Border Control vs. Cleaning Up Wall Street

[Donnachaidh]

http://counterpunch.org/breyman06132011.html

Governor Cuomo's recent decision to withdraw New York from the federal Secure Communities program—which sent the fingerprints of all jailed suspects to Homeland Security--got me thinking again about this country's never-ending struggle with illegal immigration. Upon reflection, the worst thing about illegal immigration is that it's, well, illegal.

I'm sympathetic to the plight of undocumented workers. I came of age playing high school soccer in Southern California with some of their children; no one works harder than these people. But as a strong believer in the rule of law, it's hard to get beyond the basic fact that crossing borders without passports and visas is against the law. Here in the US, and everywhere else.

It doesn't matter that undocumented workers provide far more to the US economy, welfare state and Social Security than they take from it.

Or does it? Doesn't that count for something? Given that we'll never be able to fully choke off the arrival of the undocumented--even with an alligator-filled moat--it's fair to do a little comparative analysis of American law-breaking, routine and otherwise.

More at the link --

[treestar]

1. We should make it easier to be legal

That's half the problem right there.

If they were legal, the workers could not be exploited. One realizes that's why they keep them illegal. They don't have the rights under the labor law that legals have.

[leveymg]

3. and far, far harder and more costly to be a criminal bankster.

[Romulox]

5. If the border is uncontrollable, newly legalized immigrants will be quickly be replaced by new

arrivals.

That is the logical paradox that cheap labor advocates cannot confront. After all, we already granted amnesty to illegal immigrants in the 1980s. 20 million more have arrived since then.

[FLPanhandle]

8. You can't phyiscally stop immigrants from crossing

However, you can make it not worth the effort by putting restrictions and controls in place to ensure they don't get employed. Punish the corporation that want cheap labor to drive down costs.

The key is not border patrol, but not making it a worthwhile thing to do in the first place.

[treestar]

26. That's not working either though

and it creates a lot of enforcement headaches, and enforcement already is impossible.

Make them able to work legally and without being able to exploit them, employers have to pay them as much as they do Americans, so they lose their "advantage."

[FLPanhandle]

2. If Democrats are truly for the working class, they need to fight illegal immigration hard.

When people see their jobs and hourly rates depressed because illegal immigrants will do their work for subsistence wages, they get mad.

Whomever promises to remove the working persons low ball competition will get their vote (and rightly so). All this other stuff about sex scandals, Wall Street reform, wars won't matter come election time.

The worst thing about illegal immigration is that it adversely impacts the working class and if Democrats won't fight for them, the Republicans will pretend to.

[leveymg]

4. Fine, you do stoop labor in the fields. Not many Americans will, even for $14/hr.

I will agree in some places in certain lower-skilled occupations that wages are depressed by the willingness of undocumented workers to accept somewhat lower wages.

But, the undocumented do fill a legitimate shortage of willing, able, and qualified US workers, particularly for the nastiest, most physically punishing and repetitive jobs, such as picking, food processing, and roof tarring.

[Romulox]

6. This is a horrible argument: "SOMEBODY needs to be exploited for cheap labor!"

:hi:

[leveymg]

9. Without the "illegal labor" discount, wages would rise for everyone.

[Romulox]

11. Right. That would be a VERY GOOD thing.

Unfortunately, just legalizing existing illegal immigrants won't do a thing to make wages rise. We can easily observe the results of the 1980s amnesty to understand why.

[leveymg]

13. In this economy, there has been a net outflow of undocumented workers.

Yet, real wages haven't gone up for the rest. Wages will rise again when measures are in place to force multinationals to repatriate profits and create lost jobs, if they can't be enticed to do so with tax breaks which has been the failed approach taken.

We should be focusing on the real problems that cause mass unemployment -- primarily, multinational corporate policies.

[FLPanhandle]

19. Only because the number of jobs has decreased.

The jobs that remain are still having their rates diminished due to the immigrants that remain.

[leveymg]

20. Just wait. There will be more departures, unfortunately for all of us but the few very rich

who benefit from the decline in labor costs across the board that come with rising structural unemployment.

[FLPanhandle]

7. Is that you President Bush?

Sounds just like his "Jobs Americans won't do" speech.

Yes, Americans will do those jobs and have done those jobs in the past. Also, those jobs wouldn't be $14/hr jobs anymore if the corporations didn't have a ready supply of cheap labor.

[leveymg]

10. Even Bush wasn't perfectly wrong about everything. Immigration isn't a Dem v GOP

sort of issue. There are people of good will on all sides who have concluded that the costs of immigration enforcement outweigh the benefits to American society, and that alternative approaches -- such as legalization and returning jobs to America -- need to be tried.

[WatsonT]

14. I suppose then you are 100% pro-outsourcing

I mean that does the same thing: takes jobs and depresses wages for Americans.

But it's mostly for jobs that white people are too good for (amiright?).

I mean seriously, do you really want to sew shoes together for a living?

[leveymg]

15. I am pro-insourcing, which means something entirely different from the failed policies

of the Bush Administration that have not sufficiently changed under Obama.

A Walmart in every town has led to the collapse of local retail as well as the annihilation of the U.S. industrial base. A similar process of gutting-out and offshoring the service industries is under way because anti-trust, tax and regulatory policies encourage that.

The American people need to wake up and start demanding that the corporations pay a fair amount of taxes, that their presence and ability to sell within the US market be made conditional upon good corporate citizenship, which includes repatriating profits and reopening plants and offices here.

[WatsonT]

16. So your solution to illegal immigration is to tax walmart

how do you suppose that will help?

By paying higher taxes corporations will suddenly lose interest in cheaper labor?

[leveymg]

18. No. That's part of the solution to restoring the U.S. economy and fiscal base.

It's not just about increasing taxes on corporations to historical norms, although that is essential.

It's about regulating the movement of money, business presence, and the movement of natural persons as a coherent policy. You can't deregulate one and try to restrict the other - that's a policy that is internally contradictory and doomed to fail on several levels, as it has in the US during the past decade.

[WatsonT]

21. So again, your solution is corporate taxes

not enforcing the border or detaining and deporting them.

But by taxing corporations more then somehow that will solve all our problems.

What shall we do about unemployment? Tax corporations? (don't spend the money on anything, just tax them and it will all work out awesome).

[FLPanhandle]

22. I don't think it's feasible to enforce the border

However, you can make it impossible for illegal immigrants to get hired by punishing anyone who hires one. Make it not worth the effort to come across because they'll have no opportunity for money once they get here.

Go after the corporations and people that dare to use them and not make it worthwhile to cross the border in the first place.

[WatsonT]

24. The best solution would be multi-factorial

step up border enforcement (more jobs!), improve enforcement within the US (more jobs!), and heavily audit companies to make sure they're hiring legals starting with the biggest and working down, then hitting those who break the law with massive fines (more jobs and more money!). And then work on shuffling people who are unemployed currently in to those positions that are freed up.

[leveymg]

23. You seem to imagine that the only federal gov't policy that effects corps is taxes

The Federal Gov't dwarfs all other contractors and purchasers of goods and services. The potential power of the procurement purse is enormous, if it were ever exercised in a coherent way to encourage domestic reinvestment in jobs creation.

Anti-trust laws are still on the books, but have not been used as part of the battery of policy options to stimulate jobs creation for a quarter-century.

Meaningful reporting requirements and tracking of cross-border funds transfers is also a necessary step. You or I cannot make a deposit or withdrawal of more than $10K without the financial institution or merchant notifying IRS. Why should Exxon-Mobil be able to wire a series of $800 million tranches to a subsidiary abroad without reporting it?

[WatsonT]

25. We keep going around in circles here

you offer no solutions other than "tax corporations". And even then you fail to follow up with an explanation as to why that would discourage people from coming here illegally.

Do you even think illegal immigration is a problem, or do you work in a field that is unaffected?

[WatsonT]

12. I say, how can we get this cotton picked without the coerced labor of the negro?

My lily-white hands certainly won't touch the stuff.

[Romulox]

17. This really gets to the heart of the matter. nt