No Free Lunch

U46 serves thousands of free lunches each day. But your dad is still right. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody paid for those lunches. The money goes through a federal department, but I wonder if it would make a difference if each home in Elgin got an invoice every 90 days for free lunch expenditures. Maybe if we saw the money coming out of our pockets, we’d think differently about it.

But we consider ourselves lucky to get a $600 tax refund, not entirely realizing that we gave the feds $5,000 during the year.

When it comes to illegal aliens in the workplace all sorts of otherwise intelligent people say, “If they weren’t here working for so cheap, it’d cost us a lot more money.” City contracts would be more expensive if we enforced the clause about not hiring illegals.

A BLT would be astronomical because illegals slaughter the hogs and pick the lettuce and tomatoes. Or so they say.

We all received an education from Dr. Barry Chiswick, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois Chicago. He was a panelist at the Hemmens back in October when they held that immigration forum. He sat next to Mayor Schock as I recall.

First, Chiswick explains the attraction of cheap, illegal labor: “You know, when I hire a lawn care service I would rather pay a lower price than a higher price. When I go to a restaurant, I would rather pay a lower price than a higher price. But in fact, native workers would otherwise do those jobs.”

Then, Chiswick tells us there is no free lunch, even in using illegal aliens for our labor. He says: “They’re paying the price and actually the rest of us are also paying the price through higher taxes because of the income transfers that go to low skilled immigrant workers and native workers whose earnings and incomes are lower because of the competition.”

Did you hear what he said? Native-born workers are paying the price, especially the low-skilled workers. Low-skilled workers are kids looking for their first job. Low-skilled workers are the poor citizens who otherwise turn to welfare or street crime to get by.

And did you hear that term “income transfers”? That’s a fancy way of saying we are subsidizing the illegal alien. He’s going to show up at the emergency room to be treated for a backache and we’ll pay $800 for it. How will we pay it? Through higher insurance rates and higher fee schedules at the hospital. And maybe we pay by losing our hospital on the east side of town.

We pay because the illegal alien lives with three other families and sends his kids to our schools. The taxes from that one house aren’t going to cover all the kids coming out of it, so our taxes go up to compensate.

This “income transfer” takes place every time we send a check to the insurance company. My policy says it is about $80 a year for uninsured motorist coverage, not to mention my rate being higher because I live in zip code 60120.

Those “income transfers” are all over the place and they aren’t being paid by the employer. They are hidden charges that mask the true cost of illegal labor.

In our Classroom section of www.legalamericans.net we’ve included a congressional testimony but Cornell Professor Vernon Briggs on the subject. You might enjoy reading it.

It is a mistake to think that the city contractor who hires illegals is passing the savings on to the city. It is also a mistake to think that you are beneficiary of the roofer who hires illegals. In both cases they bid the job just low enough to get it and pocket more profit for themselves. There’s an “income transfer” going to the crooked contractor who hires illegals in the first place. And if he’s paying them in cash we’re not even getting FICA or taxes from him. Bear Stearns says that amounts to $35 BILLION a year in lost revenue!
(Link: http://www.firecoalition.com/docs/bear%20stearns%20study.pdf)


But no matter. Things are cheaper when illegal aliens do the work and far too many of us are willing to look the other way.

AFLA is NOT willing to look the other way. It’s costing us money and it is just plain WRONG!