Illegal Immigration, and the NSA

[pecunium]

The issue of illegal immigration is in the news (what with half a million people coming out in LA to protest the planned legislations being bandied about in Congress and the Senate).

I know what I think would, not solve, but greatly change the face of the problem: Actually enforce the laws, in combination with increasing the fines.

The cause is people being able to come to the states to get work. It doesn't deter them that they might be deported, because the lure of money is a magnet.

Employers aren't paying any real penalty for hiring them. Wal-Mart was caught using them to clean the floors. They were fined a token. Make it costly for businesses to hire large numbers of illegal workers, and they will stop hiring them, which will reduce the number who are interested in making the trek. Doing all of that, and ending up unemployed.

Some will come and get work as gardners, day laborers and the like, but the numbers will drop.

We will have to pay more for grapes, houses, celery, landscaping, chicken, and all sorts of things we get cheaply now because we pay people who can't protest the pittance they are being paid for their work.

But that's not really what I'm writing about.

The people screaming about this have been harping on the fact that these immigrants are here illegally. I just saw some Republican member of the House explaining that amnesties (like Guest worker programs being allowed to accept workers who are already here) are not the answer because rewarding people who break the law will only encourage more people to break the law.

Which is, of course, where the NSA comes into this, because rewarding someone who is breaking the law right now (and admits it) is what DeWine, and Spector and all those who support trying to change the law to make what Bush has been doing legal are talking about.

And these same people admit that rewarding lawbreaking is a bad idea, because it will only encourage the person so rewarded to break other laws.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

And these same people admit that rewarding lawbreaking is a bad idea, because it will only encourage the person so rewarded to break other laws

You should submit this as a comment to Daily Kos or one of the other sites where these matters are currently being discussed, because this is a connect-the-dots that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Also, a good point.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't know how.

Feel free to link to this. Right now (at the risk of seeming flip) I'm sort of busy, what with working, packing and being engaged in a heated debate with two of the officers in the room about the duty of a gov't to look after the poor; they made the mistake of saying that nowhere in the Bible does it say to redistribute wealth.

TK

[trinker.livejournal.com]

they made the mistake of saying that nowhere in the Bible does it say to redistribute wealth.

...?!?!?! Wow. Go get 'em.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I did.

They got off lucky, they kept it to the OT. Had we gone to the Red Letters they'd have been boneless bags of pulp when I got done beating on them. As it was they were just black and blue.

TK

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I still don't understand why fundamentalist Christians are so gung-ho on the OT, except that the OT has a lot more blue law potential.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

What? WHAT? WHAT????????????

The mind is past boggling.

[elf]

Isn't it cute when they mistake political propaganda for holy scripture?

I have friends who hate arguing with fundamentalists. My only problem is that the bible-thumpers run away as soon as you actually pull out the book & start looking at passages.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

These aren't fundies (so far as I can tell... given the level of semi-intimate contact one gets in situations like this, I'd lay long odds against it).

They just said something silly and I whipped out the big guns. I considered taking orders as a Jesuit, so I am tolerably aware of the book.

The way the debate rolled out, the OT was where the debate went.

TK

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

Wow. How far did you get in considering that choice?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I was young. I'd say, all in all, I got to somewhere between half and three quarters of the way to entering the shaping process.

But I have some real reservations with Ex cathedra and as a result some of the other doctrinal positions of the Church. That made me decide I couldn't be a truly faithful servant, and so I put it aside.

But a lot of the attitudes, and drives, which led me to ponder that calling led me to the others I have taken up, journalism and the Army.

And it probably puts me in the nightmare category when fundies try to pick a fight we me. They never seem to realise that when I give them chapter and verse as reference, that I know the book. It leads them into painf questions, which they usually can't answer.

Me, I can thread the needles. There's a lot of fine reasoning (some of it utter nonsense) in the Catholic faith, a lot of justifying contradictions, and making some sense out of them. A lot of that was used to make things which seem (or are) in contradiction of the words of the text acceptable.

I can live with that sort of ambiguity, and conflict. My moral compass is full of shades of grey. Those who live in a Manichean world... well it hurts their little brains to try and reconcile the things they do, with what they say they believe.

But I don't really care. I can be a real asshole and take a certain pleasure in using the faith they have constructed to beat them up; because I think them to be pharisees and pricks, deserving of more scorn than I will heap on them, and living the only reward they are likely to get; by wallowing in the public piety of their self-righteousness.

TK

[elf]

I keep thinking that one solution to people who hire illegal immigrants is to insist they pay them back-wages equal to what they'd have to have paid U.S. citizens for the same time... get caught with 300 workers at $40/day for six months, and have to pay them the difference between that & minimum wage. If someone's been working for six years and is getting more than minimum wage, but not what a legal worker would be making, calculate their wages based on industry standard for raises and so on, and add that to the penalty.

Pay the workers the difference, and ship 'em home; maybe they've got enough nest egg to get a new start now, or start whatever attempts they want to be here legally, and so on. No point in putting them in prison--we can't afford it, and sometimes our prisons are better conditions than where they came from.

(I freely admit I understand very little about economics; I don't know how much the prices would jump if grape harvesters were paid minimum wage. But I'm all for pushing minimum wage across the board--pay it for jury duty, illegal workers, overseas employees. Part of the purpose of min wage is to keep businesses from exploiting employees and the community, and if there are exempt categories, it doesn't work for that.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You've got a decent fine structure there. The only thing I'd add is that there has to be an additional fine; which gets used to fund the enforcement efforts.

TK

[anna-en-route.livejournal.com]

I believe that pretty much describes the situation here, I think but am not completely sure that companies are forced to pay back-wages for breaking employment condition laws and I *know* for a fact that the fines for employing people who do not have the right to work here are big enough to make people think twice.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

I heard on the radio yesterday it can take 6 months to deport somebody. While I'm not sure this is true because any dork with an agenda can get on the radio, I think it should only take a couple days. I think it should be fairly simple to prove whether or not somebody is a legal resident, and those that aren't can be put on a bus and sent back.

[roman-mclaze.livejournal.com]

Fines are good, but I suspect that the additional threat of jail would be an even better deterrent.

The trouble, I suppose, would be determining who in a corporation should be held responsible for hiring practices.

A lot of "corporate accountability" laws call for a company official to sign off on all decisions related to a certain subject, such as workplace safety or hiring practices...the idea is to put the fear of God into CEOs, company presidents, et. al. by making sure they can‘t distance themselves from infractions.

In a large corporation, however this job might fall to somebody with a title like "Deputy Vice President for Environmental Compliance"...or as an environmental lawyer I know calls them, "Designated Felons"). As long as there is somebody willing to take a chance at being the fallguy, the "real" big guys are safe from prosecution.

Still, there is probably a way to avoid that with carefully worded legislation.

I’m also a big fan of improving whistleblower rewards. Hell hath no fury like a disgruntled ex-employee with some photocopied memos and a toll-free number…especially when he can use them to make his car payment.

Thank you for reminding this Guardsman that there are a few sane people on active duty!