Free information on all public schools

[anxvariety]

I went to this school.. I’m caucasian. Check out the stats, particularly the race and free lunch correlations.

http://schools.publicschoolsreport.com/California/Vista/BobierElementary.html

[TheBreeze]

It’s good to see that we are importing poverty at an ever increasing rate.

[powayseller]

Poverty is related to education, not race.

On a related note, did you hear about the totalization program that the Social Security Admin had to release under the Freedom and Information Act. Bill Handel talked about it this morning (6-9am, 600 AM – lawyer who delivers exciting stories).

Under the totalization program, illegal aliens from Mexico get full Social Security benefits in the U.S. It’s going to be retroactive. Bush is expected to sign it soon, and Congress has 60 days to reverse it but is expected approve of it as well.

I’m all for helping the poor, but it just bothers me that we are helping someone who is illegal. If we’re going to treat them as citizens, let’s make them citizens and stop treating them as criminals by calling them illegal. And while we’re at it, why are we holding down the quotas of educated people who come in by plane? I guess it’s a way of keeping down supply of educated professionals, and raising the supply of uneducated laborers, further widening the wage gap.

Anyway, this SS legislation is plain wrong. Why promise even more benefits, when we can’t even pay for the ones we’ve already promised?

[PerryChase]

powayseller, you sound like a Lou Dobbs Republican.

We need the low cost labor because we think that we’re too good to do certain things. I support a guest worker program that will let workers come and go as needed.

About Social Security, if a worker(legal or illegal) contributed to Social Security, he earned the benefits and should be credited accordingly. His illegal status does not take away the fact that he’s legally entitled to SS benefits.

[anxvariety]

Poverty is related to education, not race.

For some reason I am slightly bothered by the free lunch stats.. no one should be starving, but for some reason I feel scammed as a taxpayer being that there are free rides for almost 100% of the students at some of those schools all the way down to the last $1.50 for lunch.. I’ll support it for the kids secondarily, but I think primarily it’s the parents responsibility to take care of that.. can these students parents really not afford that? It’s almost opportunistic/greedy sounding, or maybe I am…

I would guess that most of these kids parents are illegals and are paid under the table at their jobs.. so they’re not paying taxes… maybe in other ways they are making equivalent contributions through civic duty, but I just don’t believe that there is any loyalty to the united states from them so why the free lunch..

[TheBreeze]

Perry, you sound like a misguided liberal. The U.S. already has a guest-worker program. This isn’t about not having enough guest workers. It’s about not having enough cheap labor. Business owners don’t want to pay a living wage for these jobs and that’s why many Americans don’t want to do these jobs. It has nothing to do with the type of work, rather, it’s all about getting cheap labor and pushing benefits like retirement (SS) and medical care for these cheap laborers onto the taxpayers.

Do you realize that as we let more impoverished people into the U.S., that wages continue to go down and more and more Americans go on welfare and unemployment? How does that help our country? Would you support a guest worker program that requires the employers to pay a wage rate based on the prevailing union wage and for the employers to provide health insurance? I could accept something like that, but that is not what this is about. It’s not about paying living wages and supporting these laborers, but is all about foisting the real expense of a cheap laborer onto American taxpayers.

As far as Social Security Totalization, America should do it the same way Mexico does it. Right now, America requires that a taxpayer pay into the system for only 10 years before that taxpayer vests. Poor Social Security payers in America also get much more back compared to what they put into the Social Security. Mexico on the other hand requires 24 years worth of payments for vesting and only provides a benefit equal to the amount someone paid in plus interest. For this to be fair to citizens in both countries, the U.S. should provide the same benefit to Mexicans that Mexico provides to Americans — 24 years vesting then only pay back what was put in + simple interest. Right now, this totalization program would provide a huge benefit to illegal aliens that America cannot afford:

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back904.html

[JJGittes]

I could easily be wrong, but I seem to recall that the proposed Totalization agreement contemplates that work histories in both countries count and are reciprocal. In other words, a Mexican could have worked 8 years in Mexico, and then 2 years in the USA, and then qualify for US social security with the total of ten years.

These agreements have been entered into with many other (primarily western european, australia and canada) countries. But with those counries it is no big deal because people are not flocking from them to the USA, and their benefits are roughly equivilent to ours. Citizens of theose countries come here to work via a company transfer or the like, and then go home. Same thing for US workers who go to those countries to set up telecom systems or factories or whatever. Mexico, however, is a third world country that absolutely loves sending is economic refugees here, and receving remitances back.

Regardless of the above, and regardless of the cutural implications already being felt from SoCal to Texas, I have yet to see a serious econmic analysis that shows that this deal is good for us–the USA. If it is not good for US, then we should not do it, period. And no, I don’t consider below market illegal cheap labor good for the USA. Its like economic cocaine…eventually the fun will be over and the consequences will be ugly.

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