Over on Facebook, my friend Michael Kohn asked:
What do you think of Jan Brewer and immigration politics in AZ, SC, & DC?
At first, I thought that was a bit open-ended to ask someone on Facebook, but I decided to give it the old college try and provide a succinct answer. Here it is:
Not a whole lot. Without looking her up, I wouldn’t have known who she was.
I guess she’s sort of their Joe Wilson. One day an unknown, the next day the darling of the angrier elements of the right. I suppose we’ll be talking about someone else next week.
As far as immigration is concerned — it’s an issue that I didn’t think much about before those who really, REALLY care about it a LOT starting forcing the issue onto the front burner, where it doesn’t deserve to be. The absurdity of it was that when President Bush and John McCain and Lindsey Graham got together with Democrats to forge a sensible approach to addressing their concerns, the people who were all worked up about immigration went ballistic. They don’t want a real-world solution, they just want to be ticked off about those people being here. The main obstruction to a solution to illegal immigration is that the people who are really upset about it stand in the way of sensible solutions, and no one else cares about it enough to take the heat that they generate, so it languishes.
For more, check out the “Immigration” category on this blog, or on my old one.
“They don’t want a real-world solution, they just want to be ticked off about those people being here. ”
If those people didn’t break the law to enter the country, there would be no issue.
Sorta like if people didn’t smoke in restaurants, you wouldn’t get all in a tizzy over it.
There’s cause and effect. The cause is illegal activity. The effect is a significant drain on limited resources.
If a person sneaks across the border today should he be allowed to stay? If they make it across the border and into a community, what rights and privileges do they then deserve?
Those are pretty simple questions.
If you want open borders, just say it.
I want open borders.
Smoking is harmful not only to the smoker and those around the smoker, but the effects of the residue have been found to be harmful, long after the smoker has gone.
And if I wanted “open borders,” you can bet I WOULD say so, and Doug knows that (Geez, people, I write EVERYTHING I think practically 24 hours a day, and I still get this crapola from people urging me to say what I really think.)
I want to know who’s in my country. The Graham/McCain bill of a couple of years back would have accomplished that.
I don’t think people should be in the country illegally. But I also have a sense of perspective. I’m also against jaywalking, but I don’t want to throw all the jaywalkers out of the country.
As crimes go, cross a border without the right paperwork is a pretty mild one. I’d still rather people didn’t commit it, but I don’t stew with a desire for vengeance upon them for committing it.
Brad I wonder if you and Kathryn would feel differently if you had school-age children attending a public school with a large ESOL population. Children of illegal immigrants are straining public schools. My experience with this fact changed my perspective on illegal immigration.
I wonder if the fact that you, Brad, now many Latino/as, colors your judgment. This is a great thing, imho, but it may be why Doug suspects a disconnect. I think you (and I and most people) take many positions based on a cohesive theory, and then take apparently other conflicting ones because empirically you realize the theory is incomplete.
For example, you have very traditional views on gender characteristics, but if I had been your daughter (sister wouldn’t necessarily change your view), you might have formed much different ones. Doug has admitted that knowing gays has changed his views on homosexuality.
Integration and diversity are great things.
*know* many Latinos
Kathryn,
Are you suggesting that the influx of illegal immigrants has had no impact whatsoever? The factual evidence proves otherwise. Medical resources, education, criminal activity, terrible working conditions for underpaid workers… there are specific significant impacts in all those areas.
And until your open borders dream comes true, do you believe the United States should enforce the laws that currently exist regarding entry into the country?
As for Brad’s frustration over my confusion over his statements related to immigration, maybe it’s because you speak out of both sides of your mouth on the topic. You claim to want secure borders but consider illegal entry into the U.S. as the equivalent of jaywalking and can’t seem to be bothered with actually trying to enforce the laws that currently exist. Enforcement = deportment today, doesn’t it? If you want to change the law, you have every right to advocate that position. But its a real stretch to claim you want “secure borders” but not want to send illegal immigrants back once they make it across.
That’s open borders, Brad.
If I sneak into a movie theater and get caught, the manager isn’t going to let me stay just because I was able to evade detection. And the theater isn’t going to give me a free popcorn and drink to reward my ingenuity. That would probably make the paying customers angry, eh?
I answered that a long time ago, so I’ll repeat myself–I believe we need to enforce the laws as written or change them. I do not approve of scofflaws.
I do believe that open borders–we can record who comes in, but stop refusing to let in people whose only crime is their skin color.
Statistically illegals commit no more crimes than the population at large. If they could work openly, they would likely be just as diligent as they are now. Why do employers hire illegals? I think a big part of it is that they are highly motivated workers–might light a fire under some of our less motivated ones, just as highly motivated Asian computer science students have with some of the natives….We do also send home, mandatorily, students whom we have educated.Dumb immigration policy, imho.
Open borders makes it fairer to all. I realize my comrades in the unions are not thrilled with the concept, but are foreigners not God’s children, too? How come my ancestors got to come over, no problem, but then we shut the door? The quotas favor Europe, Canada and the Antipodes, and those from developed countries (which is kind of the same thing).
The issue I have with current immigration enforcement is that it is selective against brown skinned people. Start sending home illegal Irish nannies and I’ll believe otherwise.
They’d better not try to take MY Irish nanny. Actually, they can’t. I’m married to her. (And yes, she describes her profession as “nanny” — she takes care of our grandchildren in the morning, and other people’s 2-year-olds at a church preschool in the afternoons.)
Irish-American nanny.
Brad, spend a month in Arizona and see how clogged up the medical facilities (emergency room) and the schools are with illegals. These people do not pay taxes or have insurance and expect taxpayers to pay for their children to attend our schools and clog up the medical facilities for those of us who live in this country legally. Try to do what they are doing in any other country in the world and see how well you’re received. Here in South Carolina we have no real impression of how bad it is in Arizona, even with our population of illegals (which is just a drop in the bucket compared to Arizona and California).
Kathryn might like to visit one of the border towns in Texas before she comments further on open borders. Friends of mine are leaving the area where they’ve lived for nearly 40 years because the “illegals” have turned the area from a small town you’d love to raise a family in to one that more resembles a war zone between Mexican drug dealers and gangs. They are hoping and expect to get about 50% of the price they paid for their current house which was bought in the mid 1980’s.
I heard on NPR yesterday that the illegals commit crimes at the same rate as the population at large. As far as not paying taxes but using services, first, when does that matter? I have no children but gladly pay school taxes and wish we all paid more. Second, if the child’s parents happen to be citizens, he goes to school anyway. Third, illegals do pay taxes–it’s withheld from their paychecks and they never file for a refund, which they’d get if they were citizens.
I have been to Juarez, Brownsville, Matamoros, Laredo, Nuevo Laredo…
Parts of Columbia have drugs and gangs, too….courtesy of real Americans–and the meth triangle in Lexington County features blond and redheaded folks whenever they get busted.
Kathryn,
Please stop claiming that illegals pay taxes. They don’t. Do you seriously think there isn’t a large percentage of illegals who are paid in cash under the table? They can’t open bank accounts or buy car insurance — unless they are also committing the crime of identity fraud.
You can’t believe that illegals pay their fair share of taxes when half of Americans do not pay income taxes. Do you think there are illegals working in corporate jobs making $100K or more? It’s not happening. Illegals are net drains on the tax resources paid by American citizens. There is no doubt about that.
Funny, I thought being an illegal alien was a crime in this country. If so, 100% of them are criminals. It matters when taxpayers have to keep building more and more schools because illegals are taking up seats meant for American students. If you have to visit the emergency room, do you appreciate waiting behind 20 illegals who are there to get cough syrup and Imodium?
“Second, if the child’s parents happen to be citizens, he goes to school anyway.”
If the parents are citizens, what does that matter? They’re not illegal aliens.
Would you consider relocating to any of those places you mentioned? There are plenty of houses for sale at bargain basement prices.
Does Columbia’s drug dealers and gangs make it all that more acceptable?
Kathryn this is not a story on NPR for me. Every day I take my children to schools in which more and more resources are diverted to students who cannot speak English. Students whose parents do not pay taxes to support the schools. Contrary to your statement, most do not earn enough for withholding or a refund. Students who increase class size and slow the curriculum for English-speaking students. Students who use public bus transportation and eat a “free” breakfast and lunch.
75% of Arizona’s citizens support the new legislation because they are suffering the consequences of illegal immigration. It’s easy to sit back and wax eloquent when it doesn’t affect you. Put your child in a public school in Tucson for a year and then maybe I’ll respect your opinion.
I don’t see any point in checking for a shoebomber at the airport if he can cross at will at the Canadian or Mexican border. I thought the real issue was safety in this new reality of ours. Secondary is the fact that the Mexican culture doesn’t respect laws and authority (police). Think of the recent attack on police on the West coast. If we could get “Grahamnesty”, at least those who really want a better life could be trained in good citizenship.
I disagree that most do not earn enough for withholding, but we have no evidence either way. If they don’t earn enough for withholding, they wouldn’t owe taxes anyway.
The fact that plenty of people speak Spanish, especially in Lexington County might be seen as a plus for those interested in learning another language, and is absolutely no indication of ILLEGAL aliens—there are plenty of H-2 farm workers here legally. In Maine, where I used to live, plenty of towns are chock full of French-speaking people. So what.
I have no interest in living somewhere even hotter than here.
And the security of our country is not much at risk from poor laborers. There are plenty of threats from within–the Aryan Nation, for one, and so far, the actual big cases have come from people here legally.
If they rent, they pay far more proportionally in property tax that Doug or I or any other homeowner pays on his or her primary residence. And as far as I know, merchants don’t leave off the increasingly high sales tax when they hear their customers speaking Spanish. Even if they didn’t pay income tax — which is probably true of some, not of others — they probably bear an overall tax burden as great as, if not greater than, that of the average property owner.
As for security — that is the one really sound reason to make securing our borders a priority. The Mexican laborers are of no concern. The real concern is that they could have Islamist extremists among them crossing the border.
And it’s very legitimate to be concerned about the increasingly violent, out-of-control gangs from south of the Border, especially Mexican ones. And again, that argues for an orderly process so that we know who is in our country and can keep track of them — something we can’t do now.
>If they rent, they pay far more
>proportionally in property tax that
>Doug or I or any other homeowner
>pays on his or her primary
>residence.
Prove it. Show me the property tax bill for an apartment complex, divide it by the number of units, and then explain why a renter should pay “proportionately” less for exactly the same services I pay for. They get the same access to every public service at a fraction of the amount I pay.
Let’s see the numbers.
My property tax bill would pay 4-6 months RENT on a one bedroom apartment Columbia.
Oh, I see — unless they pay the AMOUNT you do it doesn’t count. The fact that proportionally more of what they pay for a domicile goes to the landlord’s taxes than what you pay to live where you live doesn’t matter, eh? It has to be a larger AMOUNT, huh?
Well, golly, I guess you win, then Doug. I’m pretty sure that a migrant worker doesn’t make as much GROSS as you and I pay in taxes. And you’re going to dismiss their contribution to public revenues on that basis.
I guess they should have all gone to college when their parent begged them to.
Give us the numbers, Brad. You made the claim to try and defend illegals getting a good deal on access to public services.
I didn’t dismiss their contribution. You claimed that their contribution was proportionally equal to mine and I’m trying to understand what that means. Show me the money, Brad.
Anyone with a basic understanding of math would realize that if you have a large influx of people paying lower taxes for the same services, then SOMEBODY is going to end up paying more to cover their shortfall. We don’t pay our teachers, cops, and firemen less if the number of low income residents increases.
And if they’re ILLEGAL, they don’t deserve access to anything. Zero. Nothing. You conveniently ignore that aspect of the issue because it is indefensible. I don’t want to pay a dime for anyone who is here illegally. If you do, you are welcome give the money to your church or a charity that helps the poor. Just don’t make me the funding source for your world communitarianism. I’m not interested… and neither are most Americans.
Actually, Doug, I wasn’t saying anything about public services, much less making any sort of claim on that subject. All I was doing was answering you. You said, “Please stop claiming that illegals pay taxes. They don’t.”
That was a rather easy claim to refute, so I did.
Unless you state the rent formula for a rental unit broken down by insurance, property tax, mortgage, etc. this topic is irrelevant. Owners of rental units are taxed at a higher rate than non-income generating property. To be accurate you’d have to have 100% occupancy just like a homeowner’s taxes are figured.
They’d have to complete high school before the discussion of college ever would come up.
I would comment further, but it’d be easier for me to just cut and paste Doug’s last response.
I wonder if there is any other country in the world where I could go live illegally and get the services that illegals get in this country, and then have the balls to protest and sue when those services are denied.
The exactly correct statement is that the assessment ratio for non-owner-occupied property is higher (4% vs. 6%) and there is as the DOR website puts it “up to $100,000 exemption for legal residences from ordinary school millage. ” So home-owners have it good.
As far as services go, I walk on the Cayce Riverfront most days. I pay nothing extra–there may be some Columbia or state or federal monies that went into it, but mostly I think Cayce keeps it up. I occasionally call the cops for noise issues in my neighborhood. Rental properties that do not meet code standards occasion frequent calls to the Planning and Development folks–who is actually “using” that service–me for complaining, or the slumlords for slacking off? You cannot cut things up into who uses what services very easily.
I see. When you said they pay proportionally more and “they probably bear an overall tax burden as great as, if not greater than, that of the average property owner.” you shouldn’t be expected to actually prove those assertions.
My tax burden is more than an illegal immigrants total income. I can prove that.
But can you prove illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes? Which is what you said.
Kathryn, how about we start with the big services, not your parks and housing authorities. Let’s hear your views on education and medical. Some Arizona schools have just as many if not more students who are here illegally, why are we putting this stress on the AZ public school system? With cuts to education, why are we letting people milk the system even further?
It’s time to let illegals know they aren’t welcome here if they aren’t here legally. If that means their kids can’t attend public schools, so be it. Once they start to feel the pressure of no free education, no free medical except for life threatening injuries, no jobs maybe they’ll get the hint and go back home, where they are welcome to everything allowed them in their home country.
Have you seen the polls taken by AZ legal citizens, they’re overwhelmingly in favor of this new law. This includes Hispanics which make up a large portion of Arizona’s population. It’s not all about whitey being mean to the Mexican illegals.
Income taxes. Which would be easy to infer if you read what I wrote:
“Please stop claiming that illegals pay taxes. They don’t. Do you seriously think there isn’t a large percentage of illegals who are paid in cash under the table? ”
So let’s see the data on how they have a higher tax burden.
Let’s also consider the added burden to the rest of us from the illegal immigrants who do not carry insurance (health and car insurance). Guess who pays for that avoidance of responsibility?
Doug,
The argument is that illegals pay taxes in the form of sales tax or other taxes collected at the point of sale or service. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that point but it is just another stawman to justify the claim that they do pay taxes. Heck, in that case, I pay double taxes. Taxes on my purchases and additional taxes deducted from my paycheck.
In the case of an illegal who has a fake SS number, most employers know who is and who is not illegal, whether they admit it or not. Also, it is very easy to pay someone legally and give them a 1099 form at the end of the year.
And, the cash payment is the most popular form of payment to illegals.
As services go, I have no children, and I come from a small family, so there’s some money right there. Because I walk the Cayce Riverwalk every day, I consume very few health services–illegals can have what I save there.
Boy, for churchgoers–at least Doug is, you people seem awfully selfish. Did Jesus care about what country you were from, or what a drain you were to society?
Kathryn,
What does paying taxes have to do with being selfish? You have no clue as to what I do with my money in terms of charity. Just because I don’t want to give my money to illegal immigrants doesn’t make me selfish. And neither does your desire to take my money to give to them make you charitable.
Whenever the discussion turns to seeking facts, the amnesty/open borders side starts calling people racists and selfish. The moral high ground is easy to reach when you spend other people’s money for the bus fare.
Why don’t you read the Mexican constitution and get back to me? Explain how a country that can be as repressive and controlling as Mexico is, have the damn nerve to preach to and criticize Arizona? They require citizen ID cards that have more information about each citizen that anything required here.
Read about how the government tightly controls churches, preachers, dissention, and foreigners when they participate in politics in Mexico.
Did Jesus ever say anywhere in the Gospels or the New Testament that the government was responsible for taking care of everyone? Just curious.
Love one another.
“(1) You immigrate to our country you have to speak the native language;
(2) You must be a professional or an investor…no unskilled workers allowed;
(3) No special bilingual programs in the schools;
(4) No special ballots for elections;
(5) No government business will be conducted in your language;
(6) Foreigners cannot vote or hold political office;
(7) You cannot be a burden on society….no welfare, no food stamps or other government handouts;
(8) You can come if you invest here…an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage;
(9) If you want to buy land, it will be restricted….no waterfront properties and you have to relinquish individual rights to the property;
(10) You’re not allowed to protest, no demonstrations, no waving of foreign flags, no political organizing, and no badmouthing of our President or his policies; and
(11) If you come here illegally, you’re going to jail.”
Current Mexican immigration law.
If not wanting my children squeezed into a classroom with 30 other students (including 10 who do not speak English) is selfish, then I’ll own it. I’m selfish.
You cannot emigrate here without proof that you will not become a burden on society. You cannot become a citizen (and hence, vote) without being quite knowledgeable about our history and government (and fluent in English). A friend who is a professor of American History, but born in England, had to study to pass the citizenship exam. I wonder how many of us would be able to pass it.
I guess I always have been attracted to foreign people–they are interesting and I like to learn foreign languages. It’s good for your brain, if nothing else. I’d be happy if my kids had a chance to speak Spanish with a native speaker. What a wonderful skill to have.
and Lexington County growers have to prove there is inadequate farm labor here before they can import H-2 visa workers, which they do every year. I’m not picking peaches, are you?
I was “squeezed” into classrooms with 30 kids growing up–many of whom spoke “Southern White.” It didn’t hurt me, but I think we need to make sure every child gets a decent quality education. Every child.
Kathryn,
How many of your law school classmates were not fluent in English?
As for the Lexington growers, I’d be interested in hearing about that process. Where are they posting the jobs? What is the pay? What are the benefits?
Having attended school in which classes were conducted in Spanish, this just doesn’t sound so horrible to me. One of the best ways to learn a language.
Somewhat more problematic was a case I heard of last night — someone spent a year in England and his child found herself in a school in which everything was in Urdu. Now that would be a bit intimidating.
When we lived in Ecuador, my parents briefly considered sending me to a school for German expatriates. I resisted, but ever since I’ve wished they had followed through. I was learning to speak and think in Spanish out on the street every day; just think how much my mind would have been expanded if I had had to master German at the same time in order to learn. And I was young enough then to absorb it all. That would have been awesome.
Maybe, if that part of my brain had been developed to that degree, I’d still be fluent in at least Spanish today. Now, while I can read it aloud with a creditable accent (which I do at church), carrying on a normal conversation is extremely difficult (my vocabulary now is pathetic), and I hate that. I really feel the loss.
We’ve got 30% of the grade 3-8 students who can’t even master the Basic level of English and you want to throw Spanish at them too? And use limited resources for non-citizens rather than use them to benefit the citizens who need it the most? Huh?
http://ed.sc.gov/topics/assessment/scores/pass/2009/statescoresgrade.cfm
And the numbers are even worse in Richland District 1… 40% of the 8th graders can’t perform at the minimal level in English. You think all the ESL education has made things better?
Hmmm… jobs Americans WILL DO, when the illegal workers are removed from a company in Arizona. 300 out of 1500 employees were illegal.
http://www.azfamily.com/news/Hundreds-seek-to-fill-vacant-positions-at-Pros-Ranch-Market-91880224.html
The thing to me about the illegal immigrants is that it seems like we have a problem that is reasonably fixable, and yet we argue all over the place about stuff that’s only secondarily relevant (as a result of us not solving the actual problem).
Don’t we just simply need a robust worker program that allows folks to come and work without being illegal? (I know a fair amount about our current programs, and that they are not adequate). Don’t most of these folks come here because they want to work and we need workers? So if they could be here legally through a worker’s program, wouldn’t they’d prefer that?
All the talk about whether they pay as much in taxes as I do, or overtax our schools and hospitals and such seems beside the point to me — if they were legally here, their tax situation would become irrelevant — I mean, we don’t spend lots of time arguing about whether legal foreign workers pay enough taxes or can have their kids go to public schools.
We are not treating the illegal workers fairly if we really want their work, but then want to blame them for being here. And we are not treating our own citizens fairly if we don’t uphold the rule of law and secure our borders. Seems like a problem of our own ineptitude to me, and I don’t see that beating up on poor people is a useful way to fix it.
Doug, if they’re having that much trouble with English, maybe they’d do better with Spanish. It’s so much simpler.
But seriously, folks…
Susan’s right. As I’ve said before, the only problem here is that we don’t seem capable of approving enough visas for the number of Mexicans who want to come work here and the number of jobs waiting for them. So they just come on illegally. This has always seemed to me a matter of ramping up our processing of the paperwork to let more workers in legally. It’s ridiculous that we try to defy market forces by only letting in a fraction of the workers that the market demands.
And it’s particularly interesting to me that quite often (although certainly not always), the people the angriest about all those folks being here are also strong advocates of letting markets work in other areas. Certainly not a perfect correlation there, but there are enough folks taking both those positions to make for noteworthy irony.
“How many of your law school classmates were not fluent in English?”
One, a German attorney getting his credentials. However, I have my doubts about some local lawyers…
“As for the Lexington growers, I’d be interested in hearing about that process. Where are they posting the jobs? What is the pay? What are the benefits?”
I used to dabble in immigration work, and the INS, which is now something else USCIS–is hardly a pushover. Here is the link for the process to get agricultural workers in.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=889f0b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=889f0b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD
Brad,
If you are fine with “market forces” driving wages down on the lower end of the job spectrum, so am I. If you are in favor of not providing benefits to workers, that’s fine also. Just don’t be surprised when you end up with shanty towns full of sick people. You can’t have it both ways. Pay a living wage or pay an illegal who is willing to move up a rung on the poverty ladder.
Kathryn,
I’m interested more in where those temporary seasonal jobs are posted so we can see that Americans are unwilling to do them. Where are the jobs listed?
Here’s a very good take on the immigration issue (reposted from Andrew Sullivan):
“Ross describes the downsides to having a whopping 57% of illegal immigrants come from one country:
A more diverse immigrant population would have fewer opportunities to self-segregate and stronger incentives to assimilate. Fears of a Spanish-speaking reconquista would diminish, and so would the likelihood of backlash. And instead of being heavily skewed toward low-skilled migrants, our system could tilt toward higher-skilled applicants, making America more competitive and less stratified.”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/05/mexican-exceptionalism.html
Doug makes excellent points, bringing up things I have long been concerned about — the exploitation of disadvantaged labor.
I’ll take it a step further: I have this theory that ever since 1865, South Carolina has been struggling to re-establish its force of free labor — or come as close as it can. Not educating people to be able to compete elsewhere kept the labor force captive here to a certain extent. But the stories I’ve heard over the years about the shanty conditions that migrant workers live in in many parts of our state make me think maybe SC has nearly accomplished the goal that seems ingrained in our economy.
Now, that’s one side of the coin. And I do worry about it. Here’s the other side: As Nicholas Kristof frequently writes, it’s all well and good for liberals (and people of liberal sensibility) to weep for people in the third world working in sweatshops. But that ignores the fact that the sweatshops provide a far better economic opportunity for those workers than what otherwise is available to them. I think the same is true of the jobs largely filled by illegals in this country. The only thing worse than those folks being exploited here is for them to stay at home and starve, along with their families.
So what’s the solution to this dilemma? It’s to regularize these people. Create a process whereby they can become legal, and therefore be less susceptible to exploitation. Give them a path to becoming legal, and they can demand better wages and benefits and working conditions, and then we’ll see if Americans will do those jobs. What creates this crazy situation is that we artificially keep the number of people we let in legally so low that people come in droves illegally, which creates a labor pool that is easily exploited.
So if you care about these folks being exploited, you want to do what Graham and Bush and McCain et al. tried to do a couple of years back.
But if you are someone who RESENTS these people being here (as opposed to worrying about them being exploited), then you want to punish them for their unforgivable crime of being here without the proper paperwork. And there is where we have our big disagreement. When people shout “Grahamnesty” in response to rational reform efforts, it persuades me that they don’t want a solution to the problem; they just want these people not to be here.
Doug–What I’m saying is that employers have to jump through an awful lot of hoops–I’m not a reporter, but I imagine Rawl out in Lexington would direct you to the job postings.
The exploitation of immigrants legal and not is a serious issue–the sex crimes perpetrated for one. I do not weep for sweatshop workers–I try to buy fair trade when it’s available, but, yes, a sweatshop job is better than none.
And yes, Brad, the process to bring people in legally is awful–click on the link I posted and see if you’d like to prepare that filing, and see it rejected for picayune reasons (unless they’ve gotten a lot better. I also did a lot of SEC filings at the same time and never had a one bounce, and that was back when the SEC actually did something besides download porn.).
Kathryn,
I’m suggesting the employers are NOT making the jobs available for American workers because they know they would have to pay more and not be able to control as easily as they can with an immigrant workforce.
With our current unemployment situation, any South Carolinian who is physically able to do the work should be offered the jobs first. I doubt that is happening.
Brad,
You’ll never convince me (or the majority of people who think like me) that rewarding people who have managed to cross our borders illegally is the right path.
The right path is for those people to return to their home country and get in line behind all the people who choose to follow the rules. If you want to increase the quotas, fine. But follow the rules.
If an inmate escapes from prison, we don’t let him go free if he happens to make it beyond the perimeter.
Build the fence, punish employers who hire illegals, deny all services to illegals, let them return home, THEN start the new process. That’s the right path.
Brad you’ll never convince me either, and I’m not sure I even think like Doug. 😉
I’m not sure that my belief that illegal aliens should not receive services that Americans pay for is a desire to see them punished. On the other hand, what exactly is wrong with punishing people who break the law?
@ Maude–because we all break some law or other sooner or later–sometimes even *I* will turn on red at a No Turn on Red intersection when I’m running late Sunday AM.
“Services Americans pay for”–well, we pay into a general pot more or less according to our abilities, and draw out of that pot according to our needs. Who gets to draw is not related, for the most part, to how much he or she paid in–poor kids, for one. Are we going to deny police and fire service to any non-taxpayer? No one asks to see my 1040 or W-2 before responding to a 911 call (although my wealthier neighborhood may get better service).
@ Doug–All I can say is that in my actual experience with the INS, they are not pushovers, and if an agricultural employer is bringing in H-2 workers, every “i” was dotted and “t” crossed. The hoops I had to jump through to bring in Canadian executives temporarily were amazing (I got joshed a lot about Canadian wetbacks when the going got extremely tough.)