Legal immigrants lose aid

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110629/NEWS01/706299888/-1#legal-immigrants-lose-aid

Published Wednesday June 29, 2011

By Paul Hammel
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — With a seemingly endless war raging in her native Congo, Germaine Mbuyi sought a better life for her five children in the United States.

Her family got lucky and won a ticket to the American dream via a lottery, which granted them Diversity Lottery Visas to enter the country.

They sold their home, spent more than $8,000 on required medical tests and passport documents and emigrated in March.

But their good fortune is about to run out.

On Friday, the State of Nebraska will cut off an array of welfare assistance that has helped legal, noncitizen immigrants such as Mbuyi and her family make the transition from being non-English-speaking newcomers to taxpaying, working citizens.

As part of the state's budget-cutting efforts, state lawmakers this spring cut off Medicaid, food stamps and cash benefits granted to an estimated 2,000 immigrant families.

For Mbuyi, it meant losing $648 a month in Aid to Dependent Children benefits that paid her monthly rent in Lincoln. While the children keep their food stamps and Medicaid benefits, their mother will lose both, leaving the family with a third less money to eat on and no safety net if Mbuyi gets sick.

With her husband still in the Congo and their savings exhausted, she doesn't know where to turn for living expenses.

FULL story at link.

[Angry Dragon]

1. Hang your head in shame Nebraska politicians

[dkf]

2. Why are we inviting more people we need to take care of when we can't take care of our own people?

[Cali_Democrat]

3. We can take care of our own people and immigrants

Raise taxes on the wealthy to Eisenhower levels and use that money for assistance.

Problem solved.

[dkf]

4. It's never the wealthy who pay taxes...it's the middle class who can't produce enough

shenanigans to get out of paying taxes that get whacked. Look at what is happening in Greece. They wealthy don't report their earnings so raising taxes doesn't affect them. Instead you keep on raising taxes on the same suckers who are already paying the taxes, then you cut their benefits. It's a joke.

[Cali_Democrat]

7. "It's never the wealthy who pay taxes"

Change the tax code and enforce the law. The tax code should be no longer than a few pages. If the wealthy don't pay taxes or engage in shenanigans, liquidate their assets immediately.

Simple.

[dkf]

11. It's the exemptions! Quit harping on the rate because only the responsible get hit.

Audit audit audit!! Hell why don't we give finders fees to IRS agents and target those with effective rates under 20%?

[Omaha Steve]

15. W eliminated 100's of IRS agents

Wonder why?

[dkf]

17. There is no incentive to root out this stuff and so much incentive to do it.

It's not balanced.

[Cali_Democrat]

16. Get rid of the exemptions

That would be part of revamping the tax code.

Simple

[Obamanaut]

6. Stop all the current wars, and don't get involved in new ones. That would help. nt

[dkf]

8. How many military jobs do we lose?

Has the military increased it's personnel?

[Cali_Democrat]

9. The military should be completely gutted

We should spend as much on our military as New Zealand.

Use the freed up money for infrastructure projects that will then generate jobs.

Simple.

[Obamanaut]

10. Military end strength has historically hovered in the 1 - 2 million (active duty)

area. Don't know how many reservists and guardsmen are involved currently.

Stopping all the wars shouldn't affect the end strength (active duty) all that much, since it has been in 1 - 2 million vicinity for a very long time.

So what military jobs are you asking about? The reservists/guardsmen have their old jobs. The active forces can return to the normal jobs of training/preparation. They might even reduce the overall size via normal attrition as enlistments expire and reduced recruiting efforts.

But the savings would be immediate. Fewer bombs dropped, less fuel expended, injuries reduced.

[dkf]

13. I'm just thinking about the 30% of the military that comes back home and can't find a job.

It's depressing.

[Obamanaut]

14. They will have jobs. The enlistments don't expire just because their

mailing address changes.

If the powers that be maintain the levels of active duty, where would the jobs be lost? The ones approaching discharge simply reenlist.

[sudopod]

12. Bomb the fuck out of Libya because Ghadaffi is mean, YES!

Help people who escaped an actual ongoing genocide and did so legally, selling virtually every worldly possession to finance it? FUCK NO!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

Continuing death toll

Even though the war may have officially ended years ago, people in the Congo are still dying at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month; 2,700,000 people have died since 2004. This death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals killed are children under the age of 5. This death rate has been prevalent since sincere efforts at rebuilding the nation began in 2004.<27> Efforts are hampered by factors such as the Kivu conflict, which may be, and often is, considered a continuation of the Second Congo War. Motivations of the 2009 Eastern Congo offensive are also entangled in the ongoing conflicts of the DRC. The death toll of violent military, militants, and insurgent actions have been estimated at over 1,000 in 2009 alone.

The Human Security Report Project of Simon Fraser University has contested the toll of 5.4 million war-related deaths between 1998 and 2008. It states that the widely cited study by the International Rescue Committee chose representative samples that underestimated the baseline mortality, and thus overestimated the excess, war-related mortality. The Human Security Project states that the IRC figure of 2.83 million excess deaths between May 2001 and April 2007 should be revised to 0.86 million.<28> In response to the criticism, one of the authors of the IRC report acknowledged there were some statistical issues with the original study but stated that the report had been widely reviewed and judged to be a fair estimate of the number killed.<29>

[dkf]

18. They didn't come as refugees or anything.

It was a lottery.

[sudopod]

19. OK I guess they should get stuffed then. nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. sad n/t