Illegal Immigration, and the NSA
Mar. 29th, 2006 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThe 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 04:02 pm (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 04:38 pm (UTC)