NEED HELP DeBunking Repuke Chain Letter. Can't Find Anything At Snope's

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

Boy am I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us.

I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. (This equates to $1.1 Billion per year.)
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html



10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."
Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf


13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."
Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

The total cost is a whopping $335.8 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Are we THAT stupid?


1. The Iraq war began on March 10, 2003.

Verify at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html



2. The total cost for war to date, almost exactly 5 years as of this writing, is $512.05 Billion.***

Verify at: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home



3. That means that the war in Iraq has cost us an average of $102.4 Billion per year. LESS THAN ONE-THIRD OF WHAT WE SPEND ON ILLEGAL ALIENS PER YEAR.

Verify at: The nearest calculator, or, pencil and paper. :)



Think about it. To date, the Iraq war has cost every man, woman and child in the U.S. about $344 per year. And our incredibly stupid federal government's policy of granting greater privileges to illegal aliens than they grant to you or to me, American citizens, costs every man, woman and child in the U.S. about $1,119 per year.



***This number is based on an analysis of the legislation in which Congress has allocated money for war so far and research by the Congressional Research Service (latest report) which has access to Department of Defense financial reports.


If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative in Washington, D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.

are costing the system is a guess, at best, based on an estimate of the number of illegal aliens in the country, another guess, and assuming they all get those benefits, a real stretch since illegals need to stay way under the radar and that means not applying for benefits.

So you get a guess based on a guess based on an erroneous assumption.

Some things might be too silly for even Snopes to bother with.

Here:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=30289


But no one had replied to it yet

to estimate the number of undocumented workers in the US.

If there were as many in my state of Arizona as some of the estimates I've seen, every thrid person would be an undocumented immigrant.

It's impossible that every third person would be.

"FAIR", an anti-immigrant group. That's the ultimate source for these figures, yet they don't seem to provide any reasoning behind the numbers. Just because someone can cite someone else who pulled a number outta their ass, doesn't make the number legit.

Here's where part of may have started:
http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200707060001

Here's a link from a DU post April 2, 2008.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3095958&mesg_id=3095958

I knew I'd seen this piece of crap debunked somewhere but didn't remember where

the taxes (sales tax, income tax and SS taxes that are paid) by this population.

*Since the sources are for RW websites, I wouldn't necessarily trust the numbers.

I read that in recent years. I don't know if that is PER year, but I suspect it is.
So they are helping to support social security and getting little in return.
They need universal healthcare, too.

Also - there is no documentation for the $335.8B mentioned. You obviously can't add the numbers up because they are not independent figures.


7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

The linked transcript says:
"According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 30 percent of federal prisoners are not U.S. citizens"

Non US Citizens are not necessarily illegal aliens.

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. - These are US Citizens, how stupid.


4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! -Link not found
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers. - Link Not Found

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches
for illegal aliens. - Problem Loading page
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. - Problem Loading Page

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Actual Transcript:
DOBBS: That economy, we know the estimates by the most authoritative and recent study put the suppressed wages at $200 billion a year, as a result of immigration, both legal and illegal.
Another misrepresented link to nothing but someone blowing smoke.

What are the respective BENEFITS of your two "scenarios"? In otherwords what do we as a nation get in return for our spending on these two "problems" - "illegal aleins" and illegal war?

And to really piss the sender off ask which scenario is creating more terrorists.

"Send me another one and I'm putting you in my spam filter."

I've done that before. Works like a charm.

Example 1:

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html


Example 2:
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.ht...

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.h...

by the way, under current law, there is another word for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies -- it would be "citizen"


Also, the writer seems to be arguing that the Iraq war is fine on its own merits, and if we just shipped back all of these illegals, we'd have no problem paying for the war. The truth is that one thing has nothing to do with the other.


Finally, the writer makes the "9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens" If you're going to cite that statistic, you also have to counter it with the decreased costs of goods, such as meat, that frequently utilize low cost, illegal labor -- which Rebublicans supported for years.

But it's nice to hear from Lou Dobbs :-)

Here is my question: nearly 4,000 people die in 4 separate terrorist attacks (which was horrible) and we launch a half trillion dollar war on terror. During the time period coinciding with the "War on Terror", 4 1/2 times that number of Americans were lost every year to causes relating to lack of health insurance (http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175). So tell me, it 9-11 is worth half a trillion, shouldn't 18,000 American deaths each year be worth a 2 Trillion dollar "War for universal health insurance?"

Just replace alien with invasion......:woohoo: :woohoo:


:hi:

that's one of the many small things i enjoy about DU...

ironically, i don't even get the chain stuff anymore; but back in the 90s, oh man i could have used some DU back then!

Even legally admitted refugees have a THREE-MONTH cutoff.

Check your inbox!

The following comments are my suggestion for arguing with republicans.






Wait a tick...4 and 5 are the same thing. Come to think of it 1, 2, 3 and 8 are the same thing too...and hey, why didn't the Bush administration do anything about 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 14? They vetoed all those bills the Democrat (sic) Congress passed. Now all of a sudden the DoJ (Department of Justice) can't enforce the law?

Yes, you are, take it up with the multi-billion-dollar corporation, Disney and their figure of $875 billion spent on "the war of terror"

Oh, and by the way, I don't believe any of the links provided as "proof". All the CNN transcripts are from the same interview. Everyone knows CNN has a liberal bias. Are you saying that we can trust CNN now?

All these numbers talk about what the government is doing. Why not post links directly from the government itself? Or, don't you trust the Bush administration's numbers?