“That’s a good list. I would strike #9 if it were up to me, but if we get all the other items, I could live with it.”
One thing the pro-amnesty side has been saying that is partially valid is that if we don’t have paths for legal employment-based immigration, the demand for illegal immigration with continue. We need to have some level of legal immigration, or the only immigration will be illegal immigration. what I favor is ending chain migration and replacing it with point-based merit immigration and combining it with a temporary worker program so the low-skilled labor issue is address there. The point about temporary worker program is that we should address the agricultural jobs issue without creating an open-ended program and one subject to abuse. The problem with “AgJobs” and other bills is that they are amnesty bills, that also have provision that end up being anything but temporary worker visas - they can stay unlimited and get on the green card track. What we need instead is a simple, real, temporary worker program - employee only (no family), go home after a number of years, no special green card slots.
One other thing lost in the immigration discussion is the fact that we already have all sorts of visas - too many actually. We should simplify from the 70 or so visa types to under 10 or less.
While I agree we should have some legal immigration, I disagree that we "need" it. If the penalties for hiring illegals are high enough, and enforced with the same zeal most criminal law is enforced with, the demand for illegal workers would be very low. No respectable establishment would want to hire an illegal if it faced a reasonable probability of getting caught and fined. Of course, no matter what we do, short of legalizing all immigration, we will never eradicate all illegal immigration, no more than we can erradicate murder or bank roberrty. As NRO's Andy McCarthy pointed out, crime problems are not solved, they are managed.
But it is possible, even with very low levels of legal immigration, to have tolerably low illegal immigration. Now that's not necessarily desirable, but it is doable. Japan did it, for example. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we ought to copy Japan's immigration policy; they should allow in more (highly skilled) immigrants, IMHO. My only point is that keeping illegal immigration levels low is possible regardless of how many legal immigrants we let in.
what I favor is ending chain migration and replacing it with point-based merit immigration
Agreed.
and combining it with a temporary worker program so the low-skilled labor issue is address there.
Unemployment among low skill Americans is in double digits. I fail to see why we need to import more such people. Our own already cause enough problems as it is.
The point about temporary worker program is that we should address the agricultural jobs issue
There's no issue to address. There's no such thing as a job an American won't do if the wage is high enough. If we cut off the cheap supply of illegal farm workers, farm worker wages would go up to the point where enough workers are willing to pick the crops. Food prices would go up, but only by a small amount since farm labor is such a tiny fraction of total food costs. Ag economists have already run these numbers. Higher farm labor costs would also induce agribusiness to invest in more labor saving technology and R&D. This is already happening, as now the industry is working to develop robots to pick oranges, for example.
without creating an open-ended program and one subject to abuse.
Unfortunately, there is no way of creating a guest worker program that wouldn't turn out to be something like this. There's no such thing as a temporary worker.
What we need instead is a simple, real, temporary worker program - employee only (no family), go home after a number of years, no special green card slots.
The problem is, they don't go home. Just ask the Germans what happened to all those supposedly "temporary" Turks they imported. Ask the Dutch about their "temporary" Arabs.
One other thing lost in the immigration discussion is the fact that we already have all sorts of visas - too many actually. We should simplify from the 70 or so visa types to under 10 or less.
Agreed.