alt Hacker News> and paid over $100,000 in taxes last year alone
Genuinely curious, what does taxes have to do with it? Everyone pays taxes, legal or illegal in some form.
I don’t think paying your dues should make you more likely to get through the pipeline. After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.
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Taxes are supposed to pay for public services. An efficient visa system is a public service. If you pay tons of taxes but don’t get a public service that’s personally very important to you, it’s natural to feel let down
You have to do a lot when you get a green card to prove you won't be a burden on the US tax payer. It's a big part of the system and a big part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric
> Genuinely curious, what does taxes have to do with it?
It's popular trope from the GOP that immigrants are an economic drain on the US. They get free <insert whatever you want>, so the US must throw them out to save money.
A lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric involves some version of the lie that immigrants don't pay taxes.
Citizenship is tied to the right to vote and Taxation without Representation was literally the driving force for the creation of America itself
> I don’t think paying your dues should make you more likely to get through the pipeline. After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.
> After all, you paid those taxes because you made good money, which is what people come here for.
You mean they’ve contributed generously for the compensation they’ve earned?
One can reasonably argue that not paying your dues should exclude you from the pipeline.
Uncle Sam likes tax payers.
To show that they're not freeloaders. A lot of right-wingers have a belief that immigrants are implicitly freeloaders, and therefore getting rid of them will make the economy better.
Of course it's just not true. Like most current Republican talking points, it's plainly fabricated; it's an outright lie. But, since a lot of people believe it, it's useful to reminder everyone that its not the case.
Signaling.
A very common xenophobic narrative is that foreigners do two things at the same time (1) steal your jobs and (2) drain your social systems. Another even more vile one one would be anything to do with coming for your daughters and women, but for this you will have to favtor in race. Because a rich white Frenchman coming your daughter doesn't have the same ring to it for bigots.
If the US, a country with a too low birthrate, throws out even the best kind of migrant (namely the kind that generates a lot of value for the country), you're going to be in deeper shit than ever before for decades to come.
Now I agree that paying taxes or not should have nothing to do with it.
I think the point is that they are contributing to the US, and were the best option for their employer, and are supporting their communities, etc.
All things that we should be supporting if we are indeed wishing our nation to prosper.
A plurality of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, so we’re essentially turning away someone who is building up our country.