There is no end to the discrimination and misery inflicted on immigrants, both documented and undocumented, in this country today, a few of which I have written about previously. There is even no end to the information available about it, if we keep our eyes just a little bit open.
For example, the Washington Post just ran a great series about (the lack of) health care for detained immigrants, including the revelation that we* regularly inject people against their will with mind-altering drugs so that they won't fight back during deportation.
As an excellent editorial in today's NY Times comments, "this practice violates every imaginable standard of decency, not to mention a few international laws and treaties."
On a more mundane but no less significant note, as the NYT editorial focuses on, anyone without a Social Security Number or anyone married to (and filing jointly with) someone without a SSN will not receive an economic stimulus check from the IRS. What?
Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that if you don't have an SSN you don't pay taxes. Most immigrants, and certainly all documented immigrants, pay just as much income tax as lifelong citizens of this country. If they don't have an SSN, they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or - in the case of some undocumented workers - they may be using a fake SSN, in which case taxes are still taken out of their paycheck just as they would be for anyone else.
Moreover, I'm sorry, but we're now discriminating against anyone who makes the grave mistake of being married to a non-citizen??? Besides being a totally absurd government-mandated disadvantage for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of average U.S. American citizens, this policy means that any U.S. citizen - such as U.S. military personnel on active duty - living in a foreign country who is married to a foreigner won't get a tax rebate. Thanks so much for your service to your country.
As the Times editorial states, this policy is bad in any number of ways, not least because "the checks are not rewards for good behavior; they are taxes returned as a means to an end." Restricting eligibility for receiving tax rebates just depresses the economic stimulation that the checks are designed to spur. It seems only to accomplish the racist goals of anti-immigrant hardliners... not to mention realize the perhaps unintended consequences of those goals such as labor shortages and the destruction of our international academic and scientific reputation.
Of course, just to turn everything on its head, the truth may well be that the fewer stimulus checks get cashed, the better. I guess we should all go thank someone who doesn't have a Social Security Number, and think twice about cashing our own checks.
*yes, WE. Do you pay taxes? Do you have the right to vote? Then don't pretend you have nothing to do with it.
p.s. On a COMPLETELY different note, there's a heartwrenching story in the NY Times today about the combined effects of China's recent earthquake and its one child policy. I hadn't thought about that. :(
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Shoot... I already used my stimulus check to help pay off personal debt... Damn!
-Joe
Personal debt is the exception. That and buying bicycles (I'll explain that one later). Go you!
I saw that article too and thought hmmm... what does spending the money on a poetry workshop do to the economy?
I kinda wish they had sent me two checks, so I could have gotten the poetry workshop *and* a bike. As it is, I'm guessing I'm going to be buying a bike as soon as I'm done buying garden toys.
Damn hippie consumerist.
:)
Does this mean I won't get an economic stimulus check?
Oh, and speaking of discriminating against people married to immigrants, the Home Office (aka the double-headed monster) in the UK prevents undocumented immigrants from getting married in the UK. If they want to get married, they have to go do it somewhere else!!
Post a Comment