Day: August 13, 2008

I have to eat my words, there WERE workers that had access to secured areas of the airport. I would agree that when there are locations that require security clearances, we should absolutely know the backgrounds of those people. Once again, this just amplifies that we need to fix our broken immigration system. We need to have a credible way of knowing who is here in our country.  I recognize, that many families, caught up in this raid, will be in heartache tonight.

I will be posting a story, very soon, about another detainee death, where the  man suffered horribly. 

DULLES, Va. — An immigration raid at Dulles International Airport resulted in 55 arrests on Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says.
The people were doing contract work at a construction site, inside a secure area, where they would potentially have access to runways and airplanes.

ICE agents made their move as the workers were being bused to the site, checking work and immigration papers.

The agency says one of the workers had an airport security badge, that grants unescorted access to the airport tarmac.

ICE says allowing unauthorized workers into sensitive sites puts the nation’s infranstructure at risk.

Most of the people arrested will be flown an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas to begin removal proceedings.

Officials say this operation and others like it aim to guard infrastructure. The agency says it’s important to make sure people who work at airports are in the United States legally.

Investigation into the workers’ immigration status has been going on for a while, leading up to the raid.

The arrests did not affect flights or travel to and from the airport

Ask yourself, what should Americans be more incensed about, day laborers who don’t pay income taxes, or untold millions or billions in lost income taxes due to corporations not paying?  I mean really, shouldn’t we focus on the “big fish” as opposed to the “little fish”!  There are already billions that illegal immigrants pay into social security, money they will never collect because the number they are using is bogus.  No, NOT a stolen number, simply one that doesn’t exist, except that it affords them the ability to work and pay taxes like the rest of us.

WASHINGTON – Unlike the rest of us, most U.S. corporations and foreign companies doing business in the United States pay no federal income tax, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office released Tuesday said two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, and about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO’s estimate.

“It’s shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called “S” corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

“Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code,” Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren’t paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices — amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

“It’s time for the big corporations to pay their fair share,” Dorgan said.