Immigration
I'm watching Bush's immigration speech from my one-time home of Tucson. While I support a guest worker program in theory, I am affraid that Bush's plan does more harm than good. So far as I can tell, he supports a reduction in the due process for immigrants, which is just bad since immigrants who do fight in court tend to have legitimate claims (those that don't tend to just never show up for court if they can help it). And the vague outlines of the guest worker plan that I can catch in the speech seem to be less of an informal amnesty based on residence in exchange for making sure the immigrant in question is working than it is a way to ensure that new immigrants will be kept in a precarious guest worker limbo rather than on the road to citizenship and thus vulnerable to predatory employer exploitation. Immigrants--not all of them, just the illegal, largely agricultural workers coming in under the radar--would be able to apply for three-year worker permits after two of which they would have to return to their country of origin.
There are only really two reasons for letting people stay temporarily conditioned on employment without simply letting them become citizens (which would be the dreaded amnesty that conservatives hate so much):
1) The racist argument--which, I assure you is more prevalent than you are likely comfortable knowing--that these "sorts" of people simply shouldn't be allowed to become Americans because they are shiftless and lazy and temprementally incompatable with the signal virtues of United-States-ness. Seriously, a lot of the people you heard clapping and cheering during odd and inappropriate parts of Bush's speach hold this view, though they won't admit it in mixed company. Not a few congressmen think this way.
2) The exploitative argument that says that we need cheap labor and the best place to get it is south of the border. This needs to be seperated from the more legitimate argument that immigrant groups traditionally do undesirable labor that happens to be cheap. The exploitative argument says that economically marginal groups are useful for that exact reason; that we don't need new Americans to climb the ladder and contribute but that we should maintain a population of people who are economically unstable for the purpose of doing things on the cheap. This is--in my view--a shitty argument. While new immigrants do jobs that are largely undesirable, they deserve to paid a living wage, like everybody else in America.
The temporary worker program that Bush outlined today would keep people marginal, not giving them enough tme to become citizens before they are sent back to their native coutnries to reapply for another three years of guest worker status. And even guest worker status isn't going to guarantee that employers won't pray on immigrants and pay them illegally low wages. Any number of laws to that effect don't stop predatory employers now.
You want to stop illegal immigration? Stop the demand. Demand significantly higher penalties for employing illegals. You have to look at the incentive sttructure here. On the one hand is a poor dude from Oaxaca who can't find work at a lumber-mill or coffee plantation, or his village has been burned out by paramilitaries in Guatemala and he has nowhere else to go. On the other hand is the owner of a textile warehouse or a cleaning agency in Riverside or Laredo. Which of these people is a) in a position to make considered employment choices as a business desicion, b) in a position to bear the cost of complying with the law, and c) has anything to lose and thus is deterrable? If you answered the business owner to all three, then you are right and you now understand why being so concerned about the illegals instead of the people that hire them is silly. Historical information will confirm that undocumented workers will respond to the market--though imperfectly. I recommend Lorey's The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century as a great starter with a good bibliography to work off of.
There are all kinds of really good reasons to secure the border, but keeping out immigrants isn't one of them. Keeping control on who many immigrants we have is fine. But I'm telling you that the fact that there are as many as 8 to 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country means that we probably need that many and so we shouldn't act like they are a drain. And as far as the "tax-payers are footing the bill for healthcare when these people have to go to the hospital" argument I would mention that there are 45 million Americans without healthcare that are full citizens that you are paying for too; and again, if we let the undocumented millions become citizens they could negotiate healthcare from employers or buy their own insurance.
As far as I can tell, letting men and women come here to make a new life, especially since the majority of them are willing to work herculean feets of labor when they get here to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they never ask for handouts, well that sounds like a conservative American wet-dream. So I'm generally left with the fact that deep down a lot of people are just kind of bigotted. Why else would you oppose low cost solutions that would increase the number of Americans and the health of our workforce, while endorsing high cost plans that haven't been successful in their many incarnations over the last 40 years?
There are only really two reasons for letting people stay temporarily conditioned on employment without simply letting them become citizens (which would be the dreaded amnesty that conservatives hate so much):
1) The racist argument--which, I assure you is more prevalent than you are likely comfortable knowing--that these "sorts" of people simply shouldn't be allowed to become Americans because they are shiftless and lazy and temprementally incompatable with the signal virtues of United-States-ness. Seriously, a lot of the people you heard clapping and cheering during odd and inappropriate parts of Bush's speach hold this view, though they won't admit it in mixed company. Not a few congressmen think this way.
2) The exploitative argument that says that we need cheap labor and the best place to get it is south of the border. This needs to be seperated from the more legitimate argument that immigrant groups traditionally do undesirable labor that happens to be cheap. The exploitative argument says that economically marginal groups are useful for that exact reason; that we don't need new Americans to climb the ladder and contribute but that we should maintain a population of people who are economically unstable for the purpose of doing things on the cheap. This is--in my view--a shitty argument. While new immigrants do jobs that are largely undesirable, they deserve to paid a living wage, like everybody else in America.
The temporary worker program that Bush outlined today would keep people marginal, not giving them enough tme to become citizens before they are sent back to their native coutnries to reapply for another three years of guest worker status. And even guest worker status isn't going to guarantee that employers won't pray on immigrants and pay them illegally low wages. Any number of laws to that effect don't stop predatory employers now.
You want to stop illegal immigration? Stop the demand. Demand significantly higher penalties for employing illegals. You have to look at the incentive sttructure here. On the one hand is a poor dude from Oaxaca who can't find work at a lumber-mill or coffee plantation, or his village has been burned out by paramilitaries in Guatemala and he has nowhere else to go. On the other hand is the owner of a textile warehouse or a cleaning agency in Riverside or Laredo. Which of these people is a) in a position to make considered employment choices as a business desicion, b) in a position to bear the cost of complying with the law, and c) has anything to lose and thus is deterrable? If you answered the business owner to all three, then you are right and you now understand why being so concerned about the illegals instead of the people that hire them is silly. Historical information will confirm that undocumented workers will respond to the market--though imperfectly. I recommend Lorey's The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century as a great starter with a good bibliography to work off of.
There are all kinds of really good reasons to secure the border, but keeping out immigrants isn't one of them. Keeping control on who many immigrants we have is fine. But I'm telling you that the fact that there are as many as 8 to 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country means that we probably need that many and so we shouldn't act like they are a drain. And as far as the "tax-payers are footing the bill for healthcare when these people have to go to the hospital" argument I would mention that there are 45 million Americans without healthcare that are full citizens that you are paying for too; and again, if we let the undocumented millions become citizens they could negotiate healthcare from employers or buy their own insurance.
As far as I can tell, letting men and women come here to make a new life, especially since the majority of them are willing to work herculean feets of labor when they get here to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they never ask for handouts, well that sounds like a conservative American wet-dream. So I'm generally left with the fact that deep down a lot of people are just kind of bigotted. Why else would you oppose low cost solutions that would increase the number of Americans and the health of our workforce, while endorsing high cost plans that haven't been successful in their many incarnations over the last 40 years?
posted by justin | 2:51 PM
1 Comments:
Those are some great comments, and I agree. I especially like the one about increasing the size of the American population, because I have heard shrinking or stagnant population as an argument for outlawing abortion. If one is really concerned with the shrinking population why not just make more United States citizens? Probably because they will be brown and speak Spanish and that is not what was meant. Also I heard a lady on public radio today who said that a lot of times illegal immigrants are paying into programs like Medicare or Social Security, but never collect on it. So in a way they are supplementing those programs for you or I without taking anything out. On the other hand is the argument that illegal immigrants take up public school resources and all of that, but I think that your right and some of what we are talking about comes down to racism couched as something concern for America.
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