…But they always get so much press. This morning’s must-read smackdown is La Queen Sucia for her beautiful refutation of anti-immigrant bigotry.
(via Kung Fu Monkey)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It doesn’t make what illegal immigrants are doing any more legal.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got sympathy for them and think there should be given some kind of legal status. It’s just that they broke the law and they should realize that they are subject to the whims of the host nation. If I snuck into the U.S. to work from Canada and got caught long after being there, I would expect to be deported.
I don’t think it’s arguing that it’s not illegal…it’s a pragmatic argument. We lose when we kick illegal aliens out, even if it is our perfectly legal whim to do so.
We need to set up a legal method for workers to come over, with documentation of that method, then offer an amnesty for already-present illegals for a set amount of time.
Then we go after whoever’s left. And we make sure that we punish the employers of illegals harshly.
Well, fine then. Let’s just open the borders up and let whoever wants in, come in. As it is, for most immigrants whose home country doesn’t conveniently sit next to our border, immigration is a long, expensive, and uncertain process. Why make equally deserving Asian or African orMiddle Eastern or European immigrants wait in queue, if we are just going to leave our borders open for our neighbor to the south?
Incidentally, there’s a statement there that says immigrants, regardless of legal status, pay more in taxes than they use in services.
Does anyone know whether that’s the case for the subcategory of illegal immigrants as well?
“Incidentally, there’s a statement there that says immigrants, regardless of legal status, pay more in taxes than they use in services.”
Well, for *legal* immigrants, this is no surprise. Part of the process involves making sure that the immigrant will not become a public liability. The immigrant has to either show that they have the resources to support themselves, or that they have a sponsor within the US who is willing to guarantee that they will not become a public liability. When I was sponsoring my fiancee, I had to submit forms showing my employment history, assets, income, and so forth, and the government had the option (which they did not take) of making me put up a bond to support her in the event that I was unable to.
Does anyone know whether that’s the case for the subcategory of illegal immigrants as well?
I’d assume so. The guys out on the corner aren’t signing up foodstamps, but they are paying sales tax all the time.
“Well, fine then. Let’s just open the borders up and let whoever wants in, come in. As it is, for most immigrants whose home country doesn’t conveniently sit next to our border, immigration is a long, expensive, and uncertain process.”
Anybody who has friends from Europe knows it is much, much easier for them to legally visit, work in, and immigrate to the United States. My friends from Europe can travel freely between there and here, but getting a tourist visa for a friend in Nicaragua was almost impossible. I’ve never known a European who wanted to work in America who was denied the opportunity.
Yes, illegals are breaking the law. I break the law every day. I doubt I can drive a mile without breaking the law six times. I’m really not a very good person, or a very good driver, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to make me a scapegoat for all the nation’s ills.
Having just done my state and federal income taxes and having just received my notice from the county on yet another 35% increase in the value of my house with subsequent increase in tax owed, I can tell you for certain I pay more in taxes than I use in services. And I was born in Illinois.
How so? Illegal aliens depress the wages of low skill workers by providing a pool of labor willing to work for very low wages.
Max,
“Anybody who has friends from Europe knows it is much, much easier for them to legally visit, work in, and immigrate to the United States.”
Which is probably as much due to the demographics of the people applying as anything else. If you are coming from a fairly affluent country, have an education and some savings or a sponsor who does, then the US government can be more confident that you will probably not become a public liability. I kinda suspect that, say, a Moldovan high-school dropout with no sponsors would have no easier time getting in than his equivalent in Mexico.
“Yes, illegals are breaking the law. I break the law every day. I doubt I can drive a mile without breaking the law six times.”
So all laws are equivalent, eh? Me, I’d personally prefer to bring in immigrants who weren’t already breaking our laws when they get here.
I strongly suspect that many illegal aliens do not pay taxes on their wages, because their employers pay them in cash at rates lower than they would pay legal workers. It may also be true, based on some anecdotal evidence, that their employers also do not pay all the taxes they are supposed to.
One question on her first point:
So your taxes are going to pay for their free health care. This crisis has been created by our being the only Industrialized Western Democracy on EARTH without universal health care.
How would going to Universal Health Care change this fact? (the “their” in the first sentence refers to poor citizens I believe, not the immigrants, but that’s not the focus of my question anyway)
Sure there are xenophobes in the anti-illegal-immigration debate. But there are a lot of people who simply want the rule of law enforced. I’m open to changing that law…but whatever it is, I want it enforced across the board. I’m not xenophobic, I have a mexican-american foster sister, I just believe in the rule of law.
The problem with the current system is that the state and national governments implicitly approve the unlawful employment of illegal immigrants. At the same time, politicians rail against illegals. It’s truly the height of hypocrisy.
So how do we stop illegal immigration? Tightening our massive borders is an impossibility. In any event, most illegal immigrants, such as my son’s central-american nanny, simply overstayed their tourist visas. (She is now a green card holder).
Since border security is a hoax, what can be done? Two things… punish illegal immigrant workers, and/or punish employers of illegal immigrants. And what would the consequences be?
1. Substantially higher labor costs at the low end of the market.
2. The destruction of livelihoods based upon decades of tacit governmental approval. (My nanny was here illegally 24 years before she got her green card).
Are we prepared to do this? Are we prepared to re-institute the rule of law knowing that it will rip apart the lives of millions of productive members of American society?
So here’s my solution…
1. Make it a felony to employ an illegal immigrant. Only by stopping demand for illegal labor can we stop the flow of illegal immigrants.
2. Hire 10,000 agents to police the employment of illegal immigrants.
3. Acknowledge that anyone currently in the U.S.A. arrived at a time when the U.S.A. had a tacit agreement not to prosecute. Grant these people…all eleven million…green cards.
Incidentally, there’s a statement there that says immigrants, regardless of legal status, pay more in taxes than they use in services
>>> Here’s a funny thing. There is a temporary skilled worker category called H1B (a non-immigrant visa) that is granted for a maximum period of 6 years. These temporary workers pay social security tax along with federal and state taxes. Yet if they want to leave the US after 6 years, they can’t take the social security amount back. The law for a temporary worker to get their social security contribution back when they leave the US is that they should’ve contributed it for 10 years. So all the H1B workers who go back instead of converting into immigrants essentially forfeit their 6 yrs of social security contributions. And they are not even eligible for social security benefits during those 6 years either.
This is just one among the tons of different immigrant and non-immigrant statuses via which people come to the US. So I think it is pretty believable that a lot of them pay for more in taxes than they receive in services
How so? Illegal aliens depress the wages of low skill workers by providing a pool of labor willing to work for very low wages.
Following your economic argument…lower wages = in general, lower prices for the goods they’re making. As in every “economic globalization” debate, there is a concentrated group of “losers”, in this case people who would do manual work for $8/hour but not for 3$/day, but a larger group with slight benefits, namely the rest of us who get lower prices (not to mention the people that are thrilled to make 3$/day).
We lose when we kick illegal aliens out, even if it is our perfectly legal whim to do so.
How so? Illegal aliens depress the wages of low skill workers by providing a pool of labor willing to work for very low wages.
But the overall economic impact of immigration is a wash at best, or slightly positive. Rather than ask why undocumented workers should be allowed to work for cheap, I want to know why we let businesses get away with exploiting a poor underclass.
It makes me uneasy to think that our only choices in this debate are to either pay illegal workers next to nothing, or to kick out a relatively small number of people who are trying to improve their lot in life. In many ways, I’d rather see an amnesty program in place so that immigrants and native workers can work on a level playing field at the lower levels for a fair, documented wage from business, instead of being pitted against each other in the name of cheap labor.
Our favorite rightwing nincompoop Debbie Schlussel had a post yesterday about how illegal aliens are a traffic hazard in some towns, because they try to cross busy streets in droves, like herds of cattle or deer. Therefore, illegal aliens should go home, she says.
I am not linking to it, but you can check her site if you have a morbid fascination for the truly idiotic.
This is the study that addresses the issues in California (coturnix and caledonian):
http://www.wpusa.org/publications/complete/wpusa_immig.pdf
No distinction is made between immigrant and illegal immigrant, but one can read through the lines that the primary constituent is the illegal. Read it and reload.
Personally I do not find an issue with illegal immigration to where I think the immigrants should be criminalized–the workers are the ones that put the vegetables on my table; they provide cultural heterogenity for myself and my children; and by paying a regressive sales tax likely pay more in taxes than they acquire in government services. Because unions such as the farm workers maintain high wages, it is unlikely they adversely affect the income of low end workers, who for the most part, are unlikely to take on the jobs migrant labor do.
My one concern is from a public health perspective, I think we need to exercise some level of control to address potential and real outbreaks of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.
Mike
Allowing guest workers to come in while allowing them to unionize seems like a fair trade to me. It would really benefit the meat packing workers in their dealings with management, IMO.
It seems to me that the real xenophobes are the US citizens who would prefer to employ hispanic illegal aliens (of mostly cacausian ancestry) over impoverished African-Americans.
I was completely gobsmacked this morning on the way to work – I was flipping radio stations, and came across someone ranting about both immigrants and abortion. Get this link: he was saying that the “pro-abortionists” used the argument that otherwise many kids would be born into poverty, but they also say that immigrants provide the cheap labor that our economy is based on, so if we completely ban abortion, we can keep out all the immigrants because we’ll be home-growing our own underclass to take all the crappy jobs. He was completely serious. Need I mention that this was on a Christian radio station?
Part of the problem of illegial immigrants (and the H1B visa) is employer abuse. The H1B visa holder has a difficult time moving to another job (ie impossible) and is often told by the employer that they will sponser them for a green card. The employer can readily abuse the H1B visa holder. A similar behavior can occur with the illegial immigrant. (eg sweat shops)
It isn’t practicle by any stretch of the imagination to kick all the illegial workers out. Yes, they are here illegially, but the social cost and the actual cost of somehow rounding them up and kicking them out would be huge.
I think we have to make it illegial for businesses to hire illegials. Secure the border. Have some easy to administer guest worker program that does give the guest worker some latitude to move to a different employer. (help prevent abuse) Have a probationary period where is the guest worker commits a felony and are conviced they are jailed and or deported. (no traffic tickets shouldn’t do it type of thing, but theft or worse should.) Then with those who are already here we have to encourage them to come forward and become guest workers.
I don’t see any other practicle solution.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has a study that shows that immigrants with at least a high school diploma are positive influences on the economy, legal or not.
“What do we do about immigration?” is just one more question for which the answer is “good public schools.”
From a pragmatic viewpoint, why would we damage our economy by deporting contributors?
Oh, and crime, and the other bad stuff? Careful studies show that within three generations, criminal activities, etc., of immigrants are equal to “native” U.S. groups. Prior to that time, crime is dramatically lower.
Wake up.
Employers of illegal immigrants often don’t stop at breaking the law against employing illegal immigrants. They go on and break minimum wage laws, laws against unpaid overtime, laws about safe working conditions, etc. If they weren’t afraid to go to police or lawyers because of their immigration status, immigrants could demand the enforcement of minimum wage laws, the Fair Labor Standards Act, etc.
My brother works for the Legal Aid Society and it’s truly shocking how these people get ripped off when they’re just trying to get an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.
I don’t think that criminalizing them is an answer. Giving them the legal rights of any American worker, and the same education as anyone else, would go a long way toward integrating them into society (and especially their children).
Like practically everyone else in this country, I’m a descendant of immigrants; I really can’t support slamming the door behind my grandfather.
Shorter Charlie’s post
“The poor will always be with us, but at least they’re our poor.”
We xenophiles, however, consistently rock!
Carlie,
I heard that ridiculous argument as well in a discussion with someone on Slate.com. He argued that because of abortions, we were “missing” some 46 million Americans who should have been born. Because we were “missing” these citizens, we had jobs that needed to be filled and we were forced to allow illegals into the country to fill them.
… Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that the fact that these jobs are low-paying and have no benefits and few Americans would even consider taking them? Sounds like our educational system needs to start including basic demography in its curriculum.
Here is a site that I’ve researched before which offers a lot of trustworthy information regarding the effects that legal and illegal immigrants have on taxpayers, crime, etc.
http://www.claremont.org/projects/local_gov/Newsletter/crimeimmigration.html
Well, one’s position on xenophilia doesn’t always correlate with one’s position on illegal immigration.
Allowing guest workers to come in while allowing them to unionize seems like a fair trade to me. It would really benefit the meat packing workers in their dealings with management, IMO.
Neither the cheap-labor corporatists nor the spittle-flecked wingnuts would ever stand for that. That means that you can forget about ever getting it past the Republican party.
So, as long as we’re dreaming, I’d like a pony and an ice cream soda.
Bah. Stupid nationalism. I never asked to be American, that’s for sure. Let the people flow toward the resources…they will anyway. What other choice do they have.
“Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that that these jobs are low-paying and have no benefits and few Americans would even consider taking them?”
Laurie,
That’s what was so chilling – he was advocating that specifically. Women who get abortions = lowest members of society = happy to have those jobs, by his argument.
Does anyone know whether that’s the case for the subcategory of illegal immigrants as well?
Yes, it is. As just one part (and as La Queen points out) they pay payroll taxes and don’t get the benefits. Social Security alone has $420 billion (that’s a “B” on that “illion”) they got from illegal immigrants who cannot and do not get that money back. And that’s just part of it.
Social Security is an intergenerational transfer tax it is not some account you build up.(like a savings account ) Sure it is sold that way, but the reality is that people paying in today are paying current people’s benefits.
Maybe it should be structured differently, but that is a whole other discussion.
Social Security is an intergenerational transfer tax it is not some account you build up.(like a savings account ) Sure it is sold that way, but the reality is that people paying in today are paying current people’s benefits.
In other words, we ought to be encouraging illegal immigration because it helps make sure that our parents are better off and it’s helping to ensure the solvency of SSRI.
Seriously, aside from some minor effects in the lowest income percentiles, I’m having a hard time seeing how the economic effects of immigration (of whatever form) are much different from offshoring. And those economic effects (both generally from offshoring and also in the lowest income percentiles) could be managed really easily by sensible pro-worker policies which include *all* workers, and which the Republicans will never agree to implement. Far better to scapegoat non-citizens for a wedge issue, except that it turns out that the wedge is in their own party.
I think it’s nativism, pure and simple, that’s driving this. I don’t’ see anyone clamoring to throw out all of the illegal Irish immigrants, or the Canadians who have overstayed their visas (until one brings that up, and then the anti-immigration crowd says “oh, yeah, them too”). And I hear a lot of mouth music about “reconquista” and “Learn English!” That’s not economics. That’s nativism.
I keep reading about how we should punish the employers, but I think that’s easier said than done. For one, you would need to put an end to the medieval practice of sharecropping.
(note: I learned of this through reading Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness, but since I’ve never seen anyone challenge his assertions, I’m assuming they’re legit.)
Sharecropping sounds like the ideal American dream a la Horatio Alger: poor immigrant comes to the USA, gets a plot of land to call his own, then works the land to pay off his debt and expand. But most of the time, it’s more of a feudalistic system where the poor sharecropper is so indebted to the large Fruit corporation, that he can only make his quota (and avoid losing his land) by hiring immigrant laborers who will work for under minimum wage.
If the illegals are caught, it all falls down on the poor sharecropper who can easily be replaced. In the meantime, the corporation is completely legally insulated–they can’t be touched. And of course their reaction is always (to paraphrase Claude Raines from Casablanca) “I’m shocked! Shocked to find out illegals are picking my fruit.”
Sharecropping sounds like the ideal American dream a la Horatio Alger: poor immigrant comes to the USA, gets a plot of land to call his own, then works the land to pay off his debt and expand.
No, not really. I don’t know anyone who would think that sharecropping has ever been anything other than debt peonage.
Paperwight,
I don’t see how one is going to mandate pro worker policies with offshore workers. By definition those workers are in different countries and understandably countries don’t like it if we tell them what to do.(or try to force them to do it; I don’t think you are pro imperialism.) Walling off our country from others to mitigate offshoring isn’t going to work. Yes, I agree that sharecropping and other employment abuses are wrong (regardless of the person’s immigration status) and do happen. Throwing the illegals out isn’t going to work either.
I don’t see how one is going to mandate pro worker policies with offshore workers.
Fair Trade requirements in the various trade agreements would be a good start; domestic policies like universal health care that redistribute the wealth to those harmed by offshoring would be another. Comparative advantage theory holds that each country involved in an offshoring transaction benefits — it says nothing about how those benefits are distributed. Current models distribute the benefits upward, not across.
Follow the money!
The large number of illegals depresses lower end wages. Jobs that paid $15/hr 20 years ago now pay $10. This benefits those who hire them. If we were serious about this issue, we’d enforce the laws we have and jail the employers. Of course we won’t because they are of the politically influential class.
A partial measure might be to disallow the deduction taken by any employer for wages paid to an invalid social security number. This would immediately decrease the attractiveness of dhiring illegals.
For the argument that these are jobs that Americans just won’t take, Capitalism has a solution: under the law of supply and demand, THE WAGES GO UP! The reason why that isn’t happening is that the illegals are available to take those jobs at rates that US citizens won’t
And don’t think any employer is ignorant of the invalid social security numbers used by illegal aliens.
Anybody who has friends from Europe knows it is much, much easier for them to legally visit, work in, and immigrate to the United States. My friends from Europe can travel freely between there and here, but getting a tourist visa for a friend in Nicaragua was almost impossible. I’ve never known a European who wanted to work in America who was denied the opportunity.
Ask any person from Eastern Europe. Poles are European, too. American consulate officials in Poland have a reputation for being a bunch of nasty s…ers.
Paul Krugman seemed to think that illegals were a net drain on the economy, while sharing all the warm fuzzy lefty reasons for supporting open borders. I’d link, but I’m too lazy, and I doubt that economics are what drives this debate. It’s about being ‘nice’. How dare we evil Americans want to have borders. My left-libertarian sensibilities are put off by paleocon anti immigrant ideologues, but I still think we need to control the flow of people into the country.
This ‘nativist’ argument piques my interest, though. What country isn’t nativist? In Mexico, naturalized citizens never have the rights of natives (and can’t, for instance, hold public office), and Mexico has far more draconian immigration laws in general. Not that I think Mexico is any model- I’m just sayin’. Or France and the, ahem, ‘youth’ riots of a few months back. Sort of a nativist approach, and a good argument against it, perhaps.
It’s also interesting to check out Cesar Chavez’s attitudes toward illegal aliens on Wikipedia. He was agin them, I take it, for economic reasons.
Interesting, especially in teh misdirection she included.
Regarding medical care, she points to the US poor and its poor health care system. This has not a thing to do with the fiscal drain the illegals place on the system. Valid argument but for another discussion. In my own county, taxes were raised for the hospital, in fact a separate tax district was established, just for this purpose.
On schools, well, I don’t think she knows from what she speaks. Living in a border state, I have see the numbers.
On net gain/loss, well, another misdirection by including ALL immigrants. Last numbers I heard was an $89,000 net loss to illegal immigrants.
Adding a concept – border protection – I’d suggest we follow Mexico’s lead: They’ve militarized the southern border. They, last year, complained that their immigration problem is the worst in the world. Irony, anyone?
And the follow the money concept is true on most fronts. We will never have a real health care plan in the US because too many politicians are making bucks on health insurance company stocks. We won’t have real border protection because, as noted, people are making more profit due to depressed wages. Indeed, most of the countries Bush is wanting to have guest workers come from have no middle class, just poor and rich. Care to move the present republican economics into the future with that concept as a guide?
My family went to America back in the 19th century, and stuff like that was a problem 200 years ago! It always amazed me that they werent judged merely by their race, but by which side of the German-Poland border they were born on.
How so? Illegal aliens depress the wages of low skill workers by providing a pool of labor willing to work for very low wages. Thank You.