Posted on 07/07/2007 1:11:46 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The immigration debate in Congress is dead for now, but in all the heated discussion, many flaws in the legislation were never discussed.
The immigration reform debate completely ignored one big magnet for illegal entry into the United States: minimum-wage laws. And as the minimum wage increases that were recently passed this year go into effect, this problem will get worse.
Even employers willing to illegally pay subminimum wages are reluctant to hire U.S. citizens or legal residents, because even workers who’ve knowingly agreed to the low pay have a legal right to sue. And, by law, you can sue to get back double the underpayment of wages.
So, if a worker gets $5 per hour when the minimum is $7.25, he’d have about $4,500 in underpayments for a year — and a $9,000 payoff for suing.
As a result, only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of Americans covered by the minimum wage are paid too little, and these rare violations mainly involve mistakes by employers, not outright lawbreaking.
The only "cops" needed are just 700 or so federal agents who are also responsible for enforcing overtime pay, recordkeeping, child-labor standards and other regulations.
This is why illegal aliens make up the overwhelming majority of subminimum wage workers: Not only are they more willing to work for less, but they’re afraid to sue, for fear of being exposed and deported.
A recent survey estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center as well as an older estimate by Barry Chiswick at the University of Illinois at Chicago imply that over 15 percent of illegal alien workers earn less than the minimum wage. With something over 7 million illegals working in the United States, that easily means that more than a million are subminimum workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
An interesting point that I hadn’t considered. Another example of “unintended consequences” of too may and too intrusive laws.
Ann Coulter has proposed that illegal aliens be given the right to sue employers who pay sub-minimum wages as a means to dry up jobs available to illegals. Employers wouldn't hire them for fear of being sued.
Of course employers could pay illegals at the minimum wage but it would defeat the purpose of hiring them in the first place.
That is not a reliable fact.
It only takes one or two illegals to sue. I doubt, as you do, that it would be an illegal who is still employed. It would be one who has been caught and facing deportation ... no longer employed and wanting more money!
NOT TRUE! The illegal can sue without problems of deportation! The labor department will not inquire about the legal status of the claimant. Furthermore, the Labor Department WILL HOLD THE AMOUNT OF AWARD 10 YEARS for the claimant to come with a legal SSN and claim the award. It means, not legal now? No worry, you have 10 years to get your legal papers and the check is still here for you, dear illegal immigrant. The hearings and all interviews are conducted in SPANISH and most of the hearing officers (Labor Dept. Judges) have Spanish their maternal language (nothing implied here, do not jump). I’ve been there, been sued for alleged not paying overtime (allegation unproved) case dismissed. When I informed the Labor Department Officer Investigator the claimant filed a false employment application by using someone’s else SSN (proved) the Judge said they do not handle that, I need to go to DA office. Yeah, sure, do this in Los Angeles.
Demand a border fence! Build it NOW!! Beef up the border patrol and close our borders!
U.S. Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121
U.S. House switchboard: (202) 225-3121
White House comments: (202) 456-1111
Find your House Rep.: http://www.house.gov/writerep
Find your US Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Toll free to the US Senate:
1-800-882-2005. (Spanish number)
1-800-417-7666. (English number)
Courtesy of a pro-amnesty group, no less!!
Republican National Committee
310 First Street, SE Washington, D.C. 20003
phone: 202.863.8500 | fax: 202.863.8820 | e-mail: info@gop.com
Take a look at their hidden agenda: http://www.mexica-movement.org
True..only one or two would put the scare into the employers and dry up the jobs but what about that slight complication of them not having any rights as a legal citizen to sue in a US court?
Well, I for one am for equal pay for equal work under the law. The illegal alien’s home country’s currency exchange rate ought be considered when courts consider “fair” wages.
If a Mexican illegally enters the US he is covered under Mexican law and therefore ought be paid in pesos according to what he’d make across the border. Likewise, the peso being 0.09276 of one US dollar, should the illegal be found working in a job making $8 USD/hr, fellow $8 USD/hr workers ought be abled to sue their employers for $78.24 USD/hr in back wages.
The same $8/hr job for Mexicans ought be required be advertized to US workers for $86.24/hr for Americans or the $8/hr job be offered to Mexicans for $0.74/hr.
Likewise, where the Chinese exchange rate is 0.131579 of one USD, the Chinese illegal alien ought be offered no more than $1.05USD/hr for an $8/hr job or that $8/hr job should be offered to an American for $60.80/hr.
That idea would never dry up the desire for illegals to cross the border. What you'd do is penalize the US worker through loss of employers via lawsuits, the demand must be stopped by a target effort of removing incentives for illegals, not by adding them.
Remove all wage protections that aren't adjusted to the illegal's home country's exchange rate, force employers to offer jobs to legal US workers likewise adjusted (an $8hr job for an illegal Mexican ought be $86.24 USD/hr for a legal US worker) and quickly the incentive between employers/illegals ceases.
Speaking of Columbus;
http://www.mexica-movement.org/
THIS IS A TERRORIST,
A CRIMINAL, AN EARLY NAZI
Yep, Nazi really puts Columbus in his place/sarc
If Congress passed a law that deports those Americans who ‘won’t work’,
I could support a Green Card.
More stupidity, if they didn’t want my lifestyle so bad, they would bother.
http://www.mexica-movement.org/
Your 1492 Illegal Borders
On Our Land
Do Not Divide
Our People Or
OUR CONTINENT!
That is an unbelievably frightening website --- and to think that they walk amongst us and have the ear of El Presidente and the rest of the North American Union/Open Border collaborators in our own government.
SS is a pay-as-you-go system. Currently, SS is running an annual surplus, but it will start declining in 2008 and will go into the red in 2017. For those illegals who are paying into SS, they are helping the size of the surplus, albeit in a minimal way. The SS surplus is put into the General Fund to be spent on anything Congress wants. The amount of the "surplus" is deposited into SS Trust Fund in the form of non-market T-Bills, i.e.,IOUs. The SS Trust Fund contains no real assets, but rather, liabilities, which is why the SSTF is included in the $9 trillion national debt [as intragovernmental holdings,] which consumes 17 cents out of every dollar to service annually.
So, one could say that the illegals' contributions to SS actually increases the amount of the "surplus," which adds to the size of our national debt. If that money were not available from the illegals, the money would have to be borrowed or spending reduced. Again, the illegals are not a major factor in SS collections.
The supposed wealth of the United States was largely created through the hard work and ingenuity of millions of Americans, irrespective of ethnic heritage, over four centuries.
If these racist Mexica Movement protesters really want to take up the problem of "stolen wealth," they should take up their case with the Spanish government. Continuing to make overtly racist and threatening moves with regards to Americans will only enrage the American population even more.
U.S. Unable to Deport Most Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes
By Jeff Bliss
July 6 (Bloomberg) — Ezeiquiel Lopez already had a rap sheet that stretched all the way to Texas when, police said, he shot Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Deputy Sheriff Frank Fabiano in the head, killing him.
Lopez, 45, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was free at the time of the May shooting, after having been jailed for two prior violent crimes. By law, he should have been deported, but federal immigration authorities didn’t know he had been in custody, and state and local police didn’t tell them.
The case isn’t an exception. Fewer than half the foreigners convicted of crimes in the U.S. — most of whom are in the country illegally — are deported after serving their sentences, according to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general.
Cases like Lopez’s point up holes in the nation’s overwhelmed immigration system, said Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat who heads a panel overseeing Homeland Security Department funding. ``There’s no convincing case for putting anything higher on the priority list in terms of deportation than persons who’ve committed crimes,’’ Price said.
With the failure in the Senate of the immigration bill, which would have expanded a program to deport criminal aliens, Price is sponsoring a plan to increase spending to identify and expel such immigrants by 31 percent, to $180 million.
Monthly Checks
Price’s legislation, which passed the House June 15, would require the immigration agency to check monthly with the nation’s prisons and jails to get an up-to-date number of incarcerated illegal immigrants. Another provision in the legislation would expand a program to deputize local and state police to help identify potential deportees among people they arrest.
The push comes after the U.S. launched highly publicized raids rounding up farm hands, meatpackers and textile workers — few of whom have criminal backgrounds — for deportation.
None of the 1,300 workers arrested at meatpacker Swift & Co.’s Greeley, Colorado, plant in December and the 360 arrested in March at New Bedford, Massachusetts-based textile maker Michael Bianco Inc. had been charged with a violent crime, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Raimondi said the Bush administration isn’t ignoring criminal immigrants, and that such raids often uncover illegal activity, such as money-laundering and identity theft. The administration is requesting a $29 million boost for the criminal-deportation program in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, a 21 percent increase from its current $137 million budget.
`Adding Resources’
``We’ve been adding resources,’’ said John Torres, director of U.S. detention and removal operations.
The Homeland Security inspector general’s report estimates there are currently 302,500 deportable immigrants in American jails and prisons. Identifying candidates for deportation isn’t easy, though: They’re scattered among 5,033 prisons and jails, some run by the federal government, some by states and some, as in Kenosha County, by localities.
``This problem has become so large that the federal government can’t handle it alone,’’ said Sheriff Jim Pendergraph of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which since last year has identified 2,100 people for deportation by working with the federal government.
Torres says the inspector general’s figures on deportations are out of date, and says he’s in the middle of a review to figure how to better foster communications between federal officials and the prisons and jails. Even so, he says, he has only enough staff to cover half of those facilities.
Federal Focus
Torres is focusing on federal prisons, where 27 percent of those incarcerated were born in other countries, according to the Government Accountability Office. In 2006, the U.S. sent 88,830 criminal immigrants back to their native countries with the help of agents and judges who work within prison walls to speed up the deportation process. About 107,000 non-criminal aliens were also deported.
Price said Torres’s strategy overlooks illegal immigrants in state and local prisons and jails, which make up 93 percent of the country’s facilities.
In Kenosha County, officers stopped alerting immigration officials about aliens in custody during the 1980s because federal budget cuts left no money for the deportations, said Captain Gary Preston, head of the local jail. ``Law enforcement just got into the habit of not bothering,’’ he said.
Resuming Contact
In 2005, Lopez twice pleaded guilty to battery in Kenosha County circuit court, and spent nearly nine months in the county jail. Kenosha County Jail officials didn’t resume informing immigration officials about foreign-born inmates until November 2006 at the urging of federal officials, Preston said. That was 2 1/2 months after Lopez was released, according to jail records.
On May 16, Lopez, fueled by tequila and $200 worth of cocaine, allegedly shot Fabiano three times after the officer ordered him out of the van he was driving, according to court records. Fred Cohn, Lopez’s attorney, said his client isn’t guilty.
Lopez is now set to be processed for deportation regardless of the outcome of his trial, said Michael Keegan, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Bliss in Washington jbliss@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: July 6, 2007 00:06 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTiZf6KMWd6g&refer=worldwide#
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