Taxing Remittances Could Save Los Angeles

The administrative problems with Los Angeles City Hall have made pundits proffer a heretofore unexplored solution to tax base shortfalls. The possibility of taxing export cash and wire fund transactions and using these fees to generate revenue has become a possibility. The "river of gold" that national and regional economic agencies have long claimed flows from the Southern California economy to nations abroad could be stemmed and re-contributed to the local economy. People using wire house accounts or Western Union type services could find that sending locally earned money abroad has a fee attached.

The coverage that visa assisted migrants and under-the-radar illegal immigrants have received has centered around the remittance income they send abroad to home nation families. The resulting boom in the home village has economists locally in Los Angeles scratching their heads. Shouldn't the Southern Californian economy be feeling these benefits? According to the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), billions of dollars a year flow from America to other nations. Even more may be channeled illegally from the Southern California and migrant economies throughout the Southwest.

The shortfall of money in City services does not gibe with the encouragement of illegal aliens to come here. Los Angeles is in crisis financially. The economic benefit of monies being spent domestically instead of exported to the villages and towns of foreign countries might begin to repair decades of capital outflow. The right for millions of illegal immigrants to exist undocumented and without due taxation has cost the City of Los Angeles its livelihood. Now City Administrators are challenged to recover the balance of these costs from the populations with enough money to send abroad but not pay domestically for schools, City municipal services, and additional police and fire fighting resources needed to service the extra populations.

Los Angeles has a new way to fight illegal immigration

Credit: madero de raza

Copyright: madero de raza