"Immigration bill ready for debut" (I know it is politico but they go into the first details)

[applegrove]

Immigration bill ready for debut

By MANU RAJU, CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN and ANNA PALMER

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/immigration-deal-ready-for-debut-90116.html?hp=l9

"SNIP..........................................

The legislation would have a far-reaching impact on virtually every corner of the American economy.

The bill would affect visas for high-tech workers, create a new “W-visa” program to attract low-skilled workers — one of the last stumbling blocks before senators reached a deal. It would also require businesses to implement new electronic-verification requirements to check the immigration status of their employees. In a requirement for conservatives if undocumented immigrants are legalized, the bill would call for billions of dollars to be spent on tightened security at the U.S.-Mexico border with a goal of apprehending 90 percent of those crossing the border in “high-risk” areas.

The proposal, which is expected to be officially unveiled this week is titled the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013,” according to a copy of the summary provided to POLITICO. The massive piece of legislation will undergo its first public vetting on Friday at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bill creates what is certain to be a controversial pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to become permanent legal residents a decade after they register with the government. Immigrants would pay a total of $2,000 in fines, pass a background check, have a job and wait 10 years before applying for a green card. Three years after that, they could apply to become U.S. citizens.

But the whole process is contingent, at several points over a decade, on the government meeting certain border-security benchmarks.


.........................................SNIP"

[markiv]

1. GOOD! We have too many jobs for citizens! nt

[applegrove]

2. But citizens are not doing the picking jobs and the home health care aide jobs of the future.

Last edited Wed Apr 17, 2013, 01:22 AM - Edit history (1)

Plus, in Canada, we have office buildings full of high tech workers who work for American corporations that can't get them into the USA. So Canada gets all those taxes and entrepreneurial ability right now. Which we like. But it is not good for you.

[markiv]

3. or the IT jobs - Americans train their own replacement

they wouldnt do that, unless they really didnt want to quit doing that job

[markiv]

4. 'Which we like' --> that's not what I hear

On temporary foreign workers, some sensitivity to the times

Stephen Harper should have known that the politics of the temporary foreign worker program would overwhelm its economics. It has everywhere else. In this age of rising job insecurity and slow-growing wages, did he think Canadians would simply roll over?

Bringing in 200,000 foreign workers every year to perform jobs Canadians are supposedly unable or unwilling to take was a controversial idea well before the Royal Bank of Canada (with a record $7.5-billion profit in 2012) turned out to be one of the beneficiaries. When the CBC revealed the bank was using a foreign IT worker as a precursor to outsourcing jobs to India, a simmering debate exploded into national outrage.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/on-temporary-foreign-workers-some-sensitivity-to-the-times-please/article11161612/?cmpid=rss1

plus, if you're a canadian, why are you telling us what our policies should be? I dont tell Canadians what their laws should be

[applegrove]

6. The high tech workers I am talking about are not temporary workers. They are on a path

to Canadian citizenship working at American satellite offices set up to get access to those with high skills who do not make it in via the American immigration system but are welcome in Canada.

[pampango]

5. I had not realized that Canada benefits from the high tech workers that cannot get into the US.

I knew that Canada's immigration laws are more liberal than the US' (particularly towards highly-skilled and -educated immigrants) and that they are more directed to strengthening the economy than on family reunification as it is in the US.

Most Americans are rightfully proud of our immigrant-rich history, but too often our positive feeling towards immigration applies to past, not current, immigration. This is not just a modern phenomenon either. It is encouraging that Canadians seem to have more positive attitude towards current immigration.

Thanks for the perspective from the Great North.

[markiv]

7. Canada has 1/10th the population density of the USA

the USA hasnt had that absolute level of population density since 1860

how can people possibly omit that fact when comparing the 2 countries, as though it hade no relevance at all?!?

[pampango]

8. Population density does not seem to matter much in the real world to those who are anti-immigrant.

The population of the US in 1860 was similar to that of Canada today. In 1850 our population was just 21 million and yet the mid-1850's were the hey day of the Know Nothings which was the anti-immigration party that burst on the scene in the mid-1850's and quickly flamed out. Anti-immigrant sentiment was high among some Americans at that time, even though our population and density were both very low.

The Nativist spirit of the Know Nothing movement was revived in later political movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Protective Association of the 1890s.

The term has become a provocative slur, suggesting that the opponent is both nativist and ignorant. George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign was said by Time to be under the "neo-Know Nothing banner". Fareed Zakaria wrote that politicians who "encourage[d] Americans to fear foreigners" were becoming "modern incarnations of the Know-Nothings." In 2006, an editorial in The Weekly Standard by neoconservative William Kristol accused populist Republicans of "turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party." The lead editorial of the May 20, 2007 edition of The New York Times on a proposed immigration bill, referred to "this generation's Know-Nothings." An editorial written by Timothy Egan in The New York Times on August 27, 2010, entitled "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" discussed the Birther movement, which claimed Barack Obama was not born on American soil, and thus not a natural-born United States citizen, which is a requirement for the office of President of the United States.

When people do not like immigration it really does not matter what the population or population density is. Germany has the same immigration rate as the US though its population density is much higher; Russia's immigration rate is much lower than ours though it has a much lower population density.

Canada has a low population density and values immigrants. Russia has a low population density and does not welcome immigrants. Norway and the Netherlands are smaller countries that have high rates of immigration though they also have anti-immigrant right wing political parties that are growing in strength.

[markiv]

9. you're really quoting William Kristol

in a guilt-by-association arguement?

I'm speechless

and I take it that you are saying that population density is not a valid issue

and personally, I dont get having to see who thinks what before forming an opinion on something I see. If the evidence is sufficient, I think it makes more sense to form one's own opinion

[pampango]

10. I pasted an wiki article that included a quote from him and several others. I thought it was more

honest to post the whole paragraph rather than delete the quote from Kristol from the paragraph and leave the rest. Sorry if I offended you. At least he was quoted as accusing "populist Republicans of "turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party" rather than having something positive to say about them.

You are certainly welcome to form your own opinions and not be influenced by what other liberals and conservatives have to say or what history shows about attitudes towards immigration or anything else. I choose not to do that.

Is population density a valid reason to oppose immigration? That is in the eye of the beholder. People have opposed immigration because they spoke the wrong language, practiced the wrong religion, were too uneducated and any number of other 'valid' reasons.

In reality, most immigrants to Canada settle in their large cities not in the hinterlands so the population density number does not have much relevance to why Canada is so welcoming to immigrants. Canada is not encouraging a higher level of immigration to fill up empty space in the far north of the country or anything like that. The US, of course, is one of the least densely populated countries in the world so I am not sure how far this argument will get you in comparing the US to any country other than Canada.