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NumbersUSA received a number of "outside" comments from people who disagreed with Roy Beck's quote in a front-page New York Times article on April 9. The following was particularly interesting. I verified that the writer owns a small insurance company in Houston, Texas. I am changing his name to Mr. Gallagher in order to protect his anonymity.

"My friend has been in the US for 18 years, having arrived with his mother, two brothers and a sister at the age of 10. He went to school and completed high school and now he does stone work, i.e. he puts flagstone around swimming pools, builds fireplaces, creates stone entryways and wine cellars for very expensive homes. He works for $75 cash a day when there's work. No health insurance, no sick pay, no vacation, no unemployment, no workers comp, just $75 per day. . . . . "

" He is not complaining. He spends all of his earnings buying things to live, therefore paying sales taxes thus supporting the local and Texas state budget. He rents an apartment, therefore paying property taxes, which in Texas helps pay for the schooling he received. He's not complaining. He used to have a landscaping job for many years where they took out ! taxes. He paid federal income taxes and paid into the social security fund and Medicare fund. He did not complain.

So if you need a job or know anybody that does, please come on down to Texas where we have lots of jobs I am sure you would be qualified for. Don't worry about my friend, he can always find a job. Employer's love him since he goes to work, takes the pay he's offered does his job and doesn't complain. I hope you and your friends will enjoy your new job. Just don't complain. "

Yes, Mr. Gallagher, there are countless Americans that need jobs like the one your friend has. The unemployment rate in the Houston area was 6.4 percent as this February. Last February, it was 4.3 percent. There are many thousands of people who need jobs when the unemployment rate is at 6.4 percent.

Mounted police were called out to control the crowd of thousands seeking 65 full-time jobs (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times/Redux)

For example, in New York City, in November, 2006, at the height of the subprime loan/Wall Street boom, the official unemployment rate in the city was 4.5 percent. Early that month, Mars Inc., the candy manufacturer that makes M&Ms, was opening a retail store in Manhattan. The company put out a help-wanted ad offering 65 full-time jobs at $10.75 an hour, and about 135 part-time jobs. The New York Times reported that,"Several thousand people - mostly young, black and Hispanic - had shown up to apply for fewer than 200 positions, only 65 of them full-time jobs."

Making $10.75 per hour may sound like a lot of money to people in many areas of the United States, but in New York City the cost of living is very high, and that is not sufficient even to live with dignity as a single adult, much less for a family. That wage rate works out to about $21,000 per year, and the poverty line for a family of four is $26,000 per year in New York City. A recent credible study said that it requires an income of $100,000 per year to be middle class in New York City (see page 9 of that link).

This was for jobs to work in a candy store. A candy store! Not jobs at a Mercedes-Benz manufacturing plant, or jobs at a military contractor. It was a heartbreaking and soul-crushing view of the desperation that exists just under the surface of the United States economy. If it was that bad when the official unemployment rate was 4.5 percent, imagine how bad it is now that the unemployment rate is 8.2 percent in the New York area. This episode is one major data point towards proving the proposition that the official unemployment rate is inaccurate and deceptively low. So I suspect that a 6.3 percent official unemployment rate in the Houston area indicates a serious situation - something even worse than what existed in New York in 2006 when the official unemployment rate was 4.5 percent.

Several thousand people were desperate for those 65 full-time jobs at $10.75 per hour. "Many had arranged for baby sitters, traveled from other boroughs and New Jersey, and lined up as early as 1 a.m., only to be told eventually that there were no more jobs being offered that day. ... Jose Muñoz, 19, of Queens, stood in line and lost out on a day's pay as a driver's helper for United Parcel Service. A part-time employee, he makes $8 an hour, he said, and hoped for a Mars position because "this was a full-time job."

Mr. Gallagher, $10.75 per hour works out to $86 per day, and your friend makes $75 per day. But your friend works "off the books." So he makes $75 and pays no income, social security, or medicare taxes. So his $75 is actually better than earning $86 before taxes. Additionally, the cost of living in Texas is lower than the cost of living in New York City. The New Yorkers should indeed be interested in an after-tax income of $75 per day in an area with a lower cost of living.

There are no benefits (such as health insurance) to your friend's job, while I presume there were benefits to the 65 full-time jobs at the candy store. However, the standard reply that we always hear from the amnesty lobby is, "If undocumented workers were made legal, they will have the bargaining power to get those benefits." So according to the amnesty lobby's own words, those legal workers in New York and all over the country could get benefits if they had your illegal alien friend's job.

The M&M Mars incident shows that we do have thousands of legal workers in the New York area, thousands in the Houston area, and probably millions around the United States, who are not even in the official unemployment statistics and need decent jobs. If there are such jobs unfilled in the Houston area, then it is probably because employers are not reaching out sufficiently to the unemployed in their own city, and failing that, they could reach out to unemployed Americans in other cities. There is no need to bring in people from foreign countries to fill these jobs. So thank you, Mr. Gallagher, for letting us know about the jobs in Texas.

----------------------------------------------Below is the follow-up to the above article. . . 

By Charles Breiterman
NumbersUSA.com
Thursday, April 21, 2009

Last week, I posted part 1 of Reply to An Outside Commenter, whom I am calling Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Gallagher wrote us about his friend, a 28 year-old male illegal alien, brought here at age 10 by his parents along with 2 brothers and sister. This person was in the Texas public schools from the time of entry until graduation with a high school diploma. He earns $75 per day doing stonemasonry on expensive homes. The blog received many thoughtful and excellent comments- many of you were as flabbergasted as I was:

Richard4091 of California:

Indeed, "Mr. Gallagher" also forgot to mention that his friend can get free medical care at local hospitals, with citizens picking up the tab via taxes and medical premiums and co-pays.

Richard2467 of Texas:

If Mr Gallagher's friend gets sick and goes to a hospital, who is going to pickup the costs? Naturally, the American taxpayer (aka suckers)! Also, by working in the US, this illegal alien is taking a job from and American citizen. I will not mention crowded schools, the costs of bilingual education, crowded highways, more pollution, etc.

Bruce8307 of Connecticut:

He can't afford medical care, uninsured motorist coverage when he has an accident, food for his kids if he has any, lawyers to defend him when he commits a crime, etc. etc. Who pays for this? ... WE PAY FOR IT. .... There is no such thing as "cheap labor". There is only subsidized labor. One way or another the average United States citizen pays for the plethora of costs associated with illegal immigration and over immigration. Especially for unskilled or low skilled workers who flood the country ...

Medical costs, education costs, housing costs, lost job opportunity costs, prison costs for drug dealers, costs from disrespect for our rule of law, on and on and on. If you want to push the labor market to new lows for wages at our expense, you are thinking just right to make this a third world country. There is no "cheap labor". There are huge costs in many directions.

Karl8555 of Tennessee:

To "Mr. Gallagher" I say, maybe your "friend" isn't complaining but you should be. You should be complaining about all the Americans - employers and private citizens alike - who pay illegal immigrants under the table for work performed. In short, this unscrupulous behavior not only cuts the legs out from under honest tradesman all across America, it affects all American taxpayers. How? In the form of lost revenue from payroll taxes, increased insurance rates for small businesses, and by adding an insurmountable burden to the social services needs of America's lower income citizenry, nationally, as well as in Texas.

John3870 of Minnesota, Cynthia of Texas, NancyJ5900 of New Jersey, Roland5655 of Texas, Jill3968 of North Carolina, and Patty9297 of California all had similar ideas in their comments to the blog. Notice that the comments came in from all across the United States, showing we still have a United States that will react to this problem and continue as a strong, coherent nation. At least, that is my hope, and the hope of Reginaldo9982 of California.

Mr. Gallagher runs an insurance business, yet he sees no problem that his friend does not carry workers' compensation or health insurance, and it was surprising that a business owner can't seem to do elementary financial reasoning.

Mr. Gallagher states that his friend "spends all of his earnings buying things to live." That statement indicates the friend has essentially zero savings.

Mr. Gallagher, you are an insurance man. You know your friend has no health or workers' compensation insurance, and no savings. If your friend has a serious illness or accident on the job, who will pay his hospital bills? Do you volunteer to pay? He's your friend. You want him to stay in the United States, so be a sport and pay for his hospital care! Oh, you want us, the taxpayers, to pay for it? At least "he won't complain," as you say repeatedly in your e-mail to us. Well, we are complaining.

The taxpayers will end up paying the bill, or the prices charged to the other hospital patients will rise to cover the uninsured individual, or nobody will ever pay that bill, making it a complete loss to the hospital. Once that occurs enough times, the hospital will go bankrupt and have to shut down. It has happened to several hospitals in areas where large numbers of illegal immigrants reside.¹

Mr. Gallagher commends his friend, saying, "He spends all of his earnings buying things to live," therefore paying sales taxes, and paying property taxes. In the past, the friend had federal income, social security, and medicare taxes withheld from his paycheck when he was an employee of a company.

All that, Mr. Gallagher says, is "supporting the local and Texas state budget [and] ... helps pay for the schooling he received." It's good that Mr. Gallagher acknowledges that his friend's education was paid for by Texas taxpayers and should be reimbursed through the taxes the man pays during his working life. Will that ever happen?

The average cost of public education in Texas was , when his friend graduated from high school.² Let's say the average cost of public education in Texas was $5,500 when he went to school, and let's say he went to school in Texas from the ages of 11-18 - 7 years of schooling. So that is $38,500.

At $75 per day, the friend makes $26,250 if he works 350 days per year. Let's say he pays $3000 per year in sales and property taxes.³ Texas has no state income tax, so that is about all the revenue Texas is going to get from the friend. Is his $3000 per year in sales and property taxes going to pay down that $38,500 moral debt to Texas for his education? The problem is that money also goes to pay for the fire department, police protection, the court system, garbage collection, road maintenance, and other government services such as state welfare benefits. Illegal aliens draw a variety of government benefits. For example, President Obama's aunt, "Auntie Zeitouni" was exposed as being an illegal alien living in taxpayer subsidized housing in Boston and holding down a part-time government job. Even if state law bars illegal aliens from receiving benefits, they can still get the benefits if somebody in the household is legal and can front for the other people. It seems that only a portion of the taxes Gallagher's friend pays are going to pay down the debt that he owes the taxpayers of Texas. Once the friend has a serious illness or accident, he will immediately revert to a major burden on the state of Texas because he has no health nor worker's compensation insurance.

Then there is the cost of paying for unemployment benefits for U.S. citizens while somebody here illegally holds down a decent job:

Mary6016 of Virginia:

The cost of paying our unemployed to sit home while illegals work those jobs, on top of bringing in more visas, will destroy our economy, put us further in debt and leave us even more vulnerable.

Again, "He spends all of his earnings buying things to live," meaning he has no savings, and no prospect of having any. When he is no longer able to work, he will be a burden on somebody. If he has no children, he will be a burden on the community--- the taxpayers. If he does have children, he will be a burden on them, if they choose to help him, because there is no law saying they have to take care of him.

John 0772 of Washington:

Regarding Mr. Gallagher of Texas - his friend worked for a number of years at a legal job; paid income and social security taxes, etc. Now he works for a wage of his own choice - cash - "under the counter" and pays no income taxes or fees at all. Yet, when he become eligible does anyone doubt he will be applying for those social security benefits? The amount he has paid into the system will be re-paid to him within the first few months or years of his benefits, and from then on he'll be living on OUR hard-earned dollars! Any by the way, how does he handle his health care now? By walking into the emergency room? Just because someone is a friendly, likable guy doesn't mean he isn't a criminal!!

If Gallagher's friend has children, the taxpayers will have to pay to educate each of those children at the cost of $7,142 per year, (as of 2006). He won't be able to contribute much to educate them, since "He spends all of his earnings buying things to live." Maybe when your friend's children reach adulthood, they will get high-paying jobs. But until then, the taxpayers have to pay for them.

Then there is the question of the impact of those federal taxes that the landscaping business had earlier withheld from the friend's paycheck. Will those federal taxes counteract what the friend costs to the state of Texas? In 1997, the National Research Council conducted a study on the fiscal impact of immigrants. It is probably the most unbiased study ever conducted on the economics of immigration, and is still valid because the underlying situation has not changed since 1997. The study found that immigrant households contributed a net of $4 to the federal budget if they resided in California, and $3 to the federal budget if they resided in New Jersey.

It turned out to be very difficult to determine, for this blog post, the cost of all the services received by Mr. Gallagher's friend. It does seem unlikely that the friend will ever repay the $38,500 that the state of Texas paid to educate him. That said, I have done an extensive review of studies that assess the taxpayer burden of immigration in general, and a blog to be posted within one week will furnish definitive answers on the issue. Another blog will cover solutions to the dilemma of Mr. Gallagher's friend being brought here at age 10, obviously with no say in the matter.

By:
CHARLES BREITERMAN is a Lawyer and Research Analyst for NumbersUSA

¹Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., Illegal Aliens and American Medicine, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 10 Number 1 Spring 2005, pp. 6-10.

²Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Texas Comptroller, Texas: Where We Stand, Major Challenges Facing Texas Education Today, February 2006.

³Figure $7200 per year in rent, and 20% of rent generally goes to pay property taxes = $1440. The rent cost leaves $19,000 in disposable income. The Houston area sales tax is 8.25% (includes state sales tax), so that yields $1567 in sales taxes paid. $1440 + $1567 = $3000.