Thank you to Hector Tobar of the LA Times for debunking “Just One State”, an email forward bashing “illegals” that is making the rounds. The email lists 10 *shocking* facts about how “illegals” harm California. Hector does a little research and comments on the truthiness of each FACT.
1. “40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. . . . This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.”
The source of this information seems to be a 2005 study by the Economic Roundtable on the informal economy in Los Angeles County. Its findings were reported in The Times and other papers.
But the chain-mail’s author more than doubled the figures in that study, which estimated that 15% of the county workforce was outside the regulated economy in 2004. Illegal immigrants getting paid in cash, it said, probably made up about 9% of the workforce.
A later Economic Roundtable report, by the way, credited immigrants with keeping the local economy from shrinking in the 1990s.
Read the other 9 FACTS here to learn exactly how much you should fear the “Mexicans”.
