http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/politics/30raid.html?exprod=myyahoo First, I would like to commend the president for changing the focus from laborers to employers. It always seemed cruel to me to arrest people for filling voids in the market and doing their best to give their family better lives. However, this is still hollow progress in my opinion. The truth is that this does not solve the issue in any way shape or form. It's just a more humane bandaid. I remain unconvinced that the Obama administration, nor the previous Bush administration has/had a real plan for managing this issue. Legal immigration strengthens the nations economy and social fabric. We need a work visa program in the United States. Potential immigrants should pass a background check, and then be issued a Social Security card, which would allow them to pay income, payroll, and all other taxes workers pay. For those people already here there should be a grace period for illegal workers to obtain visas so they can continue contributing to America and begin taking part in American society openly and without fear. Immigrants with temporary work visas should have access to the normal procedures for gaining permanent status and citizenship, and should be able to bring their families to the U.S. after demonstrating ability to support them financially. Now if after this someone still goes out of their way to hire illegal workers or work illegally themselves then the hammer drops. If you are an illegal worker, and knowingly circumvent the law you are deported. If you are an employer and knowingly circumvent the law you are either fined heavily and your company's license to exist is cancelled after multiple violations. Your board of directors goes straight to jail. That's it. If a shitdick nation like the UAE can do this and do it well there is absolutely no reason why America cannot. The only thing missing is the political will and a leader that can make a persuasive argument to the nation.
I also think this is a great step; going after the demand for illegal workers will go a lot further than trying to stem the supply of them. I thought we already had most of the programs you mention, though. I know the grace period for illegals is not on the books (and will be shouted down as amnesty for illegals if proposed), but the rest.
These are the following visas available in the us for guest workers B1 Business Visitor For business people making sales, conducting negotiations, attending meetings and seeking investments. 6 months H1B Speciality Occupation Worker For individuals having the equivalent of a US bachelor degree (Foreign degrees and/or work experiencemay be found to be equivalent to a US bachelor degree). 6 Years L1A Intra Company Transferee For executives or managers who have worked for at least one year in the past three for a foreign parent, subsidiary, affiliate, or branch office of the US company that will employ them. 7 Years L1B Intra-Company Transferee For specialized knowledge employees who have worked for at least one year in the past three for a foreign parent, subsidiary, affiliate, or branch office of the proposed US employer. 5 Years E1 Treaty Trader For staff to direct and develop import / export trade between the US and the treaty country. Indefinite (2 - year increments) E2 Treaty Investor For staff to direct and develop investments made in the US by a treaty country national/company Indefinite (2 - year increments) Permanent residence First Preference Priority Worker For international managers and executives. Also for aliens with extraordinary ability and outstanding Professors/Researchers. Permanent Permanent residence Second Preference Priority Worker Professionals with advanced degrees or those with exceptional ability in the sciences, arts or business. Permanent Permanent Residence Third Preference Worker Professionals with basic degrees, and skilled workers. Also "other workers" who have less than two years of relevant experience. Permanent 'TN1' Canadian Professional For Canadian professionals and managers. Indefinite (1 year increments) None of these would qualify for the majority of people we consider 'illegals' today as these visas are generally for skilled work. Also, the amount of each of these visas is determined by the government, not by businesses. Businesses need the flexibility to hire as many workers as they need or the program just wont work. Bush tried a half assed version of this that gave no prospect of green cards/citizenship in the future. Basically, you came to the US, worked for 3 years and then were told to beat it. It really treated workers like second hand citizens. It was garbage.
Regardless of where we want to go, the notion that the owners of this particular restaurant could face ruin for doing what restaurant owners all across the country are doing, as a are landscapers and cleaning services and manufacturers and home builders and God knows so many other industries, well that's repulsive. Don't have laws on the book, refuse to enforce them, then swoop down and destroy lives. Establish a policy, clarify what you will do and give advance notice, and then (and only then) begin to enforce.
Traditionally, 'empty the factory' raids occur right before pay day. then, the employer pays the sheriff a 'fine' much less than the payroll saved. Symbiosis, neh?
four questions: a) was this approach better than nothing? b) was the pay offered to these workers significantly more than they could earn in their home nation for equivalent work, assuming that such work exists, and could they be better employed in their home countries? c) are non-citizens to be treated as citizens?
There are very few issues I will ever agree on with Matt, but this is one. Though I disagree with his limits. I am for a completely open border. Yes, at this time it is not freezable, but I can hope. No. It encourages people to come, but then does not encourage them to leave. Further, looking at the higher levels of education/skill, why would they come to the US if they know they will have to leave in 3 years? These workers would be at a position in their lives in which they would want to settle down and have families. I am not sure if there was any provision for any other members of the family. Sure, the money might be better for 3 years, but then they are given a nice GTFO! and have to restart their lives somewhere else. Absolutely.
Local fines. there was a Slate expose of this, last fall??. The 'Raids' were pre-arranged and no white collar arrests were ever made.
i hope you know that this approach would destroy the economy of the US. we already have an unemployment level that is too high. an open border would raise it. plus, it would put even more pressure on health care and other service areas. they would come to the US knowing they have to leave in 3 years if it would be a significant advantage to them. i don't kinow what "looking at the higher levels of education/skill" means. some people go to Dubai to teach English. it may be that they know it's for 3 years. sometimes we make longer-term plans, sometimes shorter-term. not to be condescending, but that's life. i hear the One World vibe loud and clear...
This was not true in 1890. It's not true today. By their nature of having to have guest visas, guest workers would already be more expensive than domestic workers meaning that fewer would be hired in a recession and most likely would be the first cut when a downturn starts. Further, more workers means more consumers which means more jobs. Why wouldn't you want that? They would be paying taxes just like everyone else. Since the majority of guest workers will be in the healthier age range (18-65) by nature of the visa it's entirely conceivable that they will put significantly more into SSI and Medicare than they take away. It means a dishwasher can become a chef Dubai has renewable guest worker visas. And everyone here already knows English. I don't agree they should have the same rights as citizens. I believe they should have the same rights as green card holders.
how is this necessarily true? what would determine pay level? the fact that someone is a guest worker generally means they fill a job that a domestic worker doesn't want. my initial point was that a totally open border would be very detrimental to the economy. it would mean people could enter the US of A regardless of whether they had a job to come to, unless a totally open border means something entirely different, which would be hard to understand in context.
Because the expense of hiring out of country, applying for the visas, paying for background checks and other related costs makes the guest worker more expensive to employ than the domestic worker. The same way pay level is determined today. It's market based. Not always. A lot of times guest workers will just do the job better or work harder that his typical domestic competition. This happens a lot in the construction industry. This is not a totally open border policy. In order to get a workers visa you need to have a job. If you don't have a job you need to go. While I don't share your fear about the ruin of the economy, i understand that a complete open border like nutter advocates is not feasible politically and could cause issues economically in the short term. That's why I think the guest visa system is a better policy.
i've always been in favor of a guest worker policy. but don't start on the construction industry. i have a very good friend who was a general contractor and before that a finish carpenter, and he knows what the costs are in construction if you hire less skilled workers. obviously, not every journeyman carpenter is more skilled than any individual "guest worker", but my buddy says that the standards for craftsmanship in building trades are set lower when the workers aren't fluent in English. if a worker doesn't know exactly what you want him to do, and you demonstrate it a couple of times and he catches on, great. but sometimes he doesn't quite buy into the need to do xyz, and the workmanship suffers. a contractor cannot supervise every process. sure, the Honduran is paid less, but his work may be worth less. not always, but there is a difference. and, btw, my buddy isn't a racist bigot. he's a craftsman.
Punishing the individual looking to work in order to make a living may be more despicable than punishing the one who provides him/her with a job, but both are despicable.
generally, i respect your view and think you have a very balanced approach to issues, but here i have a problem. nobody has a natural right to work where they prefer. there are laws and national sovereignty issues that supersede the natural rights of individuals. you and i cannot go to Ireland and get a job simply because we are qualified. we need permission. if someone crosses a national border without permission, he has no natural right to a job there. there may be "collusion" between an employer and a worker so that laws and sovereignty issues are circumvented, but that doesn't make the worker innocent. if the economic situation in the US of A is such that both skilled and unskilled laborers from other countries are needed to fill jobs here, then let's have a policy that allows for entry by those workers, entry with permission. the fact that there has been collusion or complicity for X decades does not mean that the way of handling the "problem" up to now was the correct one or that simply because someone has been here for 5 or 10 years they have the "right" to stay here. it may well be that "amnesty" is the best solution. i don't think any of us has a clear enough objective view to answer the question. what i see here is a tendency for natural-born American citizens to be more conservative. i think we have a different view of what it means to be American than a segment of the people who were naturalized. the tendency has been to try to assimilate if you came to the US of A, but that seems to be changing. the obvious result of the change is that we have commercials for Kaiser Permanente in Spanish. Vida Bien. i see nothing wrong in maintaining cultural identity, but that's not what's going on. the push is for the existing culture to accommodate the foreign national, and those populations are now large enough that it's political suicide not to do so, to some extent.
if he was trained to do xyz and if he has been doing xyz for his whole life as a carpenter, yeah. he's already bought in. i'm not saying that the undocumented workers don't work as hard as their American citizen counterparts. i don't know that. but in construction trades, it's about training to do things right. it's difficult to train someone when they don't speak your language. all you can do is demonstrate the process. it may be faster and simpler to do it the way they did it in Mexico, assuming that some processes were done differently there. my friend tells me that there is a difference, and i have no reason to doubt him.
I didn't know that. I'll go consult my crystal ball... We are in a deep recession following the highest ever level of employment. If we allow more legal workers, we will cut down on law enforcement/border protection, imprisonment/deportations, and have a higher tax base. And open border will allow more people to flow where the jobs are located. And it would hurt companies who what them. Why would somebody come to the US if they were forced to leave in three years. You had quoted a post in which Matt listed all the types of guest worker visas. Most of those visas are for college educated persons. So I was working on the basis that this is where we were looking. Dude, you are saying somebody can go to Japan or Korea or Dubai and then come back...to a teaching position that pays fairly equivalent. In Chile, for example, teachers get paid around $3000/year in Santiago, a modern city that could easily fit into the US. How would it be an advantage for somebody to come to the US for three years to teach and then go back to Chile? Love your neighbor.
people who come to this country without permission often work in under the table jobs and don't pay taxes. they are consumers, but many send money back to where they came from, which means that they don't spend all their earnings here. if they live at a marginal level, sharing rent with other people in similar circumstances, they provide an important service, but they both exploit and are exploited. a guest worker program would be an improvement, except they would have to pay tax and would not be able to send so much money back home, which would be a disincentive to come here. whether that's a good or bad filter, i don't know. an open border means that you don't need permission to come here. how many other nations have such a policy? i think you're overly optimistic. people will come whether there are jobs for them or not. people come here illegally whether there are jobs for them or not. why do you think things would change if we open the border. i presume you meant "companies who want them"? somebody would come to the US because of the opportunity to make more money than they could make if they stayed where they are. first of all, i don't think we are importing a lot of teachers from Chile. you need a credential most places, so that's an odd example in reverse. people go to Dubai or Japan to teach English because they want to have that experience. many only stay for a limited time. there is a demand for people to teach English in Japan or Dubai. ( I watch House Hunters ) seriously, though, if somebody can get a job in the US that pays 5 times what they can make in Romania, why would they not come here, even if they have to leave after 3 years? finish the quote...
As a Spanish speaker and someone who has spent several years living in border towns on both sides of the Texas/Mexico (Brownsville/Matamoros). I have seen first hand the crushing poverty many of these people come from. I have spoken with various individuals immediately after their deportation. I feel qualified to throw in my $0.02. It is a myth that most undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes. Some of them do take under the table jobs but a lot of them work using fake papers. There are taxes taken out of their paychecks. They obviously can't file a tax return so that money goes unclaimed. They are paying into social security, medicare, etc.....Benefits that they will never be able to use. They shop at stores, buy cars, etc.....Some of them are even able to buy houses. That said I am not an open borders person. That will not solve the problem and would tax our already over taxed health care and welfare systems. I have some ideas that I think would go a long way to solving some of these problems. They are as follows.... 1. Comprehensive guest worker program. Right now the US only offers a little over 60,000 visas for migrant workers. It is said that the need is 10 times that. Let's offer a 5 year guest worker contract with a path to a green card, and ultimately citizenship should you desire. Of course this program would have stipulations. A. No welfare what so ever. No food stamps, section 8, uninsured hospital visits (obviously exceptions for life and death emergencies), etc.....Live here, work here, but support yourself 100%. Don't expect the US tax payers to pay your bills. I have known several pregnant women who illegally came here to have a baby and take advantage of the WIC program. I think that is bullshit. Welfare programs should be for citizens only. To preempt the argument, "well they pay taxes, why shouldn't they be able to use those programs?", I would say this....Immigrants are getting benefits from their taxes. Their children have access to free education. They have roads to drive on. Police and fire fighters to help them. B. Mandatory health insurance. By 2015 this will be a law for US citizens as well. You can't drive a car without insurance. Why should you be allowed to be a burden to the state hospitals? This is where illegal immigration hits the tax payer's wallets. I am a respiratory therapist. I have seen this first hand. Hospital stays are expensive. Medicine is expensive. You need to have means to pay for it. If we are able to force insurance companies to compete in a free market this shouldn't be a problem. C. To get a green card you have to speak English. I can say this with a straight face. I taught myself Spanish as an adult. Within the next 6 months I will be a certified medical translator. I know how hard it is to learn a second language. That said 5 years is ample time to do so. I am originally from Iowa and up there it is very rare to meet a Mexican immigrant who doesn't speak decent English. I think English is important because it is the common language of this country. If you want to be a part of our society you need to speak English. I would love to read what you guys think. If you think my ideas are stupid/I'm a complete idiot at least tell me why.
Not sure how A would come out, B and C seem reasonable to me (and I am a leftish European). The threshold on C could be fairly low, however.
Actually, they can pay income taxes, using ID numbers from the IRS for people who don't have SSN. A good number of them do file, which might end up helping them in the long run, because one of the criteria I would want for a guest worker or permanent residency program is being able to show a history of paying income taxes (i.e. if you want to get credit for having been here for 10 years and been a good citizen, you need to show that you've paid taxes for 10 years).