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Letter: Open borders column leaves a bit to be desired

A quick Google search regarding the recent article Claire Noble wrote about illegal immigration indicates it was supported by data from a Wikipedia page, but the facts she used were misleading. She wrote: “Immigrants demonstrably enrich our country. They pay taxes — $11.64 billion in state and local taxes a year”

Let’s start with $11.64 billion in taxes, which is a lot of money. But she failed to also tell you that on the same Wikipedia page it states: “The Congressional Budget Office reported in 2007 that “the tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to them.”

She goes on to write: “More than 40 percent of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.” This statement needs serious clarification. By my estimation, unless you are Native American, everyone else here is an immigrant, and I don’t think that 60% of the S&P 500 companies were founded by Native Americans, but I could be wrong.



She also said that human decency is on her side. But in the same Wikipedia article, it states that illegal immigration drives down wages. So when is driving down wages with cheap, illegal, foreign labor on working Americans a decent thing to do? 

I am a second-generation American, and I believe that our country wants and needs immigrants. Noble’s article deliberately combines legal and illegal immigrant stats to somehow make her point, but it would be better to separate the two so we can compare apples to apples. Nobody is arguing against legal immigration, but the issue remains that illegal immigration poses an economic threat to Americans.

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I disagree with Ms. Noble with her open borders opinion and I assume that she does not grant strangers free access to her home, but she wants America to do exactly that.

Darren Brennan

Edwards


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