I haven’t followed the current immigration debate all that closely. But as I understand it, the basic issue is that there are a lot of people here illegally, and those people are perceived to be (depending on your point of view) (a) taking jobs from legal residents and simultaneously driving down wages for everyone, or (b) doing jobs that are necessary to the economy but that legal residents don’t want because they are too low-paying.
Seems to me there’s an obvious strategy that the Republicans who want to be “tough on immigration” could adopt, and they’d draw a lot of Democratic support in doing it: raise the minimum wage – a lot. Like to ten bucks an hour. And enforce it across the board – to farm jobs, restaurant jobs, the whole nine yards. That should make those jobs a whole lot more attractive to legal residents, which should make it much easier for businesses to hire legal residents to do them, which should in turn greatly decrease the attractiveness of coming to the U.S. illegally. Problem solved!
Of course, it will never happen. Some of the very same Republicans who decry the minimum wage as a disastrous interference with the operation of the free market are the ones now banging the drum about the supposed threat of illegal immigration. Well, guess what, the market’s a bitch, and it doesn’t take sides on ideological battles. The job market in the U.S. is a big part of why there are so many illegal immigrants here. Silly bills proposing building a thousand-mile fence will do a lot less to solve this “problem” than cranking up the minimum wage.
I just walked through the Common as a protest was gathering. Four men and a woman showed up with signs saying that illegals were stealing jobs and such. They looked like neo-Nazis.
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One of them was wearing a shirt with the acronym NEWP on it. Does anyone know what that means? My guess is New England White Power, but I can’t check because I can’t google something like that from work.
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Anyway, my first thought was that it’s usually a good sign for a movement when the White Power people show up and oppose it.
to be “North East White Pride.” The site is http://www.newp.org – but be warned, that is one nasty site.
I find it somewhat depressing that a group of people want to preserve their heritage, identity, and pride. And because they are white,”their nasty” and bad people. Growing up in lynn My High School Had Classical High Pride, East Boston had Eastie Pride, My mother wears a Lynn pride shirt. The puerto ricans Have everything imaginable that says “Pride”La Raza Brown Pride, Black Pride,Roxbury Pride, But God forgive a Group of White Europeans having any mention of pride and they are considered “neo-nazis” or racists. How come only whites can be punished for hate crimes when my early childhood as well as many other whites im sure were attacked by hordes blacks and PR’s, the other day i saw a group of black students telling a white professionall lady on the subway every name in the book,and every one looked on like a buch of idiots.Except me the “nasty” neo nazi,whitepride,person who was wearing the newp shirt that day in the commons.And by the way my last ten yrs of working ive had to compete with illegals I worked at jobs with only a handful of whites and the rest illegals, Why beause the businesses were foreign owned. White people made this country, but we certainly dont own it!!!And the day is coming,as your children will see the mistakes their politically correct parents made.!!!
…would be to exert pressure on the governments of the countries the majority of illegal immigrants come from (Mexico has the highest representation, I believe) to take steps to try to improve their economies and encourage foreign investment. The US job market is a big part of why people are willing to try to enter the country illegally to find work, but so is the economy they’re coming from, where unemployment is high and poverty is rampant. Raising the minimum wage in the US would probably help, and is a good idea for totally unrelated reasons (in particular that the whole point of a minimum wage is to ensure that everyone who works can afford food and housing, and currently that’s just not the case), but just like concentrating anti-drug efforts on the producers will never work as long as the consumers still want drugs, going after employers in the US won’t do anything about the people who need jobs and can’t get them at home.
wages would go up for working americans. If business weren’t able to hire illegal aliens they would have to raise wages to attract legal residents to do the jobs. We wouldn’t have to worry about what the minimum wage was, but it would be nice too if that was higer. We are making this way harder then it has to be.
part of the “big businesses” that are paying undocumented workers are actually upper middle class people who can’t afford expensive day care and have a live-in nanny that takes below market wages. what do you think would happen if the middle class mom couldn’t afford to hire that nanny? well, someone in the family would have to stop working (or go part-time) so they could take care of the children. Nevermind that the undocumented nanny is probably paying her taxes (see my prior post on this issue), now you’ve lost at least half if not a full job of someone who pays taxes.
People seem to forget that the jobs most illegal immigrants take are the ones that U.S. citizens don’t want.
Sorry, but the Republicans don’t really care about providing jobs for people that pay a livable wage. While we Democrats look at a living wage as ideal in all aspects (fueling the economy, lessening poverty, creating better jobs), Republicans are looking at what “Big Business” cares about – paying out more money to people they know they can hire for less. Plus lets not forget that many companies hire illegal immigrants and pay them much lower than the current minimum wage. So raising the minimum wage in their eyes would just give them more of an excuse to hire illegal immigrants so they wouldn’t have to pay U.S. Citizens higher wages.
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I know it sucks, but thats how they think.
I was proposing what Republicans could do if they really wanted to find a solution to the immigration situation; I don’t actually think they do want to — illegal immigrants are too important a scapegoat (not to mention too important an element of the agriculture industry in this country) for them to actually want them gone.
People seem to forget that the jobs most illegal immigrants take are the ones that U.S. citizens don’t want.
Raising the minimum wage will just attract more illegal immigrants if it raises US wages.
you don’t accept the premise that most people seem to accept, namely, that the big draw for illegal immigrants is jobs that most Americans won’t take because they don’t pay enough. In other words, you have to assume (and most people do assume) that there is a substantial pool of jobs going unfilled by Americans under current circumstances. But if the pay is higher, presumably more Americans will want those jobs (also, it’s possible that a big hike in the min. wage would reduce the number of such jobs available, at least if you believe the Republicans).
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So what would be the draw for illegal immigrants? Why would they care if wages are higher, if the jobs are not available to them?
I was in Miami during the 2004 elections and a man approached me asking me for some money. He looked like he had worked all his life, and was so thin it was scary. His family was standing a few feet from him, three young kids and a wife. He told me he’d come from Venezuela some by train but mostly by foot, after he’d been fired by Chavez because he had refused to strike against the multinational oil companies that used to control Venezuelan oil. He fired a lot of people because of that.
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But do you know the saddest part? This man is one of millions who come here because it’s where he might be able to actually earn a living, even if it’s the bottom of the barrel. Him and his family walked from Venezuela all the way to Miami, Florida trying to find a better life. The reality is that our free trade agreements have depressed wages all over the world or totally made it impossible for people to live, the wars that are raging on independently or because of us have depressed wages all over the world, and whether we meant it or not, in allowing corporations to gain a quick buck by driving away people from their land, we sowed our own problems.
I second Bob – David’s idea won’t likely work. If anything, the difference between the legal minimum wage and market minimum wages will put more pressure on employers to turn to off-the-books labor.
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What could work are a whole series of enforcement on the supply side: tighter employer regulation, basically. Tighter audits of labor practices might actually go a long way in enforcing immigration laws. Not something the Republican party is going to rally behind, either.
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I’m not sure the Dems are going to rally behind it, either, though. There’s nothing approaching a concensus on a) if there is a problem, b) what the problem is, and c) what the response should be. So we get the status quo of immigration laws on books, but not enforced too strongly.