User profile: Steven

Whenever I read comments on an article about illegal immigration, the one thing that always strikes me is the automatic assumption that people make that illegal aliens don't pay taxes - how do you know this? The IRS and USCIS rarely share information, usually only during a criminal investigation, and the law was set up that way expressly to encourage people in the country illegally to pay their taxes.

Nevada doesn't even have a State income tax so there is no tax to avoid, only Federal! I think we can safely assume they either own a home or are renting one, in which case the property taxes are being paid. Obviously they also pay sales tax.

I remember talking to a guy who had a lawn business in California about 20 years or so ago and he told me the only reason he had set up a lawn business was to be self-employed so he could avoid immigration forms like I-9 - but he filed a 1040 every year. People waffling on about E-verify forget you can avoid the whole thing by being self-employed or starting your own company and filing a W-7 to get an ITIN.

But yet these people who generally are at least paying property taxes directly or indirectly find that they cannot put their (illegal) kids in school because they can't get SSNs.

The problem isn't enforcement of the law either, the problem is the law itself. The US immigration system is totally insane, it's the only immigration system in any developed country that heavily favours family-based immigration over employment-based immigration, i.e. it is far easier to get in if you have a close relative who is a US citizen than for an employer who needs you to sponsor you. There are only 140,000 visa numbers available every year for employment-based immigration, but there are usually 500,000+ for family-based and certain people (such as spouses) are exempt from the quota.

My real pet peeve is when people say: "I'm perfectly okay with immigrants as long as they come in legally." If you'd ever had to immigrate into the US you'd know how ridiculous that statement is, the US has the most bureaucratic immigration system in the world. There are umpteen agencies involved in various parts of it: the State Dept., DHS, CBP, Dept. of Labor, Social Security Administration, DOJ, USCIS and so on. Assuming you even qualify (which you probably don't) navigating that system is very difficult. It's very easy to slip up on filing a form and find yourself in the country illegally, or worse yet, you timely file all the paperwork and USCIS or whomever take too long to process one bit of it and you miss some deadline. And this assumes you are fluent in English, and by "fluent" I mean fluent in American bureaucratese, not just able to speak the language!

"shower heads, toilets and other efficient features also had to work just as well as less-efficient counterparts on the market"

No kidding, my old house had "lo-flow" toilets and they were a joke, my current house has regular toilets and my water usage is _less_, because I don't need to flush them as often.

I dare say you can get them to work properly but the water pressure is more important with all these water-saving gizmos.

If the EPA wants to save water, the first thing they need to get sorted are the water supplies inside cities which leak huge volumes of water, especially back east in the older systems. If they reduced water leakage by only a few percent in major cities it would make this look like peanuts by comparison.

Excellent article, I only hope enough people in Las Vegas bother to read it.

Slowing the growth of the city and putting in place additional conservation measures however seems the only realistic long-term option. Even if the pipeline is built, if nothing is done to address growth it won't solve the problem in the long-term.

Talk about a gambling mentality!

I tend to think the truth is somewhere between the two extremes, the county is being overly optimistic and the airlines are being excessively pessimistic.

Las Vegas will grow in the future but I think the extraordinary growth seen over the last few years is over, too many obstacles such as lack of water, cost of fuel, power generation and so on are getting in the way. These obstacles can be overcome but when you look at the costs involved geography, i.e. investing somewhere else, is going to win out in many cases (e.g. back east closer to cities).

The AG is the chief law enforcement officer of the State, right?

"meet face-to-face with residents"

So she's going to be personally handing out speeding tickets on I-15?