Posted on 01/07/2004 2:45:15 AM PST by ovrtaxt
I say, people are darned right to be as impassioned on this forum as they were 4 years ago (and I recall) during the unfolding Clinton Scandal and enusing Impeachment hearings. You couldn't restrain anyone on that!
BS...both parties seek to get votes from what is considered the future majority (if present trends continue) demographic of America: the Hispanic population. Other than a select few, they could give a damn about America, its citizens, or citizenship. Staying in power is their only goal...its pathetic, and its not going to change anytime soon. I could kick myself when I bought into the whole "change the tone in Washington" speel. Meet the new boss...same as the old boss. (besides his character and the handing of the WOT)
For California the consequences of unregulated immigration now consume well over 1/3 of the state's budget.
30% of the public education system expenses and 25% of the criminal justice system expenses, the public health care system expenses and the cost of public welfare.
The cost of providing public services to the consequences of unregulated immigration over the past 50 years is THE largest expense the state faces.
It is fair and accurate to say that the upcoming fiscal, political battle in California revolves around unregulated immigration although both major parties are unwilling to discuss the issue in that light.
It's the 400 pound gorilla that few are willing to address honestly
Once AGAIN, you asked "well what's your plan?" and here it is. Impotent? If the GOP can have a "free pills for granny" medicare boost, this plan doesn't sound too farfetched.
His proposal is brilliant except for one flaw.
The brilliance? The part that says anyone wanting to take part in this must get their employer to show no Americans wanted the job.
That will cause the cost of those involved significantly higher. Companies will be forced to show that they tried to find Americans for the job. They will have to be prepared to defend lawsuits from out of work Americans and the ever rabid trial lawyers if they want to rely on these workers. This cost will make it so that the jobs which the people are coming across the border to get won't be there, which removes the incentive for crossing the border, particularly if the benefits only go to those who have jobs and are paying taxes.
Further, for those who do manage to get their employer to vouch that no American wanted the job, so that they can get into the program, we now know who they are and where they are, two things we don't now know, all in exchange for involvement in a program which could be legislated away at any time. Some would be skeptical that it ever would be, but in an economic downturn, ending a guest worker program so Americans could get the jobs would be very politically doable.
And of all the illegals who are out there now, there are some who are harmless and those who are not. Those who sign up for this would more often than not be in the harmless side; they are the ones who really would rather not be hiding and don't mind us knowing they are here. This would make the pool of those who are here completely illegally smaller, which would lessen the burden on our security agencies.
As specified, the proposal is worlds, worlds, worlds better than I had feared based on the initial reports and the initial debate here.
So it is brilliant in that it would put a damper on further illegal immigration, pressure companies to not hire illegals, would get many illegals to tell us who and where they are. I am pretty sure that as this debate rolls on, almost all of the leftist leaning immigration groups are going to come out hot and heavy against these proposals. That should tell us something.
But it has a fatal flaw which means that we really should be opposing it anyway- namely that the courts would very likely find some reason to strike down that one very provision, stating that it is an impossible standard to meet (you know liberal judges). And if that one aspect of the plan is removed, then the whole thing is garbage.
Relying on a single beam of support in a very large structure when there are sledgehammer weilding Judges all over the place is a very bad idea.
You must be confused, friend. I never asked anyone what their plan was.
Also, this study:
Tired & Poor: Bankrupt Arguments for Mass, Unskilled Immigration
We at the Center for Immigration Studies estimate that the average Mexican immigrant will use $55,200 more in public services during his lifetime than he pays in taxes.
I disagree I think Sabertooth should be commended for putting together a pretty good list of proposals. Best of all, I like his proposal number 8:
8: Seize the assets of businesses knowingly hiring Illegals under the RICO Act, as they are ongoing criminal enterprises. Prosecute executives who knowingly hire Illegals.
Don't you think that something like that might be worth a shot?
But that was not your question. Your question was about using RICO statutes to bankrupt those businesses which knowingly hire productive workers who they know to be carrying fraudulent ID cards.
No, I don't agree with that, either. Again, the problem is when ideologues mistake a relative good with an absolute one. There is no justice in throwing thousands of citizens into unemployment because the corporate gardener or janitor was hired who shouldn't have been hired. That would constitute a grave injustice.
The whole point of "knowingly hire" really becomes moot unless all employers are required by some prohibitively-costly mandate to then hire detectives, and forgery experts, etc. It's not their job to vet people's legal status. They are there to provide goods and services which benefit people and society, not to do the work of the government. They have no authority or expertise to vet the status of anyone to a 100% degree of certainty. But if someone is knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants and flouting the law, and if it can be proven, then yes, prosecute them, but don't bankrupt their business. To advocate such is only demagoguery.
Anyone can formulate a doomed or impossible plan, but seriously, I will stick with time-tested and elected leaders on formulating a workable plan on this problem.
It appears that we agree on the wisdom of punishing employers who knowingly hiring undocument immigrants. As for an appropriate penalty, the usual standard is to design a penalty that is sufficiently costly to encourage compliance with the law.
The key here is to find a penalty that makes it so costly to hire illegal immigrants that rational employers will refrain from doing so. Obviously, penalties and enforcement should be ratcheted up in this area.
I have a feeling that Sabertooth and most others would agree to penalties that are less than the corporate death penalty so long as the penalties were made adequate to encourage compliance with the law. Again, I think that Sabertooth's proposals are worth some serious consideration.
Until you look a little deeper. High tech industries are an excellent example. The system already exists in that industry through the H1B visa game.
Employers have easily shown that Americans don't want the jobs. Americans don't want these high tech jobs because the wage has been artificially depressed by the employer below the level that the American worker can economically justify.
That same manipulation of an honestly constructed system will be applied to all other industries. If you want foreign workers, simply cut the wage in half and you can have all you want.
Who benefits? The foreign country. Who loses? The American worker who was forced to pay thousands for his technical education only to be denied employment because of an excess of cheap, equally well qualified, foreign labor.
When I worked in industry, environmental laws beginning to be written so that executives (company presidents, CEOs, etc.) could be prosecuted for violations, even if they had no actual personal knowledge of the crimes committed - I think in legal terms it would mean there was no "plausible deniability". The EPA assumed that if someone was in charge of a company, he "knew or should have known" about everything that happened there.
It created a bit more incentive for CEOs to take an interest in making sure things were done the correct way, especially after a couple of bigshots were prosecuted and convicted.
I see no reason that immigration laws couldn't be written and enforced in the same manner. I must say, when I was listening to the summary of the President's suggestions on the radio this afternoon I was a bit confused...if employers have to follow existing labor laws to hire illegals, is there still an incentive to do so under the proposed program? If minimum wage laws, etc, were followed, would Americans be willing to do the jobs?
That is not to suggest I am a big fan of H-1B visas. I think that if there is a 'shortage' of technically capable people, then wages should go up and more people will then train themselves and educate themselves to get those jobs which would expand the work pool and allow wages to come back down; I don't think the answer is to expand the work pool artificially by importing tons of foreigners. But it is a different issue.
So the question becomes, are wages be depressed in these jobs that illegals are currently working (which tend to be lower paying ones) by them being here by more than the amount of added cost there will be in ensuring that the p's and q's are taken care of in meeting the requirements of this law? I am skeptical.
Besides, I still think people are overstating how many current aliens would take 'advantage' of this system. Let's say I am an illegal immigrant. I took a job with some forged papers. I want to take advantage of this, so I don't have to worry about being caught. I go to my employer, and now my employer (who for me to become legal has to vouch for the fact that there was no American who wanted my job) has to decide if he is going to fire me for lying about things in the first place, and then may end up finding some American citizen to take my job, the very job I need to stay, in order to meet the criteria specified. I bet the percentage would be small.
But there is still my main concern, the concern I have which tells me this whole thing is a bad idea. The fact that judges could gut the good parts of any such plan, leaving only the garbage. It is too big of a risk.
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