Bi-partisan Immigration Bill

Parent Cafe
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<p>mini: What could the Reagan administration have done?</p>

<p>I realize that you use the orchards as an example in your part of the US, but in my part of the world, the illegals are undercutting wages and enabling big rich employers to hire cheap labor with no regard for safety standards or benefits. Lots of US citizens here out of work, and yes the illegals would take the cheap jobs because the Americans have expectations for at least some minimal standards. </p>

<p>That would be if there were many jobs or construction going on. The manufacturing economy here is largely moving overseas for even cheaper labor (the dollar the day standard) so there aren’t that many illegals here because there aren’t even cheap labor jobs. I do find illegals here getting benefits for their American children such as Medicaid, WIC, welfare and education. (or free health care until their Medicaid comes through.)</p>

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<p>

You forgot about that Giant Sucking Sound that is the closing of US plants and the opening of the same plants in Mexico. NAFTA is not the cause of so many illegal immigrants wanting to come to America.</p>

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<p>“You forgot about that Giant Sucking Sound that is the closing of US plants and the opening of the same plants in Mexico. NAFTA is not the cause of so many illegal immigrants wanting to come to America.”</p>

<p>None of them - repeat - none of them, are being built in rural southern Mexico, Guatemala or rural El Salvador. The folks (and there aren’t that many of them) who are forced off the land to work in polluting, unregulated U.S. sweatshops in Mexico City are dwarfed by the number of those – multi-millions - who have absolutely no place to go. </p>

<p>“mini: What could the Reagan administration have done?”</p>

<p>Had he wanted to, he could have dealt with two things: heavily regulated industry to make it less desirable for them to hire undocumented workers, through strict enforcement of labor laws, minimum wages and benefits, and working conditions, with criminal penalities enforced; and, then having done so, tightened the border. Wages would have gone up - for everyone - documented or undocumented. </p>

<p>But there’s a hitch:</p>

<p>“That would be if there were many jobs or construction going on. The manufacturing economy here is largely moving overseas for even cheaper labor (the dollar the day standard) so there aren’t that many illegals here because there aren’t even cheap labor jobs. I do find illegals here getting benefits for their American children such as Medicaid, WIC, welfare and education. (or free health care until their Medicaid comes through.)”</p>

<p>Undocumented workers pay far, far more in Social Security and in taxes than they ever receive. Their children ARE American citizens, and deserve the same treatment as other American citizens. But the only thing that now prevents Social Security going bankrupt (and my working til I’m 80, and my mother going broke - okay, not quite) is the millions of undocumented workers who pay to keep me and my mother in our comfortable lifestyles. </p>

<p>“The manufacturing economy here is largely moving overseas…”</p>

<p>The manufacturing economy is going overseas because of specific, nameable neo-liberal economic policies by the likes of Bill Clinton and, especially, Al Gore, to places where there are virtually no controls on working conditions or pollution. Want the biggest villain of global warming? It’s Al Gore - and it has nothing to do with how much energy he uses in his house or on airplanes.</p>

<p>“the illegals are undercutting wages and enabling big rich employers to hire cheap labor with no regard for safety standards or benefits.”</p>

<p>Undocumented workers don’t “enable” big rich employers. George Bush does. You want better safety standards or benefits? You know where to look for 'em. And none of that requires a new immigration bill.</p>

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<p>“Undocumented workers pay far, far more in Social Security and in taxes than they ever receive. Their children ARE American citizens, and deserve the same treatment as other American citizens. But the only thing that now prevents Social Security going bankrupt (and my working til I’m 80, and my mother going broke - okay, not quite) is the millions of undocumented workers who pay to keep me and my mother in our comfortable lifestyles.”</p>

<p>The social security figures are widely disputed. So many workers are cash only and Social Security is never deducted. Employers don’t want to pay their share.</p>

<p>As to a “comfortable lifestyle” please tour the area where I work. The unemployment is horrendous, suicides and mental illness are way up, and foreclosures number in the thousands. The products are still being built, just not by Americans, and if they are, then by lower-waged workers.</p>

<p>The Mexican government is just fine with the sweatshops and the fleeing Mexicans. The rich there are very rich, and the workers in the US send back billions of untaxed dollars from the US every year. It is a very integral part of the Mexican economy.</p>

<p>So the illegals’ children deserve the same treatment as everyone else who is dependent on the government. But we basically pay. The parents are here illegally. Many do not pay taxes. Legal immigrants can’t get ahead in the immigration process, even educated ones with real, registered jobs. </p>

<p>I see that this society is paying out way too much in benefits to people who broke the law coming in. Even if the money is supposed to be for their children, it still supports them. Their use of the system to their own advantage and to support the inadequate Mexican government is the great sucking sound of money leaving Americans’ pockets.</p>

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<p>I’d like to see your sources for this. And please be sure to factor in all the state (not just federal) benefits recieved by illegal immigrants and their offspring (who would not be here but for criminal actions of their parents.)</p>

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<p>I’ve posted it twice already - links by REPUBLICAN Linda Chavez from the Deaprtment of Labor. I’m tired of posting the same links repeatedly - you can do your own homework.</p>

<p>As for their children, they are as much citizens by virtue of the same Constitution and same laws as you are. If you don’t like it, you should consider going back where you came from. :wink: (And they will be voting, too, and many of them are already. So antagonize your fellow citizens at your own peril.)</p>

<p>“The Mexican government is just fine with the sweatshops and the fleeing Mexicans. The rich there are very rich, and the workers in the US send back billions of untaxed dollars from the US every year. It is a very integral part of the Mexican economy.”</p>

<p>Of course they are - they are a client state of the U.S., much like the U.S. is a client state of Saudi Arabia.</p>

<p>Anyway - I don’t have an opinion on the the Ding-Dong’s last ditch attempts to salvage some self-respect; the bill is dead before it arrives, and by the time the next bill rolls around (in 2009), there will be half a million more new U.S. citizens, and 750,000 more workers arrived.</p>

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<p>This dilemma is down right depressing. It’s the proverbial ghordian knot. Mini, you seem to the one of the most knowledgeable (and certainly one of the most emphatically opinionated of CC’s denizens). What do you think we should do to solve our current immigration crisis? What should we do about our “border” with Mexico? Should we even bother to have one?</p>

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<p>Our immigration policy as currently practiced is a fine hypocrisy, squeezed between economic realities and nativist/racist posturing. The proposed immigration bill reminds me of Bismarck’s observation about law-making & sausage-making and I doubt it’s going to become law as it comes under attack from both Left and Right for different reasons.</p>

<p>It’s also one of the few public policy areas where Bush isn’t completely off his nut…maybe the Texas experience finally counts for something.</p>

<p>A lot of the folks howling about illegal immigration would be here if the similar laws had been in place when their ancestors got here (pre-1911 or whenever). I get a satisfying laugh when I read about states like Colorado that try to implement tough anti-immigrant laws and then the local economy tanks. Serves 'em right. Except that a lot of innocent people get caught in the economic back-splash.</p>

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<p>I’m going to disagree with my friend TD here.</p>

<p>Does anyone but me understand what a sea-change of a difference there is between assimilating a multi-national group of people under an English-dominant system, vs. a massive number speaking a competing language? Do you have any idea what this does to the educational system based on English & taught in English? (No, I thought not.)</p>

<p>This is pie-in-the-sky idealism not grounded in reality one bit. </p>

<p>What do you think would have happened if, say, the U.S. in the late 19th & early 20th century allowed in equally massive numbers of Italian immigrants, and in the States of settlement, Italians became the “majority minority?” What if the dominant language spoken in the public schools was suddenly Italian? (1) Would the English speaking families have found that peachy keen? (2) Would the public schools have caved in to accommodating to Italians insistent on speaking Italian & remaining illiterate in English?</p>

<p>And you’ll excuse the cynic in me, TD, but I don’t think that GB is motivated by humanitarian compassion for South-of-the-Border immigrants. He’s motivated, imo, by compassion for his business buddies wanting cheap, convenient, wink-wink labor. Ask anyone in the construction business (or, higher up, a developer-investor), about who works for him. In States with large Latino immigrant populations, the Hispanic construction workers monopolize those jobs, at undercut rates. </p>

<p>Fact: In job categories affected by immigration crackdowns, the after-effect of such enforcement is that immediately the black employment in those trades increases. Thus, illegals in particular (willing to work for lower wages, foregoing union & other legal protection) do in fact affect employment of legal residents of all ethnic groups.</p>

<p>Just reiterating, one key difference between earlier & current immigration is the relative evenness of ethnicities represented. Another key difference is the expectation of learning the native language. Another key difference is the absence of gigantic social service budgets in the former era vs. now. (And, importantly, the apparent willingness of agencies to serve even illegal residents with those social services – vs. the former era.)</p>

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<p>If the jobs had benefits, job security, safety standards and a decent wage, plus social security was being paid, Americans would take them. But Americans generally are not going to stand in front of 7-11 waiting for exploitative cash jobs. And they shloudn’t have to. Or live in houses with 20-50 people sleeping in shifts.</p>

<p>The illegals are now also undercutting the trades in the construction industry, bringing down more Americans in the construction business.</p>

<p>In addition, during prior waves of immigration, there was screening for health, this is no longer being done. There are also a lot of questionable people coming in per crime. And pregnant women coming in solely for benefits for their anchor babies.</p>

<p>Also, does anyone know if illegals from any part of the world can now stay here? Or is this just geared towards Mexicans? </p>

<p>They have a lot of nerve marching and demanding a better immigration bill. Might as well let everyone out of prison if there is going to be an amnesty on illegality.</p>

<p>Trying to just up the number of voters is no justification for weakening the economy and the future of Americans. Anyhow, who is there to vote for that is just not full of rhetoric and out for his/her own glory?</p>

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<p>“It sounds to me like a very complicated, expensive, bureaucratic nightmare that is essentially unfair and unworkable in the real world.”</p>

<p>That’s exactly what the immigration law is now. Think Kafka, think Soviet bureaucracy, think Vaclav Havel’s “The Memorandum.” At the moment, I’m representing the African wife of a U.S. citizen before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal. She spent a year in a U.S. jail at a taxpayer cost of about $40,000 upon arriving here to join her husband because…wait for it…the government believes that she checked an incorrect box on her visa application in Nigeria. There’s no way to know whether I and her other lawyers are going to be able to keep her from being deported in the long run. Wife of a citizen, folks. I’m not making this up.</p>

<p>“Also, why is the birthright option not under scutiny?”</p>

<p>Because of the text of the 14th Amendment. You could make an argument that the first sentence shouldn’t guarantee a citizenship birthright, but that would be a radical departure from how it’s been interpreted for the 140 years since it was enacted. In other words, the prevailing opinion is that it would take a Constitutional amendment to change this rule.</p>

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<p>Is this plan going to be for all illegals, so that your client could now apply to stay under a new law such as this? Would she do better to leave and now run in over the Mexican border this month, and then get someone’s receipts for buying a 7-11 Slurpee in January to prove she was here?</p>

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<p>“In other words, the prevailing opinion is that it would take a Constitutional amendment to change this rule.”</p>

<p>And the prevailing demographics, with the resulting economic, social, linguistic, educational, medical (public health, private health) changes are a continent away from what they were when the specific language of the 14th Amendment was adopted.</p>

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<p>That’s why I don’t understand why the birthright is not on the table in the immigration discussions. Let the people decide.</p>

<p>I also do not see how the politicians are saying that there is a mandate that 70% of the American people want to grant illegals a route to permanent citizenship. The polls that I see are a lot more mixed. </p>

<p>I wonder if the pollsters and politicians even come to my part of the US where the American workers can’t find jobs, to ask these questions. The unemployed workers are fuming over this issue. Of course, many of them can’t afford phones anymore, so they can’t be called.</p>

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<p>Collegialmom, you’re confusing two seperate, distinct problems: work currently done by illegal immigrants – and jobs that Americans are NOT finding. </p>

<p>American workers who can’t find jobs are not competing with illegal immigrants – illegal immigrants perform back-breaking migrant labor in our fields, cut grass in 100-degree weather, work under appalling conditions in slaughterhouses, etc. I bet this is not the kind of work sought by the unemployed Americans you’re referring to. </p>

<p>In general, American workers you’re referring to can’t find jobs because of closing factories, massive outsourcing and rampant age discrimination. It really doesn’t have much to do with immigrants.</p>

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<p>“illegal immigrants perform back-breaking migrant labor in our fields, cut grass in 100-degree weather, work under appalling conditions in slaughterhouses, etc. I bet this is not the kind of work sought by the unemployed Americans you’re referring to.”</p>

<p>That’s not the whole picture, either. Because after several raids this year, citizens were lining up to apply for jobs vacated by illegals. Here in NYC, we don’t have agriculture, but we do have restaurant work, which is sought after employment by young people who are now pushed out of those entry-level jobs, particularly in the African American community.</p>

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<p>“That’s why I don’t understand why the birthright is not on the table in the immigration discussions. Let the people decide.”</p>

<p>Well if by “the people” you mean 3/4 of the state legislatures, etc. etc…it’s extremely difficult to pass a constitutional amendment. The reason it isn’t on the table is because most people think that the political will to do so isn’t there. If you want a constitutional amendment on the table, put it on the table.</p>

<p>I have no idea how this law is going to affect my client, if at all, because right now there isn’t any law; there’s a bunch of proposals. Believe me, if the houses of Congress get on the same page, lawyers like me will be searching every nook and cranny for ways to help our clients.</p>

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<p>katliamom: Where I have recently lived, the jobs that were always done by tradesmen are now being taken by low wage immigrants. This avoids the construction industry paying decent wages, benefits, soc sec, and adhering to safety standards. The tradesmen are VERY angry. For instance, bricklayers.</p>

<p>Also, where there are no immigrants the American TEENAGERS actually do the landscaping. And make a nice income.</p>

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<p>I think this is a horrible proposal. It just rewards illegal behavior, imo. And I speak as a first generation American, whose parents immigrated legally and went through the lengthy process to become citizens. I grew up in California, and I don’t really have a good solution for illegal immigration. Some jobs that citizens don’t want ARE filled by illegal aliens. But not in all cases.

<a href=“http://www.corruptionchronicles.com/2007/03/immigration_raid_opens_jobs_fo.html[/url]”>http://www.corruptionchronicles.com/2007/03/immigration_raid_opens_jobs_fo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I’m one of the outspoken conservatives on this forum and I think it’s appalling that GWB and McCain are in favor of this idea. Personally, I think most LEGAL immigrants would feel the same way.</p>

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<p>collegialmom, I believe you, though I have to say where I live (Denver) you NEVER see ‘Anglo’ teens doing lawns. They work in clothes boutiques, wait tables, file paperwork in law firms or work as summer-time nannies. (Meantime, the guys who do the lawns on our block are named Jose and Carlos.) It could be a regional thing - but from my viewpoint here in the west - if even half these people went away the local economy would simply collapse.</p>