It is harder then you think.
Winners of AID the Best Student group in Kansas City
Posted on 04/09/2006 5:56:29 AM PDT by madprof98
If they really wanted to, your representatives in Washington could dry up illegal immigration almost before you could say, "Tom Tancredo is a tiresome demagogue." All they would have to do is require U.S. employers to check the legal status of all employees and impose stiff sanctions — including multimillion-dollar fines and prison time — on employers who flout the law.
After a few executives had done the perp walk, others would get the message. Illegal hiring would drop precipitously. Since the vast majority of illegal immigrants come to this country to work, many of them would leave if they couldn't get hired.
And they'd take the message back home to La Paz and Villa Juarez and San Gerardo: Without legal papers, you can't get a job in the United States.
So why haven't Congress and the White House fixed a broken immigration system? Because it works for so many — illegal workers, business interests and middle-class Americans alike. Industries such as construction and agriculture get a cheap and docile work force, poorly educated men and women who'll work Sundays and holidays and never report their employees for labor violations. Middle-class Americans get the benefit of cheaper products and services, everything from lawn care and domestic work to homegrown fruits and vegetables. And houses. Since home sales are keeping the economy afloat, politicians don't want to do anything to interfere with the massive housing-construction-and-sales complex.
Fringe politicians benefit from the presence of illegal workers, too. Without them, would you ever have heard of a minor-league congressman named Tancredo? A Republican from Colorado, he is now considering a run for the White House, fueled by the name recognition he's won with his nativist rants against the undocumented workers pouring in across our southern borders.
That's not to say illegal immigration is without its costs. In towns and cities that have seen a rapid influx, there is rising frustration over schools having to accommodate non-English-speakers, hospitals overwhelmed by uninsured patients, and higher rates of gang-related crime. (But those taxpayers benefit, too, from lower prices for ditches dug and chickens filleted.) An even higher cost is borne by Americans at the bottom of the wage scale, especially poorly educated black men, who lose out when forced to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs.
But poorly educated black men don't have oily platoons of lobbyists looking after their interests. Big Business does, and it wants to keep those borders open. Overwhelmed taxpayers, meanwhile, are easily placated by election-year rhetoric promising higher walls, stouter fences and more border guards than rattlesnakes along the Rio Grande. Let's call this campaign-season spectacle "Wag the Mexican."
Indeed, the steady flow of workers across our borders became a tsunami in the 1990s because of pressure from business interests. After agents from the old Immigration and Naturalization service raided one of Georgia's Vidalia onion fields in 1998, members of Georgia's congressional delegation — Republicans and Democrats alike — denounced the raid. In response, the INS practically shut down workplace enforcement. By 2000, according to INS figures, the estimated number of illegal immigrants had risen to 7 million, from 3.5 million in 1990.
To understand the inherent and willful contradictions in the laws that govern workers and their legal status, consider this: The Social Security Administration is able to identify companies that routinely employ large numbers of workers using fake numbers. But by law, Social Security is forbidden from forwarding the names of those companies to Homeland Security. That law could be changed in a heartbeat, but Congress hasn't done it.
Congress could also appropriate money for a nationwide computer system that would allow all employers to get instant verification of a worker's Social Security number and then require all employers to use it. If Bloomingdale's can give me approval for a credit card in three minutes — while I'm still trying samples at the perfume counter — then the feds can create a system for instantaneous verification. Congress hasn't set aside money for that, either.
That's because it doesn't want to solve the problem. Your political leaders like to rant about the broken immigration system, but they have no intention of fixing it.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Who could possibly argue with that.
A rare moment of sanity from Ms Tucker.
Now if we could just get our Republican leaders to admit this.
These must be the end times...I've agreed with Cynthia Tucker twice in one week.
And how do you suggest that we do that? The only sure way is to have all American citizens finger printed and check the prints of all potential hires against a data base.
Anything else is going to have holes big enough to drive a truck through just like it does now.
You make the requirements too onerous and you are going to dry up the summer help jobs for teens even worse then you have already.
I'm afraid that while she actually does make sense here, her proposals are still colored by fatal naivete. If all you need to work here are legal papers, all that will do is get a lot of counterfeit papers made.
It would do almost as much good, if the journalists would move past generalities and document specific corps and their abuses. Someone caught Walmart using illegal cleaning contractors, and you can bet that is over. It looks to me as if this is mostly penny anti, small scale, off the books stuff. However, local journalists could embarass those people, too, if they wanted to. Take a camera crew to the Home Depot and photograph the illegals and their employers. Bad PR is every bit as effective as an official, government sanction. This situation only persists amidst what appears to be general apathy. Take the apathy away and watch the perps dance.
She's 100% right on this one. This problem would be self correcting if the government would simply put teeth into the laws. No employer wants to lose his business no matter how cheap illegal labor is. Without willing employers, illegals would have no incentive to come to the US, unless they really wanted to accept the values and ideals of this country.
Congress could also appropriate money for a nationwide computer system that would allow all employers to get instant verification of a worker's Social Security number and then require all employers to use it.How is this so "onerous" that it will end summer jobs for teens?
My best recollection; feel free to add/correct if you have access to the transcript:
On Rush, a week or so ago, a guy called in and said he was a neighbor of Rush (i.e. Palm Beach, multi-million dollar mansion, sort of "Hey Rush, I'm rich too!", etc.). Then he proceeds to tell how the loss of cheap migrant labor would hurt his business. A short time later another Rush caller refers to the "rich" caller and suggests that maybe, if the rich guy paid a little more for his labor, he might not have the Palm Beach mansion, but the rich guy not having a mansion wasn't sufficient rationale for our migrant policies.
��5{��������y educated black men don't have oily platoons of lobbyists looking after their interests.</i>
Oily? Al Sharpton. Platoon? Louis Farrakhan. And I'm sure Jesse's up in there, somewhere. But they're oddly silent. I suspect they're rather pleased at the "revolutionary" aspect of having tens of millions of people who'll eventually be able to vote, and vote Democrat.
The point is that U.S. employers are ADDICTED to and HOOKED on cheap labor to the detriment of our Country and 298 million Americans!
Hmmm. It looked right in the preview. Back to the HTML sandbox, lol.
Cynthia seems to make sense when she writes about a problem that affects her directly and she can speak from experience. The other 95% of the time she's just talking out her @ss.
And everybody's going to fall for this recycled opportunistic agit-prop.
soon
Lot of illegals on your payroll?
and their little RAT friends too.
So on our own dime many employers are starting to do background checks on prospective employees. That catches more but depending if you want a statewide or a nation side search the charge is going to be between $200 and $500. That is onerous. And it is ending summer jobs. When it costs you $300.00 a pop to just weed out the bad apples you are not going to do it for someone that will be gone in three months.
Don't you just hate that? You know our so called "leadership" in Washington has screwed it up badly when we agree with people like Cynthia Tucker!
I'm afraid we're going to have to disagree. This piece is full of leftist code words, calling Tancredo a "nativist" and calling him minor league... I heard of him before the immigration issue came to the fore, but then I guess I pay more attention than the average American.
She nearly refuses to use the word illegal and calls class warfare into play. "Poorly educated black men"... I thought the government schools were pumping out hordes of computer savvy techno geeks with more education than in years prior. Her plan calls for a permanent underclass to "do the jobs Americans are overqualified for or just won't do." If this is what we need to drive our economy why isn't Mexico's economy booming? These are actually entry level jobs that America's younger workers are supposed to be doing to build an employment history. Instead they sit and collect social welfare while they wait to be lifted to the top of the ladder of success with an executive job based solely on their overinflated sense of worth instilled by those government schools who teach "fairness" and "self esteem" over achievement.
Congress hasn't fixed it because they fear the loss of a potentially huge voting bloc. Democrats want to pander to them offering socialist programs and legal stauts while republicans want to just make them legal to satisfy corporate donors and keep the costs of deporting them all to a minimum.
Illegal immigration does NOT benefit middle class America. Middle class America benefits America, cheap lettuce and lawn care aside. Middle class America pays the welfare, medical, schooling, housing, wage tax, unemployment tax, disability insurance, workman's comp on and on down the line for these illegals while their unscrupulous, or unaware, employers pocket the profits of NOT paying the fare.
The cost to employ a worker at minimum wage in PA is over $10.00/hr, not the $6.15 the worker actually gets before taxes. Employers who don't follow the rules push their costs onto the employers who do, thus keeping the wages of their workers down. This practice also prohibits the small businessman from hiring more entry level employees. This is where the allure of the illegal worker comes in. The chance to hire someone off the books and split the $10.00 cost of employment with the worker.
How can one say that is the process that drives America?
Sorry for the rant
Those SSN numbers are tied to a name and an address. Going back to the credit card approval process mentioned in a previous post, it is not an insurmountable task to verify the first four letters of a person's last name, or some other similar method of verification. Even the electric utility does this, with telephone transactions.
Second, correct, illegal aliens like being illegal aliens, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Third, the middle class benefits from illegal aliens? If that is true, where do those 70% poll numbers come from to shut down illegal border crossings?
The middle class sees the costs in taxes, in schools, in hospitals, in crime of illegal aliens. To me, that's a better explanation for the 70% poll numbers.
Then Tucker, because in part she's agreeing with a Republican, has to go on an anti-Republican rant against Tom Tancredo to show her liberal pals that she's not like those evil Republicans. This is a typical liberal media crapola article.
Don't give the b******s a break. Get them down and keep them down. Tucker deserves this more than most.
I doubt it's your fault.
Looking at the HTML source code, it looks like FR's server burped after you clicked the Post button.
I used to be sympathetic to this position, but no more. Not after last week. If the US "Government" doesn't care enough about illegals to enforce existing laws, why should the private sector have to do it? Dereliction of duty by the "government" does not impose an obligation on private citizens.
"The private sector doing the jobs that the 'government' won't do..." Sound familiar? These guys have only one key on their piano. And its a flat note.
"This piece is full of leftist code words, calling Tancredo a "nativist" and calling him minor league"
I've heard very similar language used on FR by erstwhile conservatives, and even from a few favorite pundits. "Fearful fringe nativist" springs to mind, from the Dubai ports uproar.
send in your pictures of illegals loitering in your home town.
Whaddya bet Cynthia's got a Nanny problem?
No thank you. This would be too easy to abuse.
The government has done this, sorta. It called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program. Have a look. It's been a pilot program for some time.
BINGO!!
Mark my words, the illegals will be suing for reparations in the future. Our government took all the money they paid in, and some leftist judge is going to give it all back to them in spades.
Gee it would be so expensive and impossible to tell the difference between someome from Oaxaca and someone from Kansas City.
My point exactly. It is already happening. Percentage wise at least half of the illegals have papers and are working at regular jobs. Getting a drivers license is so easy that as a id it is worthless, getting a SS card with a valid number is not that hard either.
And if I challenge someone's papers (Why does Jill Smith have a beard?) and turn out to be wrong (She is a transvestite) Cynthia Tucker and Co will be screaming for my head because I am a racist bigot homophobe.
All they would have to do is require U.S. employers to check the legal status of all employees and impose stiff sanctions — including multimillion-dollar fines and prison time — on employers who flout the law.Sounds nice, but it's a red herring and Cynthia knows it.After a few executives had done the perp walk, others would get the message. Illegal hiring would drop precipitously. Since the vast majority of illegal immigrants come to this country to work, many of them would leave if they couldn't get hired.
~~snip~~ The Social Security Administration is able to identify companies that routinely employ large numbers of workers using fake numbers. But by law, Social Security is forbidden from forwarding the names of those companies to Homeland Security. That law could be changed in a heartbeat, but Congress hasn't done it.
Congress could also appropriate money for a nationwide computer system that would allow all employers to get instant verification of a worker's Social Security number and then require all employers to use it.
Do to people LIKE her and her ilk (the Dems), the DOJ, OUR DOJ, has a Special Division FOR 'Immigrant' Employment Rights. This division PROSECUTES employers who refuse to hire and/or fire 'immigrants' with dubious looking, aka phony, documents. They even WARN employers that just because an I-9 form or the SSA says there's no such person. That is NOT cause to deny any immigrant a job OR to fire them. This Division works in conjunction with the EEOC and the Dept of Labor.
Last year when HR4437 was being written, and if you will recall was also being discussed in the Senate for the first time, one proposal was to offer IMMUNITY from Federal Prosecution from this 'special division' and the wrath of the EEOC and the Dept of Labor to employers who accidently fired or did not hire an 'immigrant' who is here legally, but had dubious ID. The Dems had a collective fit, would have NO part of that and it went nowhere and as such was not part of the House Bill.
So therin lies the problem.
One hand we want and scream to punish the employer YET the Gubmint warns him he better NOT deny any immigrant a job - or 'else'. And the Senate sure isn't talking about any employer immunity in any of their current amnesty proposals, oops... guest worker Bills. So as long as this special 'immigrant' division exists, the whole thing is a joke.
An aside, last year on this DOJ website the head of this divsion was a Mexican, picture and all. Now the DOJ no longer has that person's name listed. Gee, I wonder why?
I'm beginning to think that FR's server doesn't "like" OSX very much, because I routinely get double posts on the state board. At least I can delete them there.
I have no payroll.
And you have no sense of how hard it would be for "big business" to actually hire illegal aliens. But I won't bother trying to convince you -- you'd never accept reality, I don't have time, and the truth remains the truth whether you're on board or not.
It's pitiful how Marxist a "conservative" will become when pushed -- showing that he was really a Marxist all along.
" Every 79 seconds, a thief steals someone's identity, opens accounts in the victim's name and goes on a buying spree."
-CBSnews.com, 1/25/2001
Oh yeah the credit card thing works out real well.
Cynthia Tucker tells the unorthodox truth, and then covers herself with her Liberal Democratic friends by repeatedly smearing Congressman Tom Tancredo. These are the compromises you must make to remain an MSM wh-re with an urge to tell the truth
Well, that's not "big business," is it?
It is harder then you think.
Winners of AID the Best Student group in Kansas City
Cynthia's right about big business, but Tom Tancredo's anything but a minor league congressman.
Amazing, isn't it? Imagine if there was no process, whatsoever, to confirm whether a given transaction was valid or not. Then what kind of mess would there be? And how does this support the current situation? It doesn't.
THANK YOU! Just one tiny example: Here in Georgia, supposedly a great leader in state efforts to crack down on the problem, illegal immigrants are building our state highways and other massive state projects. How is that possible? Answer: Contractors.
No doubt you giggled as you typed that.
"Big business" keeps things at arms length via temp agencies, in my understanding.
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