swimming across the Rio Grande, has government funded housing, medication, and $700 a month in Social Security. She's been on assistance for 20 years, and wants others to know that help is available. Florida is teeming with food stamp recruitersÂ…who have a goal: increase federal aid to Florida by $1 billion a year.
Nothing like a dose of tabloidism! Two issues here. First, the problem with the nature of US benefits is the focus on efficiency (i.e. ensuring that the dollar goes to the genuinely poor). It largely ignores effectiveness. Not surprisingly, the result is negative. Second, with regards immigration, the worry is how poor the US has become in ensuring intergenerational mobility. We'd expect the immigrant to, on average, be lower down the income distribution. This partially reflects compatibility of their human capital. We'd therefore expect their children to do better and move, more speedily than the native born, up the distribution. That doesn't happen much, showing that the US has largely given up individualism for class-based limitation. They just don't quite realise it, indicating a bothersome dissonance
Can I take that to mean that you don't have an answer as to why the US has such low intergenerational mobility?
Last chance. Do you have an answer to why the US has such low intergenerational mobility with regards immigrant families?
What's the penalty? So, why do you consider Fox News to be tabloid? Also, I don't see any reference to any study or article to support your "low intergenerational mobility with regards immigrant families". It's just your sayso; and of what value is that? And, it hasn't gone unnoticed that you have COMPLETELY avoided the ILLEGAL ALIEN point, and the query concerning the identity theft. Journalist Bob Sullivan reported for MSNBC 29 January 2005: ------------------------------------------------------ Linda Trevino, who lives in a Chicago suburb, applied for a job last year at a local Target department store, and was denied. The reason? She already worked there — or rather, her Social Security number already worked there. Follow-up investigation revealed the same Social Security number had been used to obtain work at 37 other employers, mostly by illegal immigrants trying to satisfy government requirements to get a job. Trevino is hardly alone. MSNBC.com research and government reports suggest hundreds of thousands of American citizens are in the same spot — unknowingly lending their identity to illegal immigrants so they can work. And while several government agencies and private corporations sometimes know whose Social Security numbers are being ripped off, they won't notify the victims. That is, until they come after the victims for back taxes or unpaid loans owed by the imposter. ------------------------------------------------------ STORY From CNN 7 June 2006: --------------------------------------------------- CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Audra Schmierer has been a stay-at-home mom for six years. Now that her son is in school, she wants to return to work. So she applied to a temp agency. AUDRA SCHMIERER, ID THEFT VICTIM: They called me three or for hours later and said, "Mrs. Schmierer, I don't understand why you're applying. You already work here." WIAN: At a big tech company, a similar experience. SCHMIERER: There's my driver's license, my passport, my Social Security card. I gave them everything. And she said, "Well, really, how can you actually prove you are you? What if those people have the same documentation you do?" WIAN: Schmierer has discovered more than 200 illegal aliens throughout the United States are doing jobs Americans supposedly won't do by using her Social Security number. They work in fast-food chains, cosmetic companies, even receive dividends from Microsoft. SCHMIERER: I started to gather all this information and really found out how extreme the situation was. It's scary. WIAN: Her ordeal began last year with a bill from the IRS for nearly $16,000 in back taxes for a job in Texas. She lives in Dublin, California. SCHMIERER: My husband was actually quite upset. He asked me when I had ever been to Texas. WIAN: She tracked down the illegal alien whose phony tax return triggered the IRS bill. He told her he bought her Social Security number and a fake green card at this Texas flea market. SCHMIERER: I don't understand how illegal aliens can come across here and commit a felony -- identity theft is a felony -- and be excused from that felony to continue living their life when I cannot live my life. WIAN: By January, Schmierer faced a $1 million IRS bill. She was temporarily detained by Customs, returning from a foreign business trip with her husband. And her Social Security account now shows a zero balance, erasing 14 years of work before her marriage. SCHMIERER: Social Security right now sends me to IRS. IRS sends me to Social Security. Every now and then, they'll send me to the FTC, whom I have a case with. No one wants to do anything about it. Right now, I have nowhere to go. WIAN: Schmierer spends several hours a day trying to clear her name. The IRS has cancelled her bill, but Social Security won't give her a new number. She says all 35 employers she's contacted have refused to take action against the workers using her number. SCHMIERER: It's cheap labor, and they don't care. WIAN: Neither do most senators. John Ensign brought Schmierer's case to their attention, and they still approved Social Security benefits for illegal aliens using stolen identifies. SEN. JOHN ENSIGN (R), NEVADA: The crime of identity theft and Social Security fraud are not victimless crimes. The victims of these crimes are American citizens and legal immigrants. WIAN: And in this case, the victim is the granddaughter of a World War II veteran who emigrated legally to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration says it investigates reports of fraud but wouldn't say if it's investigating any of the cases related to Audra Schmierer. The IRS says it can't penalize employers who believe they are accepting legitimate Social Security numbers. ---------------------------------------------------
You're the one being tabloid, taking a story to make general comment rather than adopting any sound methodology. Fox News? Its for the herd. It makes the Daily Sport look intellectual. Example: Livingston and Kahn (2002, An American Dream Unfulfilled: The Limited Mobility of Mexican Americans, Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 83, pp. 1003-1012), for example, finds that"the wage pattern becomes one of steady decline across generations for men, and stagnation or marginal decline across generations for women".
What about east Asian immigrants, do they also have low mobility? Maybe the reason for low mobility is due to attributes of immigrants than host nation.
There is plenty of upward mobility for children and grandchildren of illegal aliens if they gangbang, run dope, etc. They have a thriving counterculture. I see it every day.
I'm not interested in the bigotry. The decline across generations shows something much more significant here: from the negative effects of discrimination to how, rather than seeing mobility due to more compatible human capital, we actually see the negative effects of inequalities of opportunity.
The "general comment" isn't mine: it's from Fox News: FOX NEWS Why do you reference an eleven year old article? Rather out-of-date... Journalist Ivan Moreno wrote for The Associated Press 5 June 2013: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Immigrants living illegally in Colorado will be able to get driver's licenses under a bill signed Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper, adding the state to a handful of others that provide a legal way for immigrants to use the roads. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- article So, your "Limited Mobility of Mexican Americans" is rather OUT TO LUNCH, so to speak...
