Illegal Immigration

So you support building a wall?

 

i support securing our borders.

What does a wall do? They build tunnels. They climb it. That solves nothing.

Mexico needs to step up and 'try' to help. They need not be handing out pamphlets encouraging illegal immigration.

 

We're discussing immigration, not trade policy. If you want to debate the merits of "free" trade, let's find another thread. (I'm willing to engage any articles you might cite, but I'll readily admit that I lend more credence to anti-poverty groups like World Vision than libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute.)

Well, given that the minimum wage has lagged behind inflation for many years, I seriously doubt that the glut of unskilled illegal aliens is helping matters.

I haven't studied the situation, but I suspect that Europe's generally high level of unemployment has been exacerbated by unchecked immigration.

I'm all for trading with poor countries, provided that we enact agreements with meaningful labor/environmental standards and enforcement mechanisms, which are presently lacking.

 

You know, I live in Texas and am absolutely surronded by illegal immigrants. The South had slavery for it's cheap labor, then Blacks who were segregated and had few rights, now illegal Hispanic immigrants. Listen, folks, I've lived here all my life and one thing that everyone needs to understand is that this is EXACTLY the way that the government wants it. These people are the ones that do the manual labor in this part of the country, and the government wants it that way-there has always been very, very little enforcement of immigration law vis-a-vis Hispanic immigrants in this part of the country-once they make it across the border, they're here to stay, with very few exceptions. If a person comes to Dallas from India and overstays their visa, the INS will come banging on their doors and drag their butts back home. But the Hispanic illegal immigrants are allmost completely ignored by the Immigration Service, and that is deliberate. I am not against Hispanics in any way, in fact I like them. My point is that the whole business of illegal Mexican/Hispanic immigration has been deliberately ignored by the government to provide cheap labor for this part of the counttry. These people will do backbreaking work for a very low wage and everybody knows it. This whole Hispanic immigration problem is no accident, trust me.

 

even Halliburton has been cited for using illegal labor in the Hurricane relief effort, and screwing them over too.

I'm a hispanic, [5th-gen] Texan as bluebonnets; I think they should share the same tax burden as working-class american citizens. the end.

race, ethnicity...just social contructs. Money knows no ethnicity, neither do taxes.

 

People should be able to live where they want to

 

Well there you go, I'm more interested in Cato. And I know what we're discussing, I'm just not into competitive linking and being asked to debate a third party's essay.

The minimum wage is set by the government, not the market.

I'm referring to European immigration to America. Millions of poorly educated, non-English speaking people with not much money arriving in America. Why didn't this increase unemployment and lower wages? We now think of this as the "golden era" before globalisation and evil capitalists spoiled everything - how is it possible?

Exactly, you're all for trade with poor countries once we've created enough obstacles to make it impossible. Protectionism in a nutshell.

 

It's a twofold problem. The glut of illegal aliens has helped keep wages near the floor that government has failed to adequately raise.

We had a strong system of tariffs and a rapidly expanding manufacturing sector. Now our tariffs and manufacturing base have been steadily eroded. Heck, our country was still geographically expanding a century ago, making it much easier to absorb throngs of immigrants.

Have basic labor and environmental standards made trade "impossible" with Canada or Europe?

 

Build a Fence -- And Amnesty

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; Page A19
Washington Post

It's time to build a real fence or a wall along every foot of the 1,989 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. There can be only two arguments against this approach to keeping out illegal immigrants: (1) it won't work -- possible, but we won't know unless we try; or (2) we don't want it to work -- then, we should say so and open our borders to anyone but criminals and terrorists. Either way, we need more candor in our immigration debates. Now is the time, because Congress is considering its first major immigration legislation in years.

In 2005 the Border Patrol stopped 1.19 million people trying to enter the United States illegally; 98.5 percent of them were caught along the southern border. Of those who got through and stayed (crude estimate: some 500,000 annually), about two-thirds lack a high school education. Even a country as accepting of newcomers as the United States cannot effortlessly absorb infinite numbers of poor and unskilled workers. Legal immigration totals 750,000 to 1 million people annually, many of them also unskilled.

I do not like advocating a fence. It looks and feels bad. It's easily stigmatized as racist. It would antagonize Mexico. The imagery is appalling, but it beats the alternative: a growing underclass and social tensions. Moreover, a genuine fence would probably work. The construction of about 10 miles of steel and concrete barriers up to 15 feet high in San Diego has reduced illegal crossings in that sector by about 95 percent since 1992, reports Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a supporter of a U.S.-Mexico fence. Sure, there will be tunnels and ladders. But getting in will be harder. Policing will be easier.

We also need to stiffen employer fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Businesses should have to check prospective workers against computer databases with Social Security numbers, passports or immigration documents. Now employers only have to inspect physical documents, which are easily forged. Even these lax rules are widely flouted and poorly policed. In 2004 the Department of Homeland Security cited only three employers for possible violations, says the Government Accountability Office. With an estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, that's mighty slim.

Fewer jobs and genuine border control ought to curb illegal immigration. Good. Naturally, there's another point of view. It is that the United States needs more unskilled workers to fill jobs native-born Americans won't take. One solution is to admit more unskilled workers legally. By this view, Hispanics are assimilating economically and culturally as fast as some groups in the past.

Perhaps. But common sense and available evidence suggest skepticism. If there are "shortages" of unskilled American workers, the obvious remedy is to raise their wages. A Texas roofing contractor testified to Congress that he couldn't get enough roofers at $9 an hour. Okay, increase it to $10 or $12. Higher wages will bring forth more workers. Perish the thought. Business groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, clamor for more guest workers. That's a euphemism for cheap labor. These business groups seem unperturbed by extravagant increases in chief executives' pay. But they're horrified by anything that might raise the wages of maids, waitresses, laborers or gardeners.

As for assimilation, it's true that millions of Hispanic families are moving into -- and reshaping -- the American mainstream. But average trends look less encouraging. Since 1990 about 90 percent of the increase in people living below the government's poverty lines has come among Hispanics. That has to be mainly immigrants and their U.S.-born children. In a report, the Pew Hispanic Center notes:

· Residential segregation is increasing. In 2000, 43 percent of Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with Hispanic majorities, up from 39 percent in 1990.

· The median net worth of Hispanic households is about 9 percent of that of non-Hispanic whites (net worth is what people own minus what they owe).

· Only about a quarter of Hispanic college students graduate compared with about half for non-Hispanic whites.

Assimilation takes time. The big difference between today's Hispanic inflows and past immigration waves is that those stopped. History or restrictive laws intervened. There was time for newcomers to adapt. Left alone, there's no obvious reason why the present Hispanic immigration should even pause. Today's unskilled arrivals make it harder for yesterday's to get ahead. The two compete. In 2004 the already-low median wages for foreign-born Hispanics dropped 1.6 percent, reports Rakesh Kochhar of the Pew Center.

There's a paradox. To make immigration succeed, we need to curb some immigration. That's why it's vital to control our border. It also explains why it's important not to "solve" that problem merely by legalizing these huge inflows. Unfortunately, the legislation being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee would do precisely that. Among other things, it would create a virtually open-ended guest worker program.

If we control new inflows, we should legalize the illegal immigrants already here. Many have American-born children, who are U.S. citizens. It is not desirable or ethical to force most illegal immigrants to leave. Yes, they broke the law, but we were complicit by making the law so easy to break. Their present shadowy status deprives them of rights and exposes them to exploitation. We should want the melting pot to work -- and fear that it might come to a boil.

 

Actually, only about 3% of wage earners (not working Americans or the population in general, just wage earners) get the minimum wage. And most of them don't stay there for long. So it is a bit of a myth that large numbers are trapped at minimum wage.

Geographic expansion? Please. We are not running out of space. And the thing about eroding manufacturing is that it is a normal trend for developing countries. We are an advanced, service sector oriented economy now. There is no reason America should be trying to sustain uncompetitive manufacturing industries simply for nostalgia.

Since when have Canada and Europe been poor? They aren't. These standards do not precede development, they follow it. That is why protectionists promote these standards - to lock poor countries out. Are working standards and wages rising or falling? Rising. Where would they be if we never let them trade in the first place? Nowhere.

 

I know you're averse to swapping links, but where do you get these numbers?

We certainly don't face the same shortage of workers as we did a century ago. Moreover, as noted in the Washington Post column I just posted, the previous waves of immigration from Europe were short-lived, unlike the ever-increasing flood from Mexico.

There is when they are "uncompetitive" only because of outsourcing to foreign slave labor camps.

First, the growth of the American middle class was largely the result of hard-fought labor reforms. Second, the alleged economic benefits of "free" trade in Latin America are very debatable. Third, I've never suggested that we shouldn't "let" poor countries trade with us, but we should at least require that they not violently suppress their workers who attempt to organize for better working conditions and pay.

 

Heritage http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/WM19.cfm. You can also read this article, http://www.missourieconomy.org/community/socioecon/minimum.stm, which shows that the % is highest in historically poor regions, with New Mexico being the only border state with a high %, and lowest in places like California, which has huge numbers of illegal immigrants.

I think the concept of worker "shortages" is completely false. It doesn't exist and makes no sense in economic terms. I'm sure if you'd asked workers in New York in the 1950s if they wanted millions of poor immigrants to come to the city and look for work, they would have said the same protectionist things you are saying now.

And as for ever increasing flood, that sounds like 'horde' talk to me. After all European immigrants didn't go back home, whereas some of the Mexican horde is alway flooding back to Mexico.

Right, so the reason Toyoto is beating GM is because of the slave labor camps in Japan, and that's why in the 1970s and 1980s Americans were demanding trade barriers - to protect Japanese people from slavery.

I believe economic development raises living standards. Prosperity allows these demands to be filled. Its not that we wanted better standads now than we used to.

That's what every protectionist says. If your "genuine concern" for Chinese laborers had kept up trade barriers two decades ago, Chinese workers would still be poor rather than rapidly prospering.

 

The deep South has its share of problems with illegal aliens. If you want to discuss the impact of illegal immigration on Califorinia, read the LA Times piece that I've referred you to twice now.

You're ignoring the simple fact that we've had a large and continual net increase of illegal immigrants from Mexico every year for decades. This is unparalleled by previous immigration trends.

I guess you have a point there. Unfortunately, GM falsely blames its lack of competitiveness on labor costs (rather than poor quality products) and relies on foreign sweatshop outsourcing to solve its problems.

The question is not whether economic development should occur, but how. In our case, it was accompanied by a strong labor movement that enabled the growth of a middle class.

Yeah, these "free" (lawless) trade zones have been a great boon for workers:

"Labor groups agree that a living wage for an assembly-line worker in China would be approximately US87 cents an hour. In the United States and Germany, where multinationals have closed down hundreds of domestic textile factories to move to zone production, garment workers are paid an average of US$10 and $18.50 an hour, respectively. Yet even with these massive savings in labor costs, those who manufacture for the most prominent and richest brands in the world are still refusing to pay workers in China the 87 cents that would cover their cost of living, stave off illness and even allow them to send a little money home to their families. A 1998 study of brand-name manufacturing in the Chinese special economic zones found that Wal-Mart, Ralph -Lauren, Ann Taylor, Esprit, Liz Claiborne, Kmart, Nike, Midas, J.C. Penney and the Limited were only paying a fraction of that miserable 87 cents some were paying as little as 13 cents an hour."

http://www3.wittenberg.edu/laskeland/discarded_factory.htm