Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Iowa is not a border state, and thus, does not need the type of immigration law that Arizona passed earlier this year. But something has to be done to save taxpayers from paying for services utilized by immigrants in the country illegally, Iowa House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said earlier this week during a radio interview.
While speaking to Christian radio host Steve Deace, Paulsen pointed to legislation introduced earlier this year aimed at denying state services to illegal immigrants. He said a report by the Legislative Services Agency found the state could save more than $90 million by ending state services to those in the country illegally, but Democrats opposed the measure and effectively killed it.
“The debate ended up being over, ‘Well, it couldn’t be that much money,’” Paulsen said. “State Rep. [Chris] Rants from Sioux City was the floor manager, and he stood up and said, ‘Fine. Tell me what the number is. But that’s not the question. The question is do you think it’s right for the taxpayers of Iowa to fund these services?’ Apparently in this case, the majority Democrats did.”
The nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency released their report on undocumented immigrants’ cost to the state back in 2007. The report concluded that the only government services that undocumented immigrants are eligible for are elementary and secondary public education and emergency health care.
Most citizens do not gain direct benefits from a majority of government spending. Instead, government programs are intended to benefit society as a whole through maintenance of a healthy economy, satisfying public health and safety concerns, providing basic infrastructure, etc. Although undocumented immigrants do not receive most direct benefits, the total benefit of State spending is assumed to accrue to undocumented immigrants at the same rate as legal residents.
The report concluded that because undocumented immigrants qualify for very little state services, and those services would be difficult to deny, “decreasing undocumented immigrant eligibility for state spending does not appear to be a viable policy option. Additionally, if the assumption that undocumented immigrants accrue benefits even without receiving direct services is considered valid, attempting to reduce direct state expenditures on undocumented immigrants would have a minimal effect.”
And as the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project pointed out (also in 2007), that the average undocumented family in Iowa pays about $1,254 in sales and excise taxes, $110 in property taxes, and $307 in income taxes, for a total tax contribution of $1,671 each year. This represents approximately 80 percent of the total amount of taxes paid by a documented family in Iowa earning the same income.
The LSA backs up this data, saying undocumented immigrants are by law, “subject to all existing taxes including sales, excise, property, income and payroll taxes. Most of these taxes cannot be avoided.”
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