Illegal immigrants in public housing
Even though there are waiting lists of citizens eager for a spot in public housing, some spaces are occupied by illegal immigrants. It’s a small percentage, to be sure; estimates are .4% of units, although it is admitted that authorities are unaware of the true number, which could be higher.
Most of the known illegal immigrants in public housing are the relatives of citizens or legal immigrants with whom they live. A typical grouping will be illegal parents living with children who have been born in this country—once this happens, the parents are home free, as it were.
But sometimes the illegal alien is not part of a family unit in which some of the relatives are citizens or legal residents, and yet still qualifies for public housing. How can such a thing occur? Here’s one way:
Massachusetts, where Obama’s aunt occupied one of about 50,000 state-funded units, doesn’t ask immigration status under a 1977 federal consent decree in a class-action lawsuit that prohibits the state from denying the benefit to illegal immigrants.
The article is mum about the details of the class-action lawsuit and how such a bizarre ruling came to be. But it does offer the following clarification about the legal situation of Obama’s aunt Onyango, although whether her story is typical is unclear:
…[she] applied for public housing in 2002 while she was in the country legally seeking asylum from her native Kenya…Onyango moved into federally funded housing in 2003 and stayed there after 2004, when, The Associated Press learned, an immigration judge denied her asylum application and ordered her to leave the country.
Onyango transferred to an apartment funded only by the state, which cannot ask about immigration status under the court order.
The issue seems to be whether the public housing is federally funded or state funded. It is not disclosed how Onyango was able to make this all-important transfer from a federal to a state-funded site in a city such as Boston, where there is a substantial waiting list for public housing. My guess would be that, as a person already residing in a federal project, she may have had some sort of priority if she wanted to move, and might have been able to bypass a waiting list.
However it was done, immigration attorneys are no doubt well aware of such loopholes in the law, and most likely advise their clients accordingly. The taxpayer, of course, is the one picking up the tab—for the housing itself, and probably also for the attorneys who advise their illegal immigrant clients as to how best to game the system.
If the supply of public housing is too small to fill the demand, then the amount taxpayers are paying for it is the same regardless of who lives there, unless it’s illegal immigrant residents who make the difference between oversupply and undersupply. That doesn’t seem likely from your own figures.
Last week we drove by the projects where Obama’s aunt was scamming the system and the US taxpayer. My wife grew up in Southie.
Neo, have you ever studied the history of Prop 187 in California? It denied illegals public assistance. The residents voted for it in an election. A federal judge overthrew it and Gov Davis refused to appeal it higher. One of the “hispanic” legislators called it the ” Last gasp of whites in California”. Whatever the official number is, you can bet in reality it is much higher, since illegals are experts in obtaining stolen Social security numbers to appear legit on paper.
Last year in Texas we found out hundreds of illegals were registered to vote in just a single county. Juries are drawn from voter registrations and judges were getting the excuse that people could not serve because they were not citizens, so that sparked an investigation……
Neo, check this out: 5 million illegal aliens with home mortgages —
link: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/10/09/calling-old-media-five-million-illegals-have-illegal-mortgages-u
But at least this isn’t France, where over 1,000 cars were burned on New Years night. You will see the original story had only about 450, but the number went up. Gotta love those “youths”.
http://www.france24.com/en/20090101-almost-450-cars-torched-new-years-eve-france-paris-police-crime-security
If the supply of public housing is too small to fill the demand, then the amount taxpayers are paying for it is the same regardless of who lives there, unless it’s illegal immigrant residents who make the difference between oversupply and undersupply.
Which is precisely why we should spend more money on the space program!
It’s not like there will be less people living in public housing whether you spend it on spaceships or not. It’s not like you’ll get a tax cut if we built more spaceships or less public housing.
You can spend the money on spaceships, laser weapons or public housing. The only constant will be the denizens in public housing, but at least we’ll have spaceships. Again.
There is no upper limit to need, but there is a limit to resources. How can you not understand that?
My question is this: Why did Obama’s aunt request asylum from Kenya? I want to know!
Hyman Rosen –
If I have to feed the grasshoppers, I prefer them to be legal ones and not illegal ones.
And I don’t expect it to be a generation of help.
Lets try something new- Those that will not work, do not get to eat.
Said the ant, tired of working to feed the grasshoppers. 🙁
It comes to this: making provision for a problem guarantees the existence of the problem. Similarly, subsidizing something encourages it; taxing something discourages it.
SF is learning this basic lesson the hard way re homelessness: the more programs, the more homeless people end up there.
I’d love to see a voluntary tax contribution similar to the Presidential campaign one, but larger. Something along the lines of “Would you like to increase your taxes by the larger of $5000 or 10%, whichever is larger?”
Then liberal do-gooders could soothe their consciences without forcing the grownups to do something that grownups know is fundamentally counterproductive by encouraging layabouts to come/stay here (or, for the homegrown ones, to remain layabouts).
Sorry for the two “largers.” PWBMF, if it were implemented.
Why do you think that illegal immigrants are layabouts?
I don’t. (Quite the contrary.)
The “layabouts” reference was made with respect to the broader issue of liberal programs gone awry, and more particularly with respect to SF’s problem with bums (aka layabouts and/or lunatics) who are creating such havoc in the city. The point was that creating SF’s “programs” to ameliorate the problem had the effect of exacerbating it by attracting to SF more people in need of the programs.
With respect to illegal immigration, provision of housing (and the availability of employment) encourages it, and conversely.
E-Verify Program for employment is threatened
The department of Homeland Security has a great new program that allows employers to almost instantly determine employment eligibility. About 99.6 percent of all work-authorized employees verified through E-Verify are verified without having to take any type of corrective action. This is a program that works well. If every business in America used this system, all illegal immigrants would become unemployable and have to return to their homelands.