WSJ: The Nanny Chronicles -- Lock your doors; the Mexican maids are coming. (Immigration reform)

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 14, 2004 | Editorial

[OESY]

...Think about the Kerik example: The man and his wife have two small kids.... A nanny offers that help, and she seems both nice enough and gets along with kids. Whether or not she's "legal" seems less important to most American parents than whether she's trustworthy and hard-working.

As for the nanny, she's traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from home to make some money and get ahead. Her primary concern isn't running some Immigration Service gantlet but is to find a good family that pays decently and treats her well. Are we really supposed to believe that this kind of transaction between consenting adults jeopardizes our national security?

...Congress made some progress on the so-called nanny tax issue back in 1994, raising the threshold for complying and simplifying the process by which employers file taxes for their domestic help.

...Most Americans calculate the costs -- in time, legal advice and hassle -- of filling out all the forms, and they simply pay cash instead. The wage threshold should long ago have been raised far higher.

As for immigration law, the Bush Administration is headed down the right path with its guest-worker program. That proposal acknowledges that immigrants fill vital jobs, that movement across borders is inevitable as long as there is the lure of opportunity, and that merely adding more border guards won't stop migrants in any case.

The Bush plan would provide a legal means -- a three-year work visa -- for new immigrants to enter the country and take jobs Americans don't want. Some of them could even be nannies. That system would make it easier to track all foreigners, freeing up our homeland security forces to concentrate on terror threats, rather than rounding up the usual nanny suspects....

[brianl703]

The guestworker plan also fails to address daylaborers..people who don't know from one day to the next if they'll be working or who they'll be working for.

I suspect that daylaborers aren't a small percentage of illegal aliens.

[FITZ]

It also doesn't address the large and growing and very violent hispanic gangs moving in from Central America and Mexico. Will they be given "guest" criminal status? They're not being deported now so would there be any difference? Or the new mothers of anchor babies here to collect welfare handouts? Will they be "guest" moochers? The problem is Bush doesn't seem to mention deportations of anyone --- not even the lazy and the worthless.

[Travis McGee]

¿Enseña el español?

Solamente aqui.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Travis McGee]

Brazil is very comfortable for the super wealthy who travel about in helicopters and jets.

Nannies and gardeners galore, for a pittance.

Our own elites are driving us in the same direction through open borders, while pissing on our heads and telling us it's raining.

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

"As long as you can pay minimum wages, their social security and provide them a health insurance policy or pay them enough that they can afford one..."

Are you saying that employers owe their workers health insurance, or the money to pay for it?


sitetest

[FITZ]

True. Right now the middle class is useful for providing the funds for the free health care and public schools for all the many servants of the elites pouring into this country --- and as long as the middle class is still around, we're going to be hit hard for more and more money as their lust for low-paid servants grows.

What happens if they destroy the middle class or the tax burden from government social spending becomes too high? Will they pay for the programs their servants and the large families of their servants will want? Or they should be paying attention to why countries like Mexico are in trouble --- the very large servant class has grown way too large and they want in on some of their country's wealth. It's not going to work out when the middle class cannot keep paying and only the rich have access to medical care and schools and the large poverty class gets rebellious.

[FITZ]

You want them, you pay for them. Are you saying it's the taxpayers' duty to provide the health care and everything else for your cheap servants?

[FITZ]

Are you saying that employers owe their workers health insurance, or the money to pay for it?

And how else are they going to get it? You want to pay your nannies $2 an hour AND give them no health care plan. Something doesn't give.

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

"You want them, you pay for them."

So, you believe that employers, generally, are obligated to provide health insurance for their employees?

Does that include the fellow serving me at McDonald's?

The countergirl at the local drugstore or department store?

The American citizen who works for the lawn maintenance and landscaping company?


sitetest

[FITZ]

Illegals already make pretty good money - you can't find anyone willing to work for less than $10/hr (cash).

Give me a break --- in this part of the country, only one out of 10 workers makes over $10 an hour --- illegals make quite a bit less --- no one's paying their leaf-blower or toilet cleaner $400 a week. One third the people here make just minimum wage.

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

Please show where I have said I want to pay nannies at all. Since my wife doesn't work and we homeschool, we don't really need nannies.

However, I'll make it easy for you. Two dollars per hour isn't even the federal minimum wage. Please show where I have suggested that it is acceptable to pay anyone $2 per hour.

In fact, please show where I have suggested that it is acceptable to hire illegal aliens, either.

Thanks.


sitetest

[FITZ]

Do you believe it's the government (ie -- taxpayers) who must provide the free health care then?

I have employer provided health insurance. Other people buy their own --- but of course that takes more than working for $3 an hour.

If you have a dozen servants --- shouldn't you be either paying them well enough that they can purchase a health care policy for themselves and their families or else provide them a plan? It's not likely they inherited a great amount of wealth after all --- or do you believe in Socialist Health Care?

[FITZ]

As long as you aren't bringing impoverished people into the country to be your dirt-paid servants ---- if businesses must compete for labor then business tends to entice would-be employers with better wages and/or benefits like health care. If the labor pool is limited, then it's about supply and demand --- the McDonald jobs tend to go to kids whose parents still provide them health care.

It's a problem when the labor pool becomes unlimited and willing to take anything. When you've got heads of large households taking those McDonalds jobs and relying on the government to provide for them.

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

An employer has an obligation to pay workers the going wage, providing that that wage is not so low as to violate the law.

I don't believe that employers are obligated to pay a "living wage." The employer doesn't owe the worker a wage which exceeds the market value of the work, with the caveat that the employer must pay at least the minimum wage.

I own a business, and we provide health insurance.

Our very basic health insurance has a premium that costs about $4 per hour for a full-time worker. That's in-network HMO, you can't go to an out-of-network doctor at all, and you only get the medical care the HMO tells you that you're entitled to.

Better health care costs about $5 per hour on a full-time basis, and the fee-for-service stuff costs even more than that.

If you insist that employers must cover the cost of health insurance in all cases, employers will find ways to automate their businesses in ways to do without large numbers of low-wage workers. Employers will find ways to eliminate two out of every three jobs at McDonald's and Wal-Mart and the drugstore and the department store.

Entry-level jobs will be reduced dramatically.

Health care costs are a problem in this country. I'm not in favor of socialized medicine, but I'm also against an employer mandate to force employers to pay for, or even offer health insurance (what good does it do to offer a plan that costs over $700 per month for a worker making $6 per hour?).

Nowhere will you have found me to argue in favor of illegal immigration in this thread. In fact, I have argued against it.

But I asked you:

"So, you believe that employers, generally, are obligated to provide health insurance for their employees?

"Does that include the fellow serving me at McDonald's?

"The countergirl at the local drugstore or department store?

"The American citizen who works for the lawn maintenance and landscaping company?"


sitetest

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

"As long as you aren't bringing impoverished people into the country to be your dirt-paid servants..."

Please show where I have approved of this activity on this thread or any other in the nearly seven years that I've been at FR.

Thanks.


sitetest

[FITZ]

I believe anyone bringing anyone into the country who is too poor to provide for their families should have a sponsor who will pay for them and their families and that would include employers bringing them in.

I don't believe in forcing employers to provide living wage or health care normally --- but right now the entire balance of things is being disrupted --- you've got millionaires like Kerik believing his employees should be wards of the taxpayers if they should fall sick --- and we're about a half an inch from the complete government take-over of the health care system now --- and that will be a disaster.

[FITZ]

(what good does it do to offer a plan that costs over $700 per month for a worker making $6 per hour?).

And that's one of the reasons our premiums cost so darned much --- besides outrageous property taxes for the free county hospitals and clinics we've got for the citizens of Mexico, our premiums go way up -- because doctors and hospitals don't really take a loss when they fill the beds with non-insured immigrants --- they just up the charges for the paying patients.

[Travis McGee]

Brazil, here we come. It's a distillation process. As the country becomes more dysfunctional, as the middle class disappears, it gets better and better for the elites. The cost of unlimited servants approaches zero.

And when the social explosions begin, the ultra elite simply takes to the air, as they do in Sao Paulo, where helicopters fill the sky, flitting between the roofs of high rises, and guarded estates.

The roads become a gauntlet of carjackers and kidnappers....who cares? The roads are for "the little people."

That's what's so striking about this Kerik nomination. He was "anointed" into the elite by Sir Rudy the Brave. Kerik went from narcotics cop to Rudy's driver to (almost) DHS in 11 years, after being annointed! This is like going from Lieutenant to Field Marshal! He passed literally thousands of seniors in his chain of command after being anointed into the elite by Sir Rudy. A 6 million dollar "stock option" (wink wink) windfall was just one of his perks. Along with multiple mistresses in taxpayer paid love nests, etc.

And the silver lining is that this case, because of the illegal alien nanny situation, might actually lead to real change in our immigration policy. Joe Sixpack is flummoxed by competing studies on the effects of illegal immigration. He knows it's destroying America in his gut, but he's beaten down with studies paid for by the elites at the WSJ and so on.

But the Director of Homeland Security, having an illegal alien in his home....that's a thought-bite that Joe Sixpack grasps intuitively. There is no way to put lipstick on that pig and take her to the prom. Maybe that's what winning the ideological battles comes down to: ideas which the average American can digest whole, intuitively. Thought-bites.

[sitetest]

Dear FITZ,

Neither I nor Clemenza, to whom you originally responded, offered support in this thread for illegal immigration.

All Clemenza said was, in response to a poster who asked why folks couldn't mow their own lawns and clean their own houses, was that some folks work long hours and need folks to do these things for them.

In my area, the local services I thought about hiring to mow my own lawn were staffed by American citizens, mostly folks who've grown up in this area. We tried a couple of local housecleaning services. One was owned by a lady who did most of the work herself, American-born, and her assistant, American-born. Another worked out of an office building I used to have space in, and most of her staff were also American-born.

These jobs don't pay a bunch, but in this area, people working these jobs make about $10 per hour.

Even so, they don't really support health insurance premiums in our state.

By the way - the lawn service paying its American-born staff $10 per hour - I didn't go with them. Too expensive. It was cheaper to buy a riding mower and do it myself.


sitetest