http://www.indystar.com/article/2013060 ... verty-rate Stop immigrants from further driving up poverty rateMay 31, 2013 3:32 PM |
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Alarms were raised in the May 26 opinion piece, “We must confront growing poverty rate in suburban Indy.” The suburban poverty rate increased by 64 percent over 10 years due in part to the fact that so many new immigrants work for minimum wage.
The best way to keep poverty from growing is to prevent the Gang of Eight amnesty bill from passing. It gives immediate work status to 11 million illegal immigrants and grows the legal foreign worker population by 33 million over 10 years. We already have 20 million unemployed Americans, many of whom are minorities. Our black unemployment rate is 13.8 percent and Hispanics follow at 9.6 percent.
Amnesty will hurt everyone, immigrant and citizen alike. We cannot provide enough jobs for our own people. Why are we deceiving new immigrants into thinking we can provide jobs for them?
The new low-skilled workers eventually will be entitled to all public benefits including unemployment, Social Security and health care. These poor immigrants won’t pay enough in taxes to offset the $6 trillion in public benefits they will cost according to the Heritage Foundation.
Prevent more poverty by urging Congress to vote no amnesty.
Cheree Calabro
co-founder, Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform & Enforcement
***This is the article about poverty which prompted my letter:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... 3305240013 We must confront growing poverty rate in suburban IndyMay 23, 2013 |
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The soaring poverty rate in the suburbs, spotlighted in an important new book from the Brookings Institution, underscores the pressing need for low-cost solutions that have support across party lines.
Why so urgent? Poverty will get worse before it gets better, whether in cities or suburbs. As a recent Indianapolis Star article pointed out, it’s certainly getting worse in our area. The city’s poverty rate increased from 11.95 to 21.4 percent between 2000 and 2011. The suburban rate rose from 5 percent to 7.7 percent.
Nationally, Brookings authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube found suburban poverty had increased 64 percent over the past decade, a substantially faster growth rate than in urban areas. They call for the creation of a “Metropolitan Opportunity Challenge” that would funnel federal resources to regions and, in their words, “reinvent the system from the ground up.” It is an ambitious and attractive idea but while we wait for implementation, let’s not overlook steps to ease poverty now.
For example, one factor in the suburbanization of poverty is that so many new residents, especially recent immigrants, work for the minimum wage in service sector jobs.
An immediate step to buttress the earnings of low-income workers would be to index the federal minimum wage to inflation. Without this measure in place, workers will see their earnings effectively decline as the economy recovers and prices rise. Both President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney supported the idea during their campaign.
Another way to lift low wage workers out of poverty is to train them for better jobs. At present, there is no systematic national effort to assist states in providing subsidized employment or job training. Temporary, subsidized public works projects and job training programs will create new jobs and deliver valuable services to taxpayers.
We also need to improve the programs that make up the so-called safety net that protects the poorest Americans without necessitating whopping new expenditures. Medicaid patients and providers must be encouraged to move treatment out of emergency rooms and into offices and clinics. This “managed care” approach rewards doctors for keeping patients healthy whereas the current fee-for-service model generates more income when the sick require more treatments.
These are just a few potential answers to the problems the Brookings’ authors identify. All have demonstrated cross-partisan support. None carry hefty price tags although it’s reasonable to ask if we can afford to do nothing. Even as the economic recovery inches along, the number of Americans living in poverty is expected to continue to grow. That’s unacceptable, no matter their address.
Graham is dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He is the author, with Kristin Seefeldt, of the new book, America’s Poor and the Great Recession (Indiana University Press).
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... 3305240013