Category Archives: Immigration

Illegals Pay up to $300 Million in State-Local Taxes. In the Final Analysis, So What?

Illegal aliens? We don't have no stinkin' illegal aliens.

We come in peace.

by James A. Bacon

There are an estimated 260,000 to 290,000 illegal aliens (“undocumented workers” to those inclined to politically correct thinking) in Virginia. Each year, they pay between $200 million and $300 million in state and local taxes, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Institute. That constitutes between 6.6% to 7% of their household income.

Illegals pay many taxes because they are impossible to avoid, observe authors Aaron Williams and Michael Cassidy. If someone buys grapefruits or gasoline, sales tax is collected regardless of his or her immigration status. Illegals, they say, pay between $106 million and $135 million from this source each year.

Similarly, property taxes cannot be ducked. If an illegal purchases a house, he pays a real estate tax the same as everyone else. If he rents instead, his landlord still pays the tax. While some illegals work off the books, the Commonwealth Institute estimates that between 67% and 75% work for employers who withhold state income taxes from their paychecks. (These pay federal taxes as well, despite being ineligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits.)

Conclude Williams and Cassidy:

The bottom line is that undocumented immigrants make significant contributions to the Virginia economy and tax rolls despite being ineligible for many of the services and benefits they contribute to. In order to develop policies that promote the prosperity of all Virginians, it is essential that debate about immigration broaden to include these important contributions.

Bacon’s bottom line: The Commonwealth Institute provides an important reminder that undocumented workers may be here illegally but they do pay taxes, undercutting the notion that they constitute a fiscal drain on state and local government. In a similar vein, other studies have shown that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. There are legitimate reasons for opposing illegal immigration, and there are illegitimate reasons. The notion that illegals don’t pay taxes is not a legitimate reason.

We should not demonize people who are just trying to better their lives. I would not go as far as Jeb Bush as to say that illegal immigrants are performing “an act of love” by slipping illegally into the country, but I find it hard to fault someone for looking for an opportunity to work.

However, the fact that the motives of illegals are sympathetic does not make it OK for them to be here. The biggest problem, to my mind, is that they compete for jobs with native-born Americans, especially lower-income Americans. If I were a meat packer or construction worker who found his wages depressed by a glut of immigrants who think $8.00 an hour is pretty good money, I would be fully justified in getting up in arms.

The idea that there are “some jobs that Americans just won’t do” is a lot of hooey. There may be some jobs that Americans won’t do at $8 an hour, but Americans will do them for $10 or $12 an hour. Unless someone repealed the law of supply and demand while I wasn’t looking, illegal immigrants put downward pressure on wage levels in lower-income jobs. If you’re looking for inexpensive landscaping or domestic help, that’s a good thing. If you are the landscaper or domestic help, it’s a bad thing.

Where I depart from the Commonwealth Institute analysis is the proposition that we should develop policies to promote the prosperity of “all Americans” — illegals included. No, regardless of how much they pay in taxes, illegals are not our responsibility. Our prime responsibility is to hundreds of thousands of low-income, native-born Americans. Our responsibility is to find ways to raise the wages of Virginians at the bottom of the income ladder without resorting to gimmicks like minimum wage that distort the labor market.

Yes, we should help illegal immigrants but we should do it by encouraging their countries of origin to adopt economic policies that support job creation and wage growth. Mexico has done so well in this regard that there is a net flow of immigrants from the U.S. back to Mexico today. Central American countries are much bigger net contributor of illegals these days. Not surprisingly, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are dysfunctional societies. The preferable solution is to help those countries achieve political and economic stability, not accommodate ourselves to a continued outflow of illegal migrants.

The Ironies of Virginia’s Growing Diversity

Midlothian’s New Grand Mart taps state’s growing diversity

 By Peter Galuszka














Memories of a Klan Rally

KlanersBy Peter Galuszka





Here goes:

Letter From West Virginia

The High Price of a Klan Rally













By Peter Galuszka; Edited by Sandra Dallas

Taking The Statues Down

stalin By Peter Galuszka

In 1993, I was stumbling along the rough concrete sidewalks of Alma Ata, then the  capital of the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. I was late for an interview with an official of what was now an independent nation rich in oil, natural gas and uranium.

The street map I had was old. I stopped a Kazakh woman in a kerchief and asked, “Is this Lenin Street?”

“Not anymore,” she replied. “It is Apple Street.”

Therein lies a small history lesson. Every human society, it doesn’t matter, where undergoes a major reassessment of how its humanity squares with its history.

The former Soviet Union is an excellent example. Its architect, V.I. Lenin, was a brilliant organizer but a killer. Josef Stalin murdered at least 20 million (who’s counting?) during the Great Purge and later in the war against Hitler.

Time and again, the old USSR and now the Russian Federation would undergo a change in leadership and the statutes would come down. They did when Stalin died in 1953 in Eastern Europe. Russians were shocked when new chieftain Nikita Khrushchev gave his liberal-minded “Secret Speech” in 1956 denounced Stalin. When another liberal, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, came to power in 1985, he pushed the national conversation even further.

By that time, I was reporting there for an international magazine. I visited a tractor factory in the town of Vladimir in 1987. Its very bright deputy director who would go on the Harvard Graduate School of Business, smirked uneasily when he said the factory was still named after Andrei Zhdanov.

He didn’t need to mention that Zhdanov was a Stalin thug who oppressed artists like Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich. He also was instrumental in starting the great purge of the 1930s during which 1.5 million people were imprisoned and more than 680,000 were shot.

The old statues really started to come down after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. The Zhdanov plant got a new name (although the way things are going under Vladimir Putin, the statues are starting to go back up).

So, what’s may point? That all societies need to air their history and their myths – including the ones that white Southerners have clung to for yours. Are some so arrogant as to claim they are above what other nations undergo?

Mother Jones, one of my favorite magazines, has story listing just how many streets, schools and public buildings are named after dubious characters. In Jacksonville, Fla., they renamed a high school named after Nathan. Bedford Forrest, a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. North Carolina has renamed school facilities named after former Gov. Charles Aycock, a white supremacist.

And for the truly strange, look no farther than Richmond. The Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School is on a street named after John Singleton Mosby, a famous Confederate cavalry raider.

Don’t Stop a Welcome Purge

confederate flag dayBy Peter Galuszka

The Confederate Battle flag is quickly unraveling throughout the Old Dominion. With it are going many icons of an era racked with controversy and hatred, along with mythology, which regretfully will still continue in some form.

Following the example of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who asked that state’s legislature to take the Confederate flag off State Capitol grounds, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe ordered the Department of Motor Vehicles to stop issuing specialty license plates showing the flag along with the Sons of Confederate Veterans logo.

National retailers such as Walmart and Amazon likewise nixed the flag and removed items displaying it from their shelves and warehouses.

Two events helped push this national movement with remarkable speed.

One was a U.S. Supreme Court decision – split evenly between liberal and conservative judges – that Texas had the right not to allow the Confederate flag on its license plates. The other was the shooting death of nine African-Americans by a self-styled white supremacist as they prayed at a Charleston church.

It’s about time some movement was made on this matter. But in Virginia, as in other parts of the South, there’s a lot more to do. Richmond’s famous Monument Avenue has the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. Why aren’t they dismantled?

Richmond area schools have “Rebels “or “Confederates” as their mascots, namely Lee-Davis High School in Mechanicsville and Douglas S. Freeman in Henrico County.

Throughout the state are street names celebrating the Southern war machine. There are Jefferson Davis Highways in Alexandria and South Richmond. Only recently were flags removed from the Confederate Memorial Chapel on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and at private Washington & Lee University.

Of course, the flag is an insult to those oppressed by it, notably African-Americans. But mythology – about an honorable South tragically plundered and lost – has provided cover and let it fly 150 years after the Civil War.

Having grown up mostly in the South or Border States in the 1950s and 1960s and then having worked there for years, I have dealt with the Confederate flag for years. I don’t find it absolutely shocking as some do, but I have always wondered why it keeps flying on public property.

It wasn’t until I was in college in the Boston area when I started really asking myself questions. For one course, I read “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” historian C. Vann Woodward’s 1955 masterpiece. He demolished the idea that legal segregation was a long-time Southern tradition. Instead, it started up in the 1890s, he pointed out.

That’s not a very long time, especially for white Southerners who purport to be so sensitive to history. Instead, they have invented a mythology. Virginia is becoming more diverse and includes people who have no family tie to state during the mid-19th century. One reason Gov. Haley had the fortitude to do what she did was that she is an Indian-American, born in South Carolina. In other words, she is neither white nor black according to the old rules and didn’t need to be guided by them.

My immediate concern is that this long-needed purge won’t go far enough. And as long as the generals preside over Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the fairy tales will endure.

Hottest Primary May Be 10th Senate District

 By Peter Galuszka

Emily Francis

Emily Francis

Primaries in Virginia used to be a bore, but no longer.

Last year, Dave Brat’s Tea Party-backed insurgency against the seemingly impregnable Eric Cantor garnered national headlines in the 7th Congressional District.

This year, you have several General Assembly races come June 9 that will seek to replace several prominent politicians who are retiring, including Republicans John Watkins of the 10th Senate District; Walter Stosch of the 12th Senate District; and Democrat Charles Colgan of the 29th.

I picked the 10th District race for a piece in Style Weekly. There, historic tax credit developer Dan Gecker, a long time Chesterfield County planning commissioner and supervisor, is up against progressive non-profit consultant Emily Francis and former delegate and lawyer Alex McMurtrie for the Democrat candidacy. Whoever wins faces Republican nominee Glen Sturtevant and Libertarian Carl Loser.

Dan Gecker

Dan Gecker

The race could well determine whether the state senate remains in Republican hands. Should the Democrat win, the mix in the senate could bounce back to 20-20; it is 21-19 now in favor of the GOP. Stephen Farnsworth, a political analyst at the University of Mary Washington,  told me this is the race to watch.

What’s also curious is that the 10th District is a true anomaly. One might assume that such as district would be comfortably GOP. It isn’t since it stretches from the blue areas of Richmond like the Museum District and the Northside. It covers parts of the more conservative mega-neighborhoods of Brandermill and Woodlake in Chesterfield and then all of Powhatan County.

Instead of having the likes of Brat saying that his opponent isn’t conservative enough, Francis says she’s the only true progressive in the race.

Another quirk is that Gecker, a moderate who says he’s a progressive, figured in the Bill Clinton impeachment.

Back in the 1990s, he was lawyer to Kathleen Willey, a Powhatan resident who claimed that Clinton groped her in the White House. Gecker represented her in a book deal. Some Democrats have said that Gecker is a Clinton-basher – an interesting claim now that part of the Democratic establishment is gearing Hillary Clinton for another presidential run.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton confidante, has tried to smooth things over by endorsing Gecker.

Two Stories on Change in Richmond’s Suburbs


New wegmans site

New wegmans site

By Peter Galuszka

Well, well,

Jim Bacon has this month’s cover story in the Henrico Monthly about the changing nature of office parks in one county that has plenty of them.

Not to be outdone, I have my own cover story in the Chesterfield Monthly, a sister magazine published by the same people.

My piece is about how Midlothian Turnpike, the main artery of suburban sprawl in Chesterfield County, is being led into its next iteration y two new types of grocery stores.

One is the high-end Wegmans. The other is New Grand Market, a large-scale international food store that reflects Richmond’s fast-growing diversity and foreign flare.

I think both of our pieces, in different ways, reflect big shifts in two of the largest counties in the state. (I wonder if I got paid more than he did).