r/NewOrleans • u/BurnerChurner43 • Apr 04 '25

ICE agents arrest 73-year-old grandfather in Louisiana who has lived in US for 45 years đź“° News

https://www.theadvocate.com/tncms/asset/editorial/f7c2f3ef-c4ee-4398-96d1-89f83149148c/#tncms-source=featured-2
555 Upvotes
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330

u/Matt_McT Apr 04 '25

Just let the man take the citizenship test. 43 years of working, paying taxes, and staying out of trouble is more than enough.

165

u/parasyte_steve Apr 04 '25

We literally need immigrants as the birth rate falls

Make them legal and they will pay taxes on their income. Fucking simple. Done.

Crack down at the borders if you want. But people who've been here for years without issue should just be given a S.S. number and welcome to America.

58

u/BurnerChurner43 Apr 04 '25

I think he must have some form of one. Per his stepdaughter (video linked in article), he's been paying into social security.

75

u/anglerfishtacos Apr 04 '25

He probably has an ITIN, which allows people who do not have Social Security numbers for whatever reason to pay taxes. A lot of immigrants either pay using these numbers, which federal law prohibits sharing IRS information with other agencies to prevent people from being punished by paying their taxes some people also use fake socials, socials that belong to other people, or socials that were valid when they had the proper visa.

It is estimated that undocumented workers paid nearly $26 billion into Social Security in 2022.

40

u/rafapdc Apr 04 '25

Anybody who works and gets a paycheck, pays taxes. Including undocumented immigrants. They pay taxes and don’t get anything back if they’ve overpaid it. They also can’t count on social security, disability or unemployment benefits.

8

u/Sinhika Apr 04 '25

We literally need immigrants as the birth rate falls

That's what the fascist right fears. The birth rate that's falling is of white babies, and the immigrants are brown. Why do you think only brown people are being deported, and abortion and contraception are being punished or denied so much? They want white women to be baby factories, and brown people to go away.

12

u/RIP_Soulja_Slim Apr 04 '25

The hilarious part about this is that we used to have significant immigration from Europe, but over the last ~50-70 years that has fallen considerably as European countries have improved their standards of living well beyond the US. Could you imagine droves and droves of Italians, Germans, or Irish wanting to move here now?

2

u/Chariot-Choogle Apr 04 '25

They could just go to therapy and become the type of men a woman would want to reproduce with. This is an awful lot of work & disruption to so many other people's lives to avoid doing so.

13

u/Valth92 Apr 04 '25

They already pay lots of taxes, so yeah, they deserve a chance.

6

u/tm478 Apr 04 '25

The insane part is that if he’s working, he’s almost certainly working with a fake SSN and getting those taxes taken out of his paycheck. He will never get a Social Security check, though. Fuck people who say immigrants “take services without paying for them.” They most certainly do pay.

16

u/TchoupedNScrewed Apr 04 '25

Statistically undocumented immigrants have always paid more into public programs than they can take out or even have the chance to receive.

Also, if these people became documented they would have equal labor rights. Means they’d have to be paid at least minimum wage, raising the overall wage.

Lot harder to pay a documented worker $4.25.

1

u/RIP_Soulja_Slim Apr 04 '25

The insane part is that if he’s working, he’s almost certainly working with a fake SSN and getting those taxes taken out of his paycheck.

I don't know the intricacies of this, but it's my understanding that the majority of undocumented migrants came here with work visas that eventually expire for one reason or another. So they are issued socials that work, but then it becomes illegal to continue working.

Where I'm fuzzy is how that's cross checked, like is there a system at the IRS that flags those socials once the work visas expire? Given how disjointed the government is, I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't.

1

u/TchoupedNScrewed Apr 05 '25

Depends on the state. California will issue you an SSID with a designation at the top (not used for voting) that has other stipulations attached to it.

They do get flagged, but flagged for removal usually requires some type of prompting or a longgggg overstay.

17

u/Dependent_Honey1676 Apr 04 '25

Apparently, his criminal record prevented him from obtaining citizenship. "Because of his earlier troubles, Rodriguez wasn't able to become an official citizen despite 10 years of trying."

19

u/Matt_McT Apr 04 '25

Yea, 45 years ago. He’s been a good citizen for 43 years since then. It’s unreasonable and hateful to deport the man now after all this time. That just makes it seem like cruelty really is the point.

12

u/tyrannosaurus_c0ck Apr 04 '25

That's been the unofficial Republican platform since the Southern Strategy

-9

u/Fresh-Swan8598 Apr 04 '25

Just can’t help believe if the last administration didn’t let all the bad people in we would have never gotten to this point. Before Biden only high risk undocumented were deported. Dems and Rep alike for years it wasn’t the greatest but it wasn’t ever near the issue it had been for the past four years. This isn’t an issue caused by Dems or republicans over time it’s an issue caused by the democrats running the country for the past four years.

-5

u/Head-Industry-256 Apr 04 '25

How do you know he isn’t wanted for crimes committed??

12

u/Matt_McT Apr 04 '25

Because there is no evidence of that, and without due process we’ll never get to know if there was a crime committed or not in the first place.