With More People Coming, U.S. Needs A Plan
No immigration compromise can ever be fair for everyone. That’s why Congress is about to take the big duck, again. That’s why the system will continue to be driven by lawlessness, exploitation and fear.
And that’s why this nation will fail to retool its immigration laws for a 21st-century economy that demands higher skill sets to compete for the jobs and inventions of the future.
As corrosive to this nation’s character as is the current lawless status quo that’s put an estimated 12 million people in the shadows earning sub-par wages, it’s even worse that we can’t muster the wisdom and political courage to do something about it.
It’s not that the latest compromise hammered out in private between select lawmakers and the White House holds all the answers. Its flaws are numerous; its loopholes, likewise.
Yet even critics admit something must be done — that neither “amnesty” nor “return to sender” are full answers.
Despite new attention to border enforcement, as many as half a million more people may slip through every year. Once in, they join the fast-growing underground of sub-rosa workers who propel equally lawless trends in document forgery and identity theft.
Yet the irony is that these “illegals” aren’t unwelcome. They are very much wanted — by some.
U.S. employers can’t hire these undocumented workers fast enough — delighted to find tomato pickers and sheepherders and ditch diggers eager to work for less than the prevailing wage. In fact, it’s exactly this illegal status that depresses wages from New Mexico’s construction industry to nursery businesses in Lake County, Ohio.
So the immigration debate is wrongly framed. It’s not just about the 12 million here illegally. It’s about the 12 million who will probably get in, in the future.
No matter how many miles of fencing or how many old cars we mound next to Mexico, as long as the jobs are here, they will come.
Under the current system, enforcement penalties against employers rarely are levied because identity documents are so easily forged, or ignored.
In this regard, some ideas in the current proposal, on fingerprinting and other biometric measures and “secure” electronic identity cards, offer real promise at turning enforcement around. So do its careful mechanisms for transforming today’s illegals into tomorrow’s legals — involving fines, fees, long waits for possible citizenship and requirements to keep renewing paperwork and to study English.
This is not amnesty. It is logic.
Sweeping the desirable small fry off the table will help end the waste of today’s enforcement lottery that tends to go after what my colleague Phillip Morris calls the “low-hanging fruit” of the easy grabs instead of the roughest customers who know how to disappear.
The priority should be on the real threats, the ones plotting harm to this nation. That becomes harder with every enforcement sweep that handcuffs a 16-year-old and pushes the bulk of otherwise law-abiding “illegals” further underground, where they’ll hesitate to turn in the truly malevolent ones.
At the same time, border security remains the perverse step-cousin to national security, not a critical component. The nation may be trying to hire more border agents, but Iraq contractor DynCorp International is using taxpayer money to offer twice the pay of current agents so they’ll quit and work in Iraq, the Washington Times reports.
Framing the debate around “legal” versus “illegal,” meanwhile, clouds the real contributions that immigrants make. In a few places where immigrants land, such as Painesville, Ohio, some even roll out the welcome mat — because they see the worth of productive workers with family values.
Immigrants still offer what they always have to this nation — an economic boost to struggling communities, the vibrancy of new blood, the drive to succeed and the motivation to look after not just family members and friends, but the larger communities in which they dwell.
Copyright 2007 The Cleveland Plain Dealer
If we supported Chavez like his neighbors in Latin America do, the lives of the poor in these countries would improve to the point that they might not want to immigrate here. But this is a pipe dream. America is a corporation that only supports corporations that exploit the cheap labor and resources of all countries. By law, the only purpose of a corporation is to maximize profits. Our politicians are the CEO’s of our government corporation that profits our plutocrat owners. Isn’t it time we the people removed their charter and took over our government for the common good? Switch2green.
Just as terrorism is not “managed” by becoming a force of terrorism (via our military) ourselves, treaties like NAFTA that design channels for wealth to aggregate upwards send the poor in search of a means to the faintest livelihoods. Ezeflyer is right. If their homelands were not sold out, they’d have the means to produce their own humble harvests. I recently drove through Homestead, Florida and the bent over laborers in the field reminded me of a scene from “The Grapes of Wrath.” Low and behold, a tale of two coastlines, two weeks later I find myself driving in California only to witness the same scene. The feudal lords are back… welcome, sharecroppers!
ezeflyer has a point. My professor in Politics 101 always said that when people are stuck with a government that flips them the bird, they’d normally get rid of it and build a new one. The trouble with our US Government is that it was created by the elitists at a time when they could easily frame democracy as somehow “bad” for our nation. The Founding Fathers knew that very well and whether we’re talking Jefferson or Hamilton, they took Shays’ Rebellion and used it to create a somewhat centralized government. By now, Hamilton would be blushing !
The US wants, and will continue to get, all the cheap labor it can find. International migration of people, as labor of course, is a part of the road to globalization. The US middle class doesn’t quite know it yet, but they are in direct competition with labor from around the world. (Not doctors or lawyers, yet.) Even Bob Dylan in, “Working Man’s Blues”, talks about proletariats and competing abroad. Labor is now a natural resource that will be used to fuel globalization. It will get moved around the world just like oil is.
Hoa binh
Most illegals will become part of a large permanent underclass. Globalization, technology and the unending drive for greater profits will continue to reduce the number of desirable jobs. The good jobs that remain will go to citizens who have education, speak English and have political connections and social skills. At least until those disappear too. See Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End Of Work”.
In our Capitalist/Christian society, those who can’t find work are considered lazy and deserve their fate. With that deeply ingrained and widely held belief, there will be little assistance for poverty-stricken people. Don’t count on schools to remedy the situation, public education is poorly funded here and the political will to change it is lacking. The millions who are fleeing poverty, drug wars and political corruption will find that the problems they fled in other countries have followed them here.
Our overburdened social systems will not be expanded to deal with millions of uninvited and unwelcome who come here without skills. It is not part of our Capitalist nature to erect a massive socialist infrastructure to alleviate poverty. We barely do it for “our own” now. Burdened with massive debt and trade imbalances, great disparities in wealth and a declining middle class, the US will become a “third-world’ nation. Probably a fascist one at that.
The title of this article is telling: “With More People Coming …” Yes indeedy, the country that built the Panama Canal is incapable of securing its borders. We’re defeated before we start. Nonsense!
At least the author didn’t take a whack at Lou Dobbs, as Frank Rich did twice in his article. Lou, who hobnobbed for years with all the big movers and shakers, is now a born-again populist, NOT a racist. Nowhere in the corporate media except on Lou Dobbs Tonight could you have found out about the secret plans to expand NAFTA into the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership, which has been written about on this site today.
Nor would you know this telling detail in the Grand Compromise immigration bill they’re trying to ram through: The Z Visa, which instantly gives every illegal immigrant the right to be here for four years, and is renewable after that, must be processed — including a background check — WITHIN 24 HOURS by the most dysfunctional agency in the U.S. government, the INS (now the CIS). Isn’t that heartwarming, particularly when you consider how many members of the violent Salvadoran gang MS-13 are already here. Dobbs then revealed that the bill gives people a pass regarding gang membership.
No, it’s not amnesty. It’s insanity.
>In this regard, some ideas in the current proposal, on fingerprinting and other biometric measures and “secure” electronic identity cards, offer real promise at turning enforcement around.
Let me see your ID! To prove you are you, instead of me!
How did you arrange to be born here instead of there anyway?
I really really want to know.
You think it’s bad now? Just wait until North American Union.
Why do some stories not have comment areas?
We have to look at the illegal immigration problem within the context of the whole nation, not just from the viewpoint of a single minority group. The fact is that, politically at least, this is our new Marriage Made in Hell. The power of the old one is finally fading. Wall Street’s intercourse with the evangelicals is threatening our future less and less every day, as if George’s war was that infamous one last step too far. The new marriage is between Wall Street and Mexico, or big business and ethnic special interest groups, if you prefer. When is the middle class of America going to wake up to the fact that Wall Street will race to the bottom, no matter what the long-term cost is to America? When are we all going to see the horse puckey that is being shoveled on us by the talking heads on television? Don’t you realize that practically everyone selling this particular line of bull is a millionaire? Don’t you realize that compassion is a word that should apply to all of our legal citizens, not just some special interest group with a microphone? Rubbers, rubbers, rubbers, rubbers, rubbers, rubbers. Some people use them, and some don’t….
http://sucktheboob.blogspot.com
“…and the motivation to look after not just family members and friends, but the larger communities in which they dwell.”
The Kool-Aid finally started kicking in, I see. I was beginning to wonder.
How did you arrange to be born here instead of there anyway? I really really want to know. - Lew2007
Well, I ‘ll tell you how I arranged it, Lew. I arranged to have my ancestors cross a dangerous ocean and then work their butts off trying to survive in a dangerous and hostile wilderness long before there were any roads, hospitals, public schools, or anything else. They built it all with their bare hands; bled for it with their own blood; and lost lots of friends and family members in the process.
Coming here today, by contrast, is the surest sure thing of all the sure things there has ever been. There is next to no risk involved; the chance of death is minimal; there is no question about whethere your quality of life will improve, only the degree to which it will do so.
Why is it that progressives, when they talk about immigration, suddenly wet their pants and forget all they said about income equality and the environment? Like Barney Frank, they prefer the Rube Goldberg approach to improving the plight of the American worker:
“Gee, we could simply improve income equality by cutting off this massive flow of immigrants; but instead we’d prefer to let tens of millions of immigrants come in; let them completely destroy the environment while doing so; let them wreck the earning power of working Americans while doing so; let them drive the cost of livin into the stratosphere while doing so. But eventually they’ll vote for Democrats and then, 30 years down the road, we can hire millions of bureaucrats to manage new, debatably effective programs that might just, maybe, possibly, kinda help the working class.”
Thanks for your reply Greatdane.
So you did not arrange a darn thing. Where it is simply dumb luck or the grace of God if you wish that you are you and not one of the recent immigrants that you have so much contempt for. I hold you in contempt for your bigotry.
That is how you can avoid bigotry. Put yourself in the shoes of the other person and see if you would accept being treated like that. If you were black, would you think slavery is ok? If you were a woman, would you think it ok to deny you the right to vote or have a bank account? Why do you think your nationality or ethnicity should be grounds to prevent you from seeking and having an ordinary job to support yourself and your family?
What is progressive about using technology to control people with walls and fences and biometric devices and you must constantly prove innocence by having and producing the proper documentation.
I certainly agree population growth causes stresses in cities and rural areas and society and the environment and yet that is not a new phenomena whatsoever and placing the blame on immigrants is pure bigotry.
You want conflict within the lower classes. You do not blame the corporate and government decisions that result in low wages and mass migrations and instead blame fellow workers.
You suggest our quality of life and the environment and the earning power of Americans would be improved if only the illegal immigrants are eliminated somehow. FU Nazi Boy and shove it up where the sun don’t shine.
College educated Engineers and Architects and Chemists helped design the gas chambers where intelligence and being articulate are obviously no defense against being horrible monsters unable to imagine themselves in the shoes of the other people.
Plus, you are distracting us from the very real attempt to consolidate power in the Executive Branch of the United States Government and the dangers of uncontrolled corporatism.
Yes lew2007, play the race card cause that’s all you have, isn’t it?
So you did not arrange a darn thing. Where it is simply dumb luck or the grace of God
Yep, dumb luck. And it was dumb luck that the president and so many senate supporters of amnesty - George Bush, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Sam Brownback, John McCain, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Bob Bennett, Jay Rockefeller - were all born or married into wealth, privilege, and/or power. But dumb luck or not, they got to keep all that, didn’t they? They haven’t been forced to share it with anyone. Neither are the countries that are sending their immigrants here sharing their countries with us, are they? In fact, most of these countries ban citizenship for people of European ethnicity.
if you wish that you are you and not one of the recent immigrants that you have so much contempt for. I hold you in contempt for your bigotry.
I have no contempt for them whatsoever. I never expressed such contempt. I simply want to preserve a future for me and my family.
That is how you can avoid bigotry. Put yourself in the shoes of the other person and see if you would accept being treated like that. If you were black, would you think slavery is ok?
I’m not trying to “treat” these people like anything. I’m asking that they go home. And even though I’m not black, I still don’t think slavery is OK. In fact, quite a few of my ancestors risked or gave their lives because they didn’t think slavery was OK.
Why do you think your nationality or ethnicity should be grounds to prevent you from seeking and having an ordinary job to support yourself and your family?
Why do you think I think that ethnicity matters? I don’t. But I do believe that nationality matters. Do you own a house? A car? Any other property? And it belongs to you, right? It’s not for general public use, right? Your name is on the title, deed, or receipt, right? For that same reason, America is for Americans. Our name is on the deed to this property. We built, paid for it, fought for it, died for it.
I certainly agree population growth causes stresses in cities and rural areas and society and the environment and yet that is not a new phenomena whatsoever and placing the blame on immigrants is pure bigotry.
Then who do we place the blame on? How do we limit our population growth, 80% of which is due to immigration? Do we say “Immigrants can come in in whatever numbers they want, but Americans are now restricted to one child per family, like China?” That’s nonsense.
When trying to solve a problem, you have to consider those variables you can control and those variables you cannot control.
Take my weight: I’m trying to lose 10 pounds. What is weight? It’s a force. Weight = Force = Mass times Acceleration. In the case of weight, it’s acceleration due to gravity which, on earth, is 9.8 meters per second squared. So to lose weight I can either reduce my mass or reduce the acceleration due to gravity. Given that I don’t have an anti-gravity machine available there is really only one variable within my control: reduce my mass. Immigration is the variable we can control; in terms of population, it’s the only one. No policy to encourage or force Americans to have fewer kids is morally acceptable so long as immigration is so high.
You want conflict within the lower classes. You do not blame the corporate and government decisions that result in low wages and mass migrations and instead blame fellow workers.
I AM blaming the corporations and government, you friggin idiot! They’re the ones who want open borders: the paid-off politicians, the Chamber of COmmerce and all those other fascists!
FU Nazi Boy and shove it up where the sun don’t shine. College educated Engineers and Architects and Chemists helped design the gas chambers
Sorry, folks. I wasn’t sure I was talking to a troll until I came to this line. My bad.
Could it be that the progressive perspective on immigration gets co-opted by the neoliberals who post here?
If you notice it’s always business people who defend immigration.
Did you also notice the lack of Commondream articles by opponents of illegal immigration or the freedom some pro-immigration commentors to call people bigots or racists when they criticize. Commondreams has an agenda and they will censor you. It reminds me of the anti-Semite calls when Israel is criticized.
The immigration problem is an over-population problem caused by all of us. I understand the humanist perspective but the solution lies in shear mathematical terms.
This article makes a good point, that there is no plan with the attention of the political movers and shakers that has any connection to maintaining or improving the lives of Mexicans(or other major source countries of immigration) and Americans.
Part of the issue is that the science of economics is fundamentally politicized and flawed in recent years. The other, is that many prominent economists that do specialize in the economics of immigration aren’t even being seriously considered by political or economic elites Hispanic economist George Borjas at Harvard is a prominent example).
I’ve written extensively on the topic of immigration-and like Thom Hartman , I am a progressive that supports immigration restriction-and I have written extensively on that topic.
One fundamental problem here is that no one of any real power is looking at the economics here pragmatically. To understand the motivation to immigrate, we need to look at the value of citizenship in one country compared to another. We then need to consider what incentives are in place and whether the disincentives actually give a realistic possibility that the law will be obeyed.
I’ve recently written what is the only vaguely realistic estimate of the economic value of US citizenship (it is imperfect-but is at least a start). I put the theoretical value at about $300,000 in today’s market/situation (the actual market value is closer to $100,000-which is about what some of our immediate neighbors sell citizenship for). I would expect Mexican citizenship has considerably less economic value-and the value of dual citizenship is considerably greater than either alone.
What illegal immigrants-and guest workers-are largely working for isn’t their meager wages (which make life difficult given the US cost of living) but shot at a green card-which is highly valuable. That means that a company that can facilitate a green card-by giving an illegal immigrant employment until the next amnesty, can fully expect lot of otherwise uncompensated labor.
I hate talking to worms.
You inform me that somehow eliminating immigrants will fix many problems and you do not think that is inhumane or bigotry to suggest eliminating folks from the situation to improve things.
You are targeting folks based on their nationality as if that had connection to a person deserving anything. Phooey.
How dare you want fences up that treat people like cattle who are looking for honorable employment to provide for themselves and their families?
There are no Americans waiting in line to clean toilets and pick peaches and dig ditches and other jobs that do not even require speaking English. Phooey.
I don’t care if slavery was good or bad for the economy or Americans and I don’t care if open borders are good or bad for the economy and wage earners and Americans. We should not treat fellow people like cattle. Period.
Thank you for your insight BIGOT. Your selfishness is only exceeded by your short-sightedness where white folks will be in the minority soon in America and you better hope for your descendants that the brown folks have more compassion and a sense of humor.
I think slavery was good for the Southern economy with cheap labor to promote development and increased profits to build capital. As long as the slaves were not treated with dignity and respect and could be treated as not worthy of actual employment for their labors.
I have no idea why foreign nationals do not deserve dignity and respect for matters of employment for themselves and their families. They are less human than American humans?
Stop telling me and everybody that foreign humans are less human than American humans and so we can cage them and send them home like dogs or cattle, instead of seeing them as individuals trying to make their way in the world.
What is progressive about having magical beliefs about being American? Sort of a monarchy divine right by nationality thing? That is hardly rational or reasonable, Mister Progressive.
Lew 2007 writes:
“I think slavery was good for the Southern economy”
That is only slightly credible if you ignore long range costs. The Civil War was a great tragedy-and was particularly hard on the south-which really only started to recover from that fiasco in the 50’s.
Had the south never instituted slavery, I expect that had they opted for independence at some point, it would have been much more difficult to paint their cause as immoral.
That is what ultimately killed the southern cause. There were substantial numbers of Northerners that saw slavery as deeply morally wrong-and they were willing to do things like put men like Grant and Sherman in charge of armies.
Literally everything that had been built for years was destoyed in a wide swath.
Just FYI, my great grandmother’s uncle was a leader of the Radical republicans-and early abolitionist(Lincoln was not)-and the man that introduced Lincoln to Grant and Sherman.
Now, aside from that, historically, slave economies kill themselves by concentration of wealth. The Roman economy was a short term success, but a long term failure. When I took economic history, one of the things we learned was that there was a debate about why the Roman Empire never went through an industrial revolution like Britain. The presence of slavery in Rome-and its relative absence in Britain is a major reason given for that difference in technological development. At each stage, Rome looked like a great success to many of those leading it, but I suspect rather few people would really trade a chance to live in this present society-with all its flaws with a chance to live in Rome. Slaveholding Rome must be ultimately viewed as a moral and economic failure despite its significan accomplishments.
“What is progressive about having magical beliefs about being American? Sort of a monarchy divine right by nationality thing? ”
There is a little thing called freedom of association. I have reservations about the present situation of world nationalism. However, to deny a group of people the right to control their borders under any circimstances strikes me as rather oppressive.
The simple fact is that most americans want less immigration today. I suspect that has been the case for quite some time. Immigration policies that rely on overriding democracy are in my mind quite questionable.
My understanding is that most Americans don’t think we need the 1st Amendment either.
A large group want to clip out the 2nd Amendment also.
So polls do not persuade me.
Controlling immigration and borders is certainly not new, and yet I am afraid of the technology available now to enforce our ‘wishes’ about immigrants or slaves or traitors or whoever we decided needs to be controlled.
The military and/or the FBI and/or some homeland security group now have the power to ’sniff’ every single email or phone call or IM or telegram or Skype or chat room conversation if they want.
And they certainly have the firepower and manpower to enforce laws. We need to resist power with reason and good-will as it is too late for physical resistance. That
means being wise about the creation of many big detention centers and private armies and Executive Branch control of our National Guards and immigration agents. And the creation of draconian laws for the enforcement against non-violent behavior.
Identity theft is a problem 2nd only to database errors where an individual is mistakenly considered dead or a felon or confused with somebody else or similar errors. The company or government agency can just say ‘Oops’ and in the meantime the individual is caught in a horrible Kafka movie.
I am looking at the cost for ‘the peace of mind’ some Americans are seeking.
My family is here from the 1630s also and another branch were Quakers who helped out on the Underground Railroad and others won medals in the American Revolution, the Spanish/American War, GAR in the Civil War, WW1 and WW2 and Korea and Vietnam. I only earned a commendation from the Commander of the 6th fleet, which is one step below a medal.
I see progress and the progressive movement as expanding the list of those entitled to dignity and respect. From white landowners to include women and minorities and poor folks and eventually everybody on the planet.
So Alabama is denied ‘freedom of association’ because they must let Californians move into their stay and seek employment in their State? Why should Alabama allow a Virginian but not somebody from Canada? Did Oklahoma tighten it’s borders after McVeigh?
So employment is a government provided benefit that should not and will not be provided to non-citizens????? Is that progressive to assign that sort amount of power to a government? I understand your position and yet I am a loss of how you can choose to support it as a progressive.
Economic nationalism is kind of like trade unionism. Both have serious unintended side-effects. However, both counter real issues-and you don’t want to dismantle them until you have a clearly better structure in place.
Lew2007 wrote:
“I don’t care if open borders are good or bad for the economy and wage earners and Americans. We should not treat fellow people like cattle. Period.”
Then why should we allow wealthy interests that treat people like cattle to operate with impunity in the US? The policies I have written about include specifically applying fines on US employers that violate immigration laws-and applying those funds to ease the situation of people impacted by enforcement of those laws-and to improve the situation in source countries.
From my view, this would improve the lot of americans that compete directly with illegal immigrants(despite illegal immigration, there is no job category in the US that isn’t mostly US citizens), I also think it would improve the situation in Mexico and other source countries. The loosers would be the wealthy interests that support mass immigration. The loosers would be the political and economic elites in the US and Mexico. I can live with that. Those folks have made a mess-and need to be accountable for setting right the mess they have made.
I am also skeptical of current approaches on skills based immigration that the US has used recently. I will be publishing a significant article the few weeks that deals specifically with how I would structure a program in that area.
habanero wrote
“Could it be that the progressive perspective on immigration gets co-opted by the neoliberals who post here?”
Polls suggest there are actually quite a few progressives that support restriction of immigration. Progressive are less anti-immigration than some other groups-but there isn’t really clear evidence I have seen for a united position on immigration.
“If you notice it’s always business people who defend immigration. ”
It is deeper than that. Political elites also tend to support immigration. Leaders of both parties are more pro-immigration than their base is. There are also some specific religious groups and cultural groups that have leaders that are quite a bit more pro-immigration than their rank and file is.
“Did you also notice the lack of Commondream articles by opponents of illegal immigration or the freedom some pro-immigration commentors to call people bigots or racists when they criticize. Commondreams has an agenda and they will censor you”
Well, common dreams rejected my own articles that I have submitted(including this one. Common Dreams is far from alone though–and far from the worse offender. The progressive populist occaisionally gets a glimmer of realism on immigration. Common Dreams does publish some of Thom Hartman’s articles that are immigration skeptic. I can tell you from experience, it is VERY difficult to publish immigration skeptic articles in any progressive media-and anything that deals in depth with the numbers and issues involved. I suspect that HArtman gets published because he’s so high profile for other reasons.
As a result, there just aren’t many folks that are vaguely progressive that deal with the issue- And quite frankly, it is kind of lonely for those of us that do make an effort in this area. The research that is biased to conservatives just doesn’t typically deal with issues that might be of interest to progressives-and the material that is biased towards progressives just doesn’t deal with the range and depth of issues here.
Lew2007 wrote:
“So Alabama is denied ‘freedom of association’ because they must let Californians move into their stay and seek employment in their State? Why should Alabama allow a Virginian but not somebody from Canada? Did Oklahoma tighten it’s borders after McVeigh?
So employment is a government provided benefit that should not and will not be provided to non-citizens????? Is that progressive to assign that sort amount of power to a government? I understand your position and yet I am a loss of how you can choose to support it as a progressive.”
Lew, I will respectfully suggest you don’t really understand my range/package of positions. Read my articles and blogs. I’ve written quite a lot there-and even if you don’t agree with me, you’ll find quite a bit of numbers/research/references. Whether you or I like it or not, most Americans are rather dependent on their US citizenship to provide them any degree of stability in the world economy. The work economy is quite unforgiving and not egalitarian.
If you want to propose policies that have real protections in them to assure they at least make the situation no worse for Americans, then we start to talk.