Posted on 06/30/2005 6:38:17 AM PDT by Spiff
Guest worker proposal raises thorny questions
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas
Guest worker programs may sound compassionate or necessary, but the more you look, the more you see problems. No guest worker program should be passed until these questions are answered:
1. Many illegal aliens enter the United States to work. But there is little enforcement of laws that prohibit employers from hiring them. Not a single employer was fined last year for doing so.
If current laws are not enforced, how can we expect similar restrictions in a guest worker program to be enforced?
2. If foreign workers are allowed to bring their families with them and stay for years, why would they return home where a job, if they can find one, pays one-tenth as much?
3. Amnesty occurs when a person's crime is pardoned. Why isn't it amnesty when illegal entrants, instead of being deported for breaking our immigration laws, are allowed to stay?
And why isn't it "amnesty plus" when they are also allowed to work and offered permanent residence and eventual citizenship?
4. Nearly every study shows that competition from cheap foreign labor displaces American workers, including legal immigrants, or depresses their wages. Rather than legalize illegal entrants, why not increase wages and make these jobs more attractive to American workers?
5. Why wouldn't a guest worker program be an open invitation to potential terrorists? They could enter the country legally, get a job and use the program as cover.
6. Guest workers do not earn enough to pay income taxes. And, if they pay Social Security taxes, at their low wages they will get back more than they paid in. They also use many government services.
So how is a guest worker program not a net loss for American taxpayers?
7. If illegal entrants are legalized, and then sponsor others for admission, why won't this cause a dramatic increase in immigration, which is already at a record high?
8. Even if there is a guest worker program, millions of illegal entrants will continue to come across our borders to obtain government benefits, seek other jobs and gain automatic citizenship for their children born in the United States.
On top of this, thousands more will enter illegally because they think they will be eligible for a guest worker amnesty program. So why doesn't the very prospect of such a program increase illegal immigration?
9. A guest worker program involves processing millions of applications, enforcing many more laws and regulations and monitoring thousands of employers. Doesn't this simply create another huge and expensive bureaucracy?
10. There are more than 10 million illegal entrants living in the United States full time, perhaps twice that many counting those who are in the country temporarily. Do we really want to take a chance on a massive guest worker program with no cap on the numbers and no sunset without learning the consequences?
What impact would such a program have on American workers, wages, social services, health-care costs, schools, taxpayers, and politics?
Guest worker programs sound good, but they only compound the already serious troubles that illegal immigration causes. We should hesitate before we leap.
Contact Lamar Smith at lamarsmith.house.gov.
ping
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Why leap at all? This is what they want us to do now? Hold our noses, close our eyes and leap. Why?
Well first he chastises businesses for hiring the best workers they can find and says they should have to become less competitive, then says the same beauacracy to monitor the "evil" businesses is going to be to expensive.
5. Why wouldn't a guest worker program be an open invitation to potential terrorists? They could enter the country legally, get a job and use the program as cover.
I guess he has never heard of homegrown American, ward churchill, who gets $90,000 a year tp promote his rabid and violent anti-Americanism.
Oh yeah, Cong. Smith, how come no mention of abortion, which has taken 40 million people out of the work force since 1973.
Don't you ever give up supporting our invasion?
The "best workers" as you put are nothing more than indentured servants who can't speak up and only care about sending cash back home to "my country."
More than 40 million...figuring half of those would have had two children by now of whom 1 would be roughly 20 yrs old by now and also working..
With a question like this he could work for the German government. It appears as if someone was smoking dope or out drinking when others were in Economics 101.
"Not a single employer was fined last year for doing so."
If they ever start fining employers, no employer will hire
any hispanic, ever. Employers can't be expected to be
able to detect counterfeit ID cards and papers;
and there is no way an employer can determine whether
a hispanic was born in the USA or only comes from the local barrio.
An unemployment rate of 5.4% indicates a very healthy employment picture. These illegals are not stealing jobs. They are making the rest of us more prosperous.
I am with you. The one thing that economist always say is that they wish Europe had a Mexico. Well expansion has given it one and the population has collectively wet its panties over the prospect of people actually willing to take the jobs they arent willing to do.
Have you ever seen the low quality of service in Europe. It is because a great number of jobs get unfilled and that the people who fill them are the bottom of the barrel.
Hard working immigrants are middle class immigrants who never had a chance in their native countries. The ones who stay behind are either the elite or those too lazy or stupid to get out.
Americans seem to forget that only a few generations back their great grand parents, or grand-parents or parents came to America for a better life too. The fact that they were welcome by the legal system is touching. But you cannot blame people for wanting a better life. And the illegals themselves help to make the lives of American citizens that much richer.
So please point out the obvious. There are a great deal of socialists in conservative clothing at FR who need pointing.
6. Guest workers do not earn enough to pay income taxes. And, if they pay Social Security taxes, at their low wages they will get back more than they paid in. They also use many government services. So how is a guest worker program not a net loss for American taxpayers?
Even worse, they can get the Earned Income Tax credit which is negative income taxes, the IRS pays them to file. I have a friend who came over from an Asian country and the IRS notified her (the first year) that she should file for the EETC,
Any guest worker program needs several provisions
1) That children of the guest workers born in the United States are not citizens
2) That the employer put up a bond of ?$50,000 (for unskilled)/$100,000(for skilled)? per worker to the state/local government that is forfeited should the guest worker not leave the US after the duration of the contract.
3) That the guest worker’s visa is tied to the employer and that the employer accepts full liablitiy for the guest worker including automobile liability / liability for any criminal actions / liability for any health related costs.
4) That the employer advertise the position on a national website and that qualified US applicants must be taken over guest workers if wage/salary demands are within 200% of the posted wage/salary.
5) That the employer may be sued by those applicants that were rejected. An independent panel will review the merits with the burden of proof laying squarely on the shoulders of the employer. If the wage/salary posted by the employer was deemed too low for the industry, the applicant wins. If the applicant was deemed qualified by the panel, the applicant wins.
6) That the guest worker be able to speak and read english.
No they don't. Guest worker programs are an abomination any way you look at them. The only people who seem to like them are President Bush, Vicente Fox and a handful of unscrupulous business owners (who make large contributions to both parties).
I would wager that 99% of Americans (including many immigrants) do not want a guest worker program, yet Bush continues to try and sell us one.
Hillary's going to jump on this issue!
I realize it's anecdotal, but you're not quite right there. When a person shows up to work for me after having been fired, and presents totally new ID purporting to be someone else, I'm pretty sure I'm looking at fake ID.
Stop hallucinating. If all employers should be verifying SS numbers via an easily accessible government database. Once the employees SS is shown to be a real then he can be hired. This is what should be made law. Right now employers get to play a game of pretend where they accept the worst shit fake ID for employment
The thinkers behind the anti-illegal immigration movement don't believe in fairy tales, why do you insist otherwise? We know it can't and won't be done overnight.
But once we can gain the upper hand and secure our borders, then we can go about the process of weeding out the illegals that are here and replacing them with out-of-work underpriviledged American citizens and giving those citizens a decent wage, one that stays here in the US and isn't sent out of the country as a secondary form of Foreign Aid.
Sheesh, how stupid do you think we are?
it's going to be interesting to see what senator cornyn comes up with.
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