Published in the Omaha World Herald in July by ME
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Try Carrots for Sending Foreign Workers Home
Bush’s proposal for immigration reform was expensive, unworkable and punitive. As Gore Vidal states, nothing can keep workers out with the disparity of salaries to the South. Since its human nature to act in our own self interest, as even Mother Teresa benefited from personal satisfaction, carrots work better than sticks. There is no ONE solution but here is a proposal that might just make the illegal crossings controllable.
Even the term immigrant implies foreign workers’ goal is to stay. As most love their language, music, culture and flag, why not allow foreign workers free access to the US job market for 8/9 months/year to be lured home by a rebate of withheld taxes. When consulting with Nova Gas in Calgary, refunds based on sales tax receipts are sent home to foreign workers.
Some benefits (carrots) for the foreign workers:
- ‘Opt out’ of future Social Security benefits and receive withheld Payroll tax including employer match as a rebate.
- Don’t use Medicare/Medicaid services and get a rebate.
- At $7.50/hr for 40 weeks close to $1800 in rebate is a powerful carrot waiting at home.
- Back home, their village benefits from the influx of capital for commerce creating new jobs.
- The ability to cross legally (after a background check) dries up the black market for coyotes who sometimes put people at risk of death..
- Funds go further based on a lower cost of living. For instance, a child’s braces which cost thousands in the USA are only hundreds at home.
- Easy access for emergencies and the requirement to live at home a few months each year means your kids are not abandoned with grandparents for years at a time.
Some benefits for citizens:
- Since only qualified foreign workers receive a rebate, workers with nothing to hide gladly pay for health and criminal background checks at the border.
- A Mexican roofer in Michigan returns home each winter, collects the rebate, and may cross for funerals or births, so is less likely to start a new family in Michigan.
- When more Spanish speaking children stay home, the strain on our public schools is reduced.
- The need to punish employers diminishes as working on-the-books is required for a rebate. Again, foreign workers, in their self interest, demand it.
- With even 2/3 voluntary compliance, the job of immigration enforcement, raids and deportation become manageable. Foreign workers can s cross at border stations reducing illegal crossings.
- Encouraging migrants to return home for a rebate quickly returns our sovereignty.
- The return of diseases and the influx of criminals are reduced as immigration services focus on illegal entry.
- Real Immigrants waiting for legal access to citizenship again move to the top of the list. The term immigrant should be reserved for those like my Brazilian son, who came for a year of high school in the 1990’s, legally returned from Brazil for his MBA, legally got a great job and has two cars, a dog and a beautiful wife and child in their new home. He deserves the term immigrant.
Punishing employers adds burdens to our producers and should be minimized. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” Once legal foreign workers are available, raids on packing plants weed out the sick and criminals. Employers can no longer complain their workforce is being denied to them.
Most foreign workers from south of the border earn low wages and would qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit contributing little to our treasury under Bush’s plan or as a citizen. There is no refund of Income Taxes withheld.
Immigration is, and should be encouraged. President Bush’s immigration bill, paid for by earmarks (using our tax dollars), was proposed only to remove the issue from the 08 election campaign. Hopefully our Senators saw the flaws and will discuss alternatives.
I wish I could do that. I would give up all my past "donations" to the pyramid scheme if I could get out now.
I wonder what Gore Vidal knows first hand about illegal immigration. He probably lives in a gated neighborhood and doesn’t come in contact with them. Maybe, just maybe they will take the blackmail of billions of dollars and just go home. What a crock.
This country has been trashed and nothing will fix it except “tough love”. Follow the laws!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
However, we have limits on legal immigration that are far less in number than those who want to come here.
This does absolutely nothing to discourage illegal immigration.
Since we also don't stop people on the way out of the country, we would have to ask Mexico if they returned there, and their government is unreliable with such things. Someone who chooses to overstay their VISA is likely to be able to simply have the refund check sent home to family without ever leaving the country.
Such a program would be 99% worthless in addressing illegal immigration.
If you apply the program to illegal immigrants already here and working, then it would encourage such people to leave once or falsify their return the their home countries once. That is unless you're going to just keep paying them to return home every year even though the keep coming back.
- ‘Opt out’ of future Social Security benefits and receive withheld Payroll tax including employer match as a rebate.
They are already ineligible to receive Social Security benefits, so this is just giving them something Americans can't even get. You're just encouraging more to come by offering them more money. They effectively take home more than American workers, which means they will be willing to work for even less and undercut Americans. This is an incredibly bad idea.
- Don’t use Medicare/Medicaid services and get a rebate.
Great, so we are going to pay them not to use government services. Can I get that deal too? Of course if they need serious medical care they are going to forgo the relatively small rebate, and we still get stuck with the bill.
Once again, it rewards immigrants above what Americans receive. It will make American workers less competitive because they don't get these rebates and need higher wages to have the same take home pay. Another really, really bad idea.
- At $7.50/hr for 40 weeks close to $1800 in rebate is a powerful carrot waiting at home.
Which they may or may not have to return home to collect, but it does absolutely nothing to discourage them from returning.
- Back home, their village benefits from the influx of capital for commerce creating new jobs.
Billions are already sent from illegal immigrants to family back in their home nations. It hasn't generated a lot of economic development in Mexico because a few rich families exert tremendous control over the economy there, and it is hard to be prosperous if those in control refuse to do business with you or actively work against you.
- The ability to cross legally (after a background check) dries up the black market for coyotes who sometimes put people at risk of death..
Only if you allow unlimited legal immigration which would reduce the barrier for many and flood our labor market with even more immigrants willing to work for a far lower standard of living and quickly lower our standard of living closer to Mexico's.
If you still limit immigration, then your plan does nothing to discourage illegal immigration.
- Funds go further based on a lower cost of living. For instance, a child’s braces which cost thousands in the USA are only hundreds at home.
If health care is so great in Mexico, why aren't American's crossing the border in droves for the cheaper health care there?
- Easy access for emergencies and the requirement to live at home a few months each year means your kids are not abandoned with grandparents for years at a time.
Once again we are only talking about legal immigrants, and unless you are going to flood the country with even more immigrants, that is still going to be a relatively small portion.
- Since only qualified foreign workers receive a rebate, workers with nothing to hide gladly pay for health and criminal background checks at the border.
You do realize that we already have legal immigration, and temporary worker visas, don't you?
- A Mexican roofer in Michigan returns home each winter, collects the rebate, and may cross for funerals or births, so is less likely to start a new family in Michigan.
They are going to start a new family in the US because we grant citizenship to anyone born in the US, and we giver immigration preferences to their family members, even their parents that came here illegally to have their children.
- When more Spanish speaking children stay home, the strain on our public schools is reduced.
There is no real incentive not to have children in the US and a very large on to do so. The incentives to not bring their families are also relatively small to non-existent, especially when we are required to educate them here for free, and provide medical care if it is needed.
You must be incredibly naive or willfully ignoring the fact that the only way you are going to have people not immigrating illegally is to let everyone who wants to come here do so legally, and that would push our own citizens' standard of living down toward that of Mexico. Our middle class would be much less effected in competition for their jobs, but would have to bear the tax burden of tens of millions of more people that pay far less in taxes then they receive in benefits.
This would destroy our economy.
However, the unions would love it because Americans would be desperate to do anything they can to stop the downward slide of wages, and you'd have a massive influx of uneducated laborers for them to exploit for their own gain.
Incredibly bad ideas.