BigBallinStalin wrote:PLAYER57832 wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:Besides, making them legal isn't beneficial to businesses because the main incentive for businesses to hire illegals was to take advantage of the cheaper labor costs. When they become legalized, it's in the companies best interests to hire new illegals.
#1 its mostly the smaller businesses, not the big guys that hired illegals.
#2 most of the people who were legalized kept working for the same employer.
#3 Offering amenesty provided more incentive for yet another wave of illegal aliens.
#1 That's a good point, but is there any evidence?
Yes, but at some point, if you cannot even be bothered to investigate what you are claiming, why should I.
BigBallinStalin wrote:[#2 provide evidence... It's weird for a company that had the need to hire an illegal won't do so later.
I don't know of a single instance where an employer layed anyone off because they decided to pursue citizenship. In fact, I know of more than a few farmers who went out of their way to assist those folks in becoming legal. Among other reasons, they preferred to hire legal citizens, but citizens just would not take the jobs (not, I am not speaking hypothetically, we would see "town" folks come and take jobs.. most would last barely a week. The exceptions were the upfront short term jobs picking and such. A few housewives made extra cash picking for a week or so. Even that was limited to a few. The work was hard, the hours long and the pay not very good by US standards.
Again, I already told you I am telling you what I have seen. I did not say I have been involved in these isssues since I was a teenager, but I have.
BigBallinStalin wrote:#3 Agreed, because companies needed that cheaper labor, and illegals want to get paid better.
Begin with agriculture, a couple of other isolated industries and this is true. People don't want to pay more for food and the working conditions on farms are irregular and difficult. Its not solely illegals who take those jobs, but it is primarily immigrants. In recent times, immigration is so heavily oriented toward western countries and the more highly educated (some minor exceptions like the Hmong from Vietnahm, Somali youth, etc.) that farmers have plain not been able to find workers.
I would like to see more folks on welfare forced to take these jobs. However, I know full well that would mostly be a failure for the farmers. Farm work is not for the lazy! And, while not everyone on welfare is lazy by a long stretch, many of those who are not have conditions or circumstances that would make them picking up and moving to a farm difficult (kids, health conditions, attending school themselves, etc.)
Particularly when the work is only temporary.
HOWEVER, what began as a legitimate need in a few industries has now become a "need" to keep up profits. Illegals have absolutely taken carpentry jobs, butcher jobs, etc. Those are not beneficial changes, except where they keep the jobs here instead of outsourcing. However, the solution to that problem is not to allow illegals, it is to eliminate the illegal tag, tax the non-citizens who come here more highly than citizens, thus using the market to encourage (but not force) employers to hire citizens. If an employer has to pay even 25 cents more to hire a non-citizen (and the increase would be higher for more highly skilledpaid jobs), then they will only do so if the non-citizen is truly willing to work that much harder. Often that is the case and I say the one who works harder should get the job, citizen or not.
BigBallinStalin wrote:But let's look at what you said earlier:
But, becuase the businesses are making money, you decide to target folks who are as much victims of this as the rest of us, not the businesses who create the situation from the start
If you want to use this logic, then are not the illegal immigrants, who seek better pay, also creating the situation from the start?
Not quite a "chicken and egg", because you can take it as a given that people who are starving and so forth will seek better. Any of us would. However, unless there is someone willing to hire them, they won't benefit from coming here. I don't have a problem with people from Mexico coming here. The problem is that we have this huge need, but have not changed quotas to allow for it. Instead, the "powers that be" (not just Democrats and not just Republicans, though Reagan was about the first to truly set the current "track" and has since been lauded mostly by conservatives) have decided to play games with the "illegal question". By keeping the illegals coming they essentially get to "have their cake and eat it too". They get to decry increases in immigration, point to laws limiting them coming here... and still benefit from the labor all the immigrants provide.
BigBallinStalin wrote:They do contribute, but we have to step back and see why this problem even exists in the first place (I'll expand on that below).
PLAYER57832 wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:Businesses are acting on their best interests and will continue to do so regardless of the monopolized legal system's decrees. It's a failure of the current legal system in accommodating this country's demand for cheaper labor to maintain those businesses' competitiveness. They set up laws, and everyone who doesn't want it, will find away around it. For example, take the guy who shot and murdered the man who kidnapped and raped his child. That's the father's form of justice, which was unacceptable under any means by the current monopolized legal system.
My argument was in reference to Phatt's ideology that the Arizona law is some kind of "fix" for the problem. It isn't. Yes, not making the employers responsible for who they hire is a legal problem. However, it is one that will be best fixed through penalties and taxes (real ones, that go to help fund the local communities, replace taxes and fees the non-citizens would otherwise pay).
Are employers really not penalized for hiring illegals? I'd assume they already are after they've been caught.
In the past, hardly at all. An employer might (and only might) get a small fine. Initially, even illegals themselves faced little real penalty, mostly just being shipped back home. However, now they are more and more detained for long stretches. Ironically, those detained the longest are those trying to get legal status. This includes kids, though recent outcries have changed some tactics.
Also, the Immigration officers have used extremely draconian tactics. In one notable case, parents were not even allowed to contact daycare providers to let them know the kids would not be picked up or to arrange for someone else to get the kids. Kids who were citizens, I might add. One child, nursing, wound up in the hospital because he would not eat (nursing kids often refuse bottles). You can say what you want about the parents shouldn't be here, etc. But even the most henious of criminals get a phone call.
Note, I am not denying that illegal status causes problems, but the real solution is to allow more legal means for them to come here, not keep up this fiction of "fighting the border", while benefitting so highly from these folks' labor.
BigBallinStalin wrote:[The problem still is enforcing a law that's difficult to enforce. You can have the laws for penalties and taxes, but you need to catch them first. The US has dumped billions into that service (and related ones), yet is it overall an achievable goal? Is it really worth it? Or is this really a way for certain government agencies to continue justifying their budgets at the people's expense?
The US is combating a problem that it created in the first place by creating a price control in the form of minimum wage, which incentivizes businesses to seek cheaper sources of labor through illegal means.
No. Minimum wage did not create this problem/ Nice try, but no.
BigBallinStalin wrote:[Essentially, this is similar to the prohibition of alcohol. The price control inadvertently prevents market forces from reaching equilibrium (since the price control is a price floor and labor itself is an inelastic product), thus people themselves will find alternatives, which results in these terrible unintended consequences that we're both concerned about.
No. achohol prohibition was about imposing morals on others. This is about economics. An ecomic solution to an economic problem does make sense. That said, again, you want to focuse purely on a limited set of statistics and, yes, some false information.
As I said above, when I spoke of why Reagan did what he did, why businesses supported him, I was not making guesses. I was telling you what happened and why. Whether you think it made sense or not is irrelevant.
Gotta go, will tackle the wikki article later. If its worth tackling, anyway.
