Is Congress going to legalize 12 million illegal immigrants?
Illegal. That means "not legal." It does not mean "migrant" or "huddled masses yearning to be free" or any other circumlocution. Giving these people a pass rewards and encourages lawbreaking and reduces the credibility of our laws. Lawmakers agonize over losing the productive value of these workers to our economy, the impossibility of deporting 12 million people and the technical difficulty of protecting the border.
1. The politicians who vociferously defend the minimum wage are the same ones who say that these immigrants do work Americans won't do. Well, they might if the below-minimum-wage pay for these jobs rose with the reduction in the labor pool that would result from these folks going home. Side benefit: the marketplace would be generating better pay because of labor scarcity, instead of having (some) pay rates being artificially elevated by legislation.
2. No need to deport 12 million people. Enforce the immigration law by penalizing companies that hire the inexpensive labor and poof! the demand for it will decline. There will no longer be this particular incentive for crossing the border.
3. We can explore space but we can't build a fence. C'mon.
1. The politicians who vociferously defend the minimum wage are the same ones who say that these immigrants do work Americans won't do. Well, they might if the below-minimum-wage pay for these jobs rose with the reduction in the labor pool that would result from these folks going home. Side benefit: the marketplace would be generating better pay because of labor scarcity, instead of having (some) pay rates being artificially elevated by legislation.
2. No need to deport 12 million people. Enforce the immigration law by penalizing companies that hire the inexpensive labor and poof! the demand for it will decline. There will no longer be this particular incentive for crossing the border.
3. We can explore space but we can't build a fence. C'mon.
posted by alison @ 5:15 PM
2 Comments:
At 3:29 PM,
Anonymous said…
well i am not all about the building a fence idea - ineffective, costly and long-term maintenance and protection seems unlikely. and i think you run into problems enforcing the punishment of employers hiring illegals. i hear that later this year(supposedly)they are rolling out a system that not only requires I-9 verifications by employers, but that each verification must be logged into a database that verifies that the documentation (passports, licenses, etc) are legal documents, not forgeries. although you run into verification issues again - do you hire thousands of auditors to run checks on all accredited businesses? how about people who hire illegals for tasks like yardwork or housework?
At 4:51 PM,
alison said…
Why ineffective? At least it will reduce the manpower now needed to patrol the 700 miles of contiguous border.
No, you audit on a spot basis, just like IRS does with taxes. The penalties have to make it significantly less enticing to hire illegals. If the market for illegal workers shrinks, the flow of them to the market will shrink. That is far more practical, even if not perfect (which should not prevent the good), than deporting 12 million people.
And...it is fundamentally unfair to enable illegals to stay when legal immigrant applicants are waiting after going through the lengthy and uncertain application process.
Immigration is, IMHO, good for this country, but not done the way this bill would do it.
Yard and housework? I don't think you can control all households, but I also don't think that is a significant part of the market compared to factories, farms and other sizable businesses.
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