How did you come to believe all the stereotypes about illegal immigrants?

Question

Like ......
They don;t pay taxes.
They all live crowded in small houses.
They all draw welfare and foodstamps.
etc
etc?
Did you just one day hear these stereotypes and instantly believe them or did you make it up on your own?

I'm asking the ppl that DO believe those things.

Answer 1

the media & vigilante or racist groups have shoved it down their throats. but only those who r closed to interpretation truly believe these stereotypes. others who need to blame all their shortcomings or faults in life use the stereotypesas an excuse because its just easier to hate than to shut up & listen!

Answer 2

Stereotypes are tricky. Although they may be offensive, sometimes they are true. In the area that I live 95% of the immigrants here have up to 16 people living in a small home and a lot of them use foot stamps and dont pay taxes.

I didnt say all of them did because there are a small few that dont do any of what I mentioned earlier but a lot of them do and this aint something I heard, this is something I've seen!

I dont have a problem with immigrants or anyone else as long as they dont bother me and pay their part in taxes.

Answer 3

I don't believe all stereotypes. I spend most of my time in answers resisting the stereotypes made about whites and Americans.
I don't know how many do or don't pay taxes. However, I know for a fact from personal experience, people who are paid in cash do not pay income tax. They only pay sales tax. They do live crowded in houses and even worse in apartments because everywhere I go there are neighbors like that. I lived in a basement apartment in Utah where the upstairs neighbor was supposed to be an Hispanic gentleman with a one bedroom apartment. His friend sometimes spent the night. NOT! 15 men lived there, slept, worked and partied in shifts. If they were quiet like the Mexican families doing the same, I wouldn't have cared, but they weren't! They were loud, rude, vulgar and threw up all over the place. They vandalized my car for no reason...as a drunken prank. On the other hand, I lived in a one bedroom next to a Mexican family who were quiet, hard working and polite. I think they actually wanted to be here. I stood up for them on several occasions when the partiers (Americans) tried to blame their noise on the "Mexicans".
I don't think they collect welfare. They do collect SSI and Medi-Cal. The former I am denied for even though I have serious health problems. Only citizens should get that. Medi-Cal was difficult to get and shouldn't have been but the foreigners make up 80% of the people in the welfare office and clinics. Don't tell me that coupled with the racism of some of the intake workers doesn't effect whether I receive benefits because I know first hand it does. In the clinics we are given block appointments. They take the foreigners in first, then the blacks and then the whites, regardless of who got there first. We older whites often have to wait until the next block appointment to be seen. You think that's not a big deal? If you are sick and old and from here, and have to watch people who are not from here, who came in two hours after you go ahead of you, get more attention than you while you miss lunch and everything else you had planned all day...that IS a big deal.
You are well known in answers for promoting stereotypes about whites and Americans, like the one that we all stereotype and have no personal experience in the matter. I'll bet you won't even read this and take it seriously. But I write it for those who will.

Answer 4

I'm part Hispanic and I believe some of the stereotypes.
My neighbors had about 10 Mexican men living in one small house. The would come and steal water from our house using buckets. Around town there are Mexican dumps with 30 men living in 3 houses. It's really sad.
Our town's doctors offices are now being filled up with Mexican women on welfare. So it's just a matter of seeing our town change right before my eyes

I HAVE TO 1.Pay Taxes 2. Don't get free medical 3. Don't get food stamps. They get a free ride and it's not right. Sure the people are nice and hard working and that's great but they should have to come here legal like my family did. Unfortunately, our government doesn't do a thing about it but offer freebies.

Our schools are now starting to do half days in Spanish. That's not right. Sure it's great to learn Spanish as a second language but an entire half day? Shouldn't people who move here adapt to us. English is our language. If you move here then learn it. My family from Mexico and Europe both learned English and became Americans.

Answer 5

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children.
He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/hour.
At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.
He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent
He qualifies for food stamps
He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care
His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school
He requires bilingual teachers and books
He qualifies for relief from high energy bills
If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.
Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare.
All of this is at that taxpayer's expense.
He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.
Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.
He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.
Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour Left after paying their bills and his.
The American taxpayer's also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.
-MAD JACK-
I like this answer the best. Although you have recieved many educated, knowledegable answers. I wonder whos will be chosen as best?

Answer 6

The stereotypes you mention are for the most part true about most criminal trespassers that I have encountered. I deal with discriminatory stereotypes each day of my life, You have been a part of that also, dont deny the truth. You have agreed with others who have made stereotypical derogatory statements about me. You have laughed about these things yourself. One can check your answers and see the truth if they choose. You ask biased questions and degrade those that dont share your twisted viewpoint. I know the truth. You are a racist in the truest sense of the word.
Oh, by the way, I like what you have done with your hair. CYA!

Answer 7

ALL stereotypes have SOME basis in fact.

"They don't pay taxes.":
Everyone pays sales tax unless they are 100% thieves.

For an illegal to pay FICA they must:
a)fraudulently obtain a Social Security Number
b) forge a Social Security card,
c) steal someone else's card, or
d) submit a fake SSN to an employer without documentation.

The same applies to Income Tax, as your SSAN is used by the IRS as your account number.

"They all live crowded in small houses."

When I sold my house in Garden City, KS, to (legal) Vietnamese immigrants, 4 families immediately moved in.
I have no reason to doubt that illegal Mexicans (Latinos if you prefer, but most ARE from Mexico) who take jobs at even lower wages will get together in the same way to reduce their cost of shelter.

Any illegals living in spacious residences only make me more resentful, so I would rather believe they all live crowded together. So would you. It increases their pathos.

"They all draw welfare and foodstamps."

This is the least believable stereotype you quote, and I don't believe it. Yet, if certain California legislators have their way, this will cease to be a stereotype and become a hard-and-fast truth.

Illegal immigrants are criminals., by definition. They commit a crime (or crimes) by entering this, or any, country illegally. It matters not on whit how pretty they are, how intelligent, how hardworking, how desperate. In order to survive here, they perforce commit more crimes, and bar THEMSELVES from proceses by which they could achieve legal status They DO NOT take jobs that citizens or legal immigrants refuse as being beneath them. On the contrary, they STEAL jobs from hard-working poverty-level citizens or legal immigrants, in many cases accepting pay "under-the-table" so that their illegal status doesn't come to light. Someone in my family has worked at least one, if not more of the jobs indicated as being so shunned by American workers that illegals have to be hired to fill them.

Before you start hollering "Prejudice!", the correct term is bias. Every one of your excuses , rationalizations, and justifications for breaking our laws is bogus.

Answer 8

I do not believe that, But I know that to be true. How do you pay taxes when you work under the table. They do (80%) live together in house's, so they can save the money to send back to their country.. They do draw food stamps and welfare plus Medical. When the women (wife's, daughters and single women) get pregnant. I seen them and I still see them everyday. Not just Mexicans from Mexico but people from other Countries also.

Answer 9

I don't know. I guess it's human nature to envy to put others down to elevate one's self

The thing about stereotypes is that, of course, there is some truth to them. But there are just as many people who are decendants of immigrants that are lazy, don't pay taxes draw corporate welfare ( in the form of unneeded tax incentives) and well, they don't have to live in crowded houses because they are living off the labor of the rest of us.

If it wasn't for immigrans, legal or otherwise, this country would not, could not exist. Think about it.

Answer 10

they are not stereotypes if ther were not some truth our a lot of truth to them for me its been living in southern california for 35 years and the things you describe i have seen with my own 2 eyes like chikins in the backyard messed up houses and people like my neighbors puttin 12 in a house built for 6 the truth is harsh but its still the truth and dont call me racist as my wife is mexican descent and is darker then many blacks and she is against illegal immigration too

Answer 11

When I paid "some" of them they didn't pay taxes.

When I picked "some" up for work they lived six in a one room apartment.

Illegals cannot draw welfare or food stamps.(if they can then that is really sick)

Why don't I just become illegal?
Why do I have to register my car every year?
Why do I have to get a drivers license?

Illegal is Illegal! Get it!

Do you know what happens if you are caught in Mexico as an illegal??

I didn't think so!