Lots of good comments here; I agree with entagor particuarly, especially as it concerns creating another ‘worker class’. Not only is it morally repugnant, it’s also socially dangerous as it invites a ‘workers revolution’ based on a perceived inequity in treatment of one ethnic group to another.

Illegal immigrants make up less than 5% of the total US work force. They don’t command any more than about 36% in any job category (when looked at across the United States). The CBO even admits that illegal immigrants have caused wages for people with the same education level as most illegals (less than HS diploma), to drop, and Americans in that category have seen their unemployment levels increase. So it IS hurting America and Americans.

The majority of the jobs that illegals take aren’t meant to be jobs that you can support a family on. They’re meant to be part time work for High School or college students, starting jobs for young people, etc.

Instead many times, illegals come in, take these jobs, and receive Federal aid to the tune of $26 billion dollars while contributing $16 billion in taxes. You and I, my friends, pick up the remainder of the tab.

You’re right that many employers just jump to hiring illegals; Fox News had several stories earlier this year about illegal immigrant smuggling rings, where ads for workers would be placed in national language newspapers in Mexico (for instance) and then the applicants would be smuggled to their employers in the US. No payroll taxes, no vacation benefits to pay, no FICA to the government, no health benefits to pay for; it’s a blatant circumventing of our laws on the part of many employers.

There are a few things to consider here: in many areas there is a dearth of labour in a field; that has always been a problem in burgeoning economies, unfortuantely. Legalising millions of lawbreakers- and their dependents- isn’t reversible.

The Center for Immigration Studies, Pew, Heritage, Hoover, etc., have some interesting tidbits to consider: the majority of illegal immigrants are Mexican, the Mexican population in the US has ballooned (1 in 10 Mexicans lives in the US), the average wage for a Mexican in the US is $9, the poverty rate for Hispanics in the US in the past 20 years has increased alarmingly at a rate of 162% (compared with 3% for whites and 9% for blacks), and 60% of illegal immigrants from Mexico/Central America don’t even have a High School education. Mexican immigrants into the US also have the worst assimilation rate of all Hispanic groups; barely 62% of them are fluent in English after over 30 years of residency. They are also one of the largest growing population groups by virtue of births; only 10% of non-Hispanic Americans have a family size of 5 people or more, while almost 31% of Mexican families do.

To me, the large influx of illegals from one country (1 out of 7 Mexican citizens able to work is in the United States) tells me that Mexico has a serious and systemic problem. The relative lack of education of immigrants from that country also further reinforces that. Illegal immigration (particularly through Mexico) shows no sign of abating, and the statistics with regard to outlays in services for illegals isn’t comforting; quite the contrary.

What we’re looking at with the Presidents proposal is increasing the number of people who require Federal Aid without significantly shoring up a reliable worker base that pays into the system. We are using people here illegally as de-facto employees, when what we SHOULD be doing – if we truly lack workers – is making it a competitive market where people from other countries can also vie for these jobs. Competition is best: everyone wins. Employers get to pick, highly motivated people have a chance to enter America, and we get to choose from people with highly varied skill sets who then are potentially a better fit.

The President’s plan is flawed on so many other levels; there’s no way to know how long someone has really been in the US – document forgery is rife; none of us are allowed to ’skip’ paying taxes for years, so his idea is basically a violation of equal protection; there’s no way to accurately compute taxes on someone whose income has largely been paid under the table! The list goes on.

My steps to a better employment situation in America?

1. Build a fence; If we built one along the lines of the Minuteman design, it would cost about 1.2 billion. Build temporary detention facilites, deploy UAVs, etc.

2. Offer a short amnesty period of employers who have broken the law; they have 30 days to surrender their illegal employees or pay huge fines. Then, enforce the laws; arrest illegal immigrants, fingerprint them and deport them. If they show up again in America, they are subject to fines, including having any and all property seized to satisfy those fines.

3. Start charging government workers with felonies who knowingly grant illegal immigrants Federal Aid. My mom went down for her regular Social Security review and sat near a man who told his aid rep that he didn’t have ‘papers’; she told him not to worry about it.

4. Allow some time for the employment situation to stabilise in America. I believe with all my heart that an equilibrium will be reached.

5. Go after companies and counties that allow people to use alternate IDs to get bank accounts, driver’s licenses, etc.

6. If America continues to grow and outstrip areas of the blue collar labour market, THEN INS can consider creating a labour visa that is constrained by the same rules as other visa programmes; it’s competitive, people need to have a job before they enter the US, etc.

7. Instead of a ‘National ID’, the ID should be for legal immigrant workers, Green Card holders and visa holders. Americans already have a ‘National ID’; it’s called a passport.

8. STOP printing things in multiple languages that pander to ethnic groups for voting, etc. If someone doesn’t understand English well enough to read a ballot, how can they possibly have been exposed to enough data that allows them to make a decision? It also costs the government a LOT of money to print things up in multiple languages and to have translators, etc.

Perhaps this all sounds a bit draconian; I don’t think so. The key to America is that it has always welcomed ALL immigrants and treated them equally (I’m a second generation immigrant myself – my heritage is Ukrainian). If America is still to retain her melting pot quality and American character, it’s important to have an unbiased baseline that welcomes ALL people and gives them clear expectations. We met a woman recently who was in our neighbourhood and got lost; while talking with her she mentioned how much she loved being in the US (she was French), because of how many different people and cultures she was exposed to. This is America’s strength, and we need to retain that American undercurrent of diversity without seeming to favour a few groups; everyone should feel that they would be welcomed equally and that they have an equal opportunity here. Otherwise we just become an image of another country, alienate other potential immigrants, and we cease to be America.

linlithgow on July 7, 2006 at 2:55 PM