Give them amnesty...

I have been reluctant to take this position before...mostly because it goes a bit against the grain...

I am a small business owner in Northern Virginia. I have a store in a nice location, in a middle to upper middle class section of Fairfax County. Unfortunately, directly across the street is a spot where day laborers hang out waiting for work. They are there because many of them used to live in low income apartments that were torn down recently to make way for upscale condos (I know availability of affordable housing is a problem).

This is bad for my business. When not working they loiter in front of our stores, drink beer up behind some trees, park their bike on sidewalks so customers can't pass, and I have caught them urinating in planters outside our establishment. Customers are complaining. Last night very late, I left work to discover one of them sleeping in my car. Besides scaring the crap out of me, it angered me and I flew off the handle at the guy, which I do not regret, though I understand the situation he is in. And as I discovered, he had stolen some items I was preparing to deliver to a customer.

Now the natural reaction to all of this would be to advocate stricter controls over them, to try and have them deported, just get rid of them so we cannot see them anymore, and that was my gut instinct as well....but that will not work.

There are too very basic facts that demonstrate the impossibility of that plan...

1. There are upwards of 12 million illegals in this country

2. There is no way we are going to deport them despite all the rhetoric about them being criminals etc. The American people will simply not stand for the enormous cost such an effort would incur...

The solution long term is to tighten border security, crack down on employers who hire illegals, and most importantly adjust the way industry, the U.S. Government, and corrupt local governments exploit labor. It is not only demand (U.S. companies demanding low wage workers), but supply (millions of exploited workers) that is the problem...and both need to be addressed...

In this short term, the only thing that will get them off the streets is to grant them amnesty, give them work permits, and get them into real employment situations...not only is it the only cost effective thing to do, it is the only practical thing to do as well...

As it is now, their only option is to act as day laborers, caught in the limbo land of a country that tacitly encourages them to come here, but does not provide them adequate means to support themselves...

So there ya go, I'm out of the closet in favor of amnesty for the illegals that currently reside in the U.S....flame away!

:popcorn:

...it's certainly not from being a "liberal bleeding heart". And I think it is important. It reminds me of a friend who told me years ago that in regard to the issue of homelessness, he would label himself a "cynical socialist" (in contrast to the right's "compassionate conservative" self-labeling). What that means, he said, is some form of housing for everyone. He said he would rather pay taxes for the homeless to have a place to live, rather than trip over them on the way to work every morning. I thought he had a point.

And have always kind of known in the back of my head that deporting them simply was not an option. I also think the behavior of groups like the Minutemen was despicable But it is largely a practical matter...there is no other good, cost effective way to take care of it that I can see...

I didn't notice any mention of wage suppression in the OP.

Anyway you look at it additional available workers means lower wages for everyone.

If there is a demand for day-laborers, a new batch will simply replace the ones granted amnesty.

Can't do one without the other...stem the flow...

See e.g. post #27. What reason is there to think new laws can be enforced?

The fine for employing an illegal alien would be 100,000 per violation. This would apply to ANY employer from someone who hires a day laborer to Tyson meats. The employee would have to provide either a valid green card or a government issued ID card. The government would provide a verification system for employers.

Once it is impossible to earn money in our country if you are not supposed to be here, there will be mass "self deportations".

Fines need to hurt. $100,000 for some person wanting some gardening work is a HEAVY, life-changing, bankruptcy-inducing fine.

$100,000 per person for Tyson Foods is walk-around money.

Make it a percentage of net worth or some other sliding scale that makes it as painful for the huge corporation as for the individual.

for lawn care, I do have to ask why homeowners can't either do it themselves or hire an American citizen or legal resident to do the work?

I know that California and the Southwest has been depending on cheap illegal labor for decades, but, until recently, the rest of the country has managed without it, at least on a local scale.

.... and presumably some of it is illegal.

I suspect the same is true in most any major urban area (after all, that's where the highest concentration of jobs are).

If there's a way to get something cheaper than the going rate, people will probably avail themselves. I would bet almost anything that even some members of that wacky Minutemen group have or still do employ labor of less than legal status.

Well, that's the crux of the matter. 'Sorry for my pessimism, but I think that many of the same Americans who are opposed to illegal immigration are too lazy and/or cheap to stop taking advantage of it.

That weakness also feeds Wal-Mart and the importing of cheap crap from China.

The financial incentives drive this for everyone.

The 'illegals' are here because they can make more money here than at home.

The little guy hires them by the day, as you and I just discussed.

The big companies hire them cuz they work cheap and the fines are low.

Take away the financial incentive and the problem is self curing.

This thread is abut amnesty. Implicit in that is some application of basic standards to the 'illegals' .... including some kind of minimum wage, reporting, taxes, etc., etc. In other words, they cost the same as a US citizen. So if we pick amnesty as the solution, the financial incentives are eliminated.

On the other hand, if we exclude and deport and 'enforce the laws we have' with respect to employers, we also eliminate the financial incentives. No one wants to come here if there's no job. The making of jobs (hiring them) becomes even more criminal and more subject to fines or more.

So long as the financial incentives are taken away, we get the problem solved.

That leaves the dilemma of finding the most moral, humane way to end the problem and deal with 12 million people.

I personally favor amnesty. I'm not sure what the best public policy is.

around knocking on doors, asking if you wanted your yard cut? I was one of those kids. The day I turned 16, I already had my own truck, trailer, lawn tractor with PTO to run the hydraulic tillers and plow, and was making $400/wk.

When I lived outside of Atlanta, in a subdivision, I paid a neighbor kid to cut the grass. I could have done it myself in 30 - 45 mins with a push mower, but it was worth the $20 to let him do it. Plus, it helped him out too.

My son is almost 14 now, and he's learning to use the riding mower. He already knows how to *drive* it, but he's still gotta learn the proper settings for the blades, and how to keep the oil and gear lubes checked, you know... the maintenance stuff to keep it running well.

Anyone have a neighbor kid that cuts their grass??

but, I know that some of the kids around here are hired by some of the elderly folks in the neighborhood.

We're in kind of a DIY area. People like to garden and do their own lawn care if they are able. I do my own heavy landscaping projects and have been scraping and painting my house (I won't tell you how long I've been working on particular job :P).

It's better than paying for a gym membership.

would be a much better world... the young helping the elderly, infirm & disabled.. too many people are just out for themselves anymore.

Most people around here do pretty much everything for themselves too.. this a farming town here... but it's nice to know we can take care of the ones who can't take care of themselves.

There is a brain-lock and willful obfuscation on the issue when people say we 'can't afford it' or 'it's logistically impossible' as if projecting massive 3 day bus and truck convoys heading south.

The latest surge in illegals in the country took place over a number of years largely through a process called chain immigration and it is only plausible, with serious employer enforcement, that it might take a couple of years to reverse.

How do they get back to their country when they can't work here anymore?

My best guess is that this would be news for months before it started. If people failed to prepare and no longer had the assets to purchase passage home then they could go through the "system" and be deported. Perhaps their own government could help them? It is a very small issue that would be worked out.

Such a burden that "The American people will simply not stand for the enormous cost such an effort would incur..."

If the feds are unwilling to enforce the law, why am I paying taxes? So they can arrest the people that they want to, and let the people that are useful to them slip through the cracks???

Amnesty isn't the answer. We need to stop interfering in Mexico's election process. These people don't want to be here, any more than I would want to go to Mexico to work.

Would I do it if there were no jobs here and a bloated upper class? In a heartbeat. But not willingly, and I wouldn't want to stay indefinitely. But I would if things at home never got better.

Twelve million times anything...

How much does it cost to round up, detain, and deport a person? Think about the police, immigration, correction and transportation people that have to be employed for this purpose. Will there be appeals? Medical care? Records kept? Say it's a thousand to ten thousand for each one, can you see the problem?

You want the feds to arrest all of them? How about all the citizens who break the law? Got prisons?

--IMM

This did not become a problem overnight. Lack of enforcement of both the empolyer and the employee have gotten this problem from being small and easy to fix to massive, much as the credit crunch now is based on a snowball effect.

I say we quit it with the "war on drugs" and make it our priority to fix what we broke in Mexico and start sending these people home in stages. 12 million is not a big issue when we break it down in sections, and offer transportation for the people who want to go back. The violent criminals among this slave class will have to go to jail here, and with the new space from less agressive drug laws, we can deal with it.

Amnesty is not going to make anything better for these people, and more will be coming on their heels.

Borrowing from the drug war presumes we can afford that "war."

The real solution is to normalize the economy of Mexico. That's not easy.

--IMM

And we can start by not rigging their elections. I'd also like to see the Catholic Church shut up about having as many kids as they can(although I know a good deal of that is cultural, I hate the Vatican giving them another excuse).

Especially the part about staying out of Mexico and Central America's election process.

Like we did 20 years ago.

Round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows.

I thought Herndon was in Fairfax County.

Isn't the a nice day laborer center there?

It provides training and other things for day laborers, I thought.

I think the Day Laborer center is a great idea...unfortunately it has received such public disdain that that is the only one that got opened...and the county is pulling its support. Herndon is a town and is still running it....

You know you and I agree on most things... what do you propose we do with those that are here now?

We came to U.S. from Europe. Lived in a dp camp for over 3 years. But we did everything legally to get to this country. I am angry with the illegals. True - I don't know what to do with the ones that are here.

this whole "I came legally, so should they" bullshit is tired and completely dishonest.

Don't you?

I've heard every bullshit talking point out there, so save yourself the wasted effort. All I need to do to gather your opinion on this matter is watch Bill OReiley for twenty minutes.

who did everything they could to subvert democracy in Latin America and actually created a situation that drove people out of the homes they love.

like Sears and Penney's now have signage in Spanish as well as English in their stores. That strikes me as being fairly accommodating, especially since I don't see the same courtesy extended to the large Hmong, Ethopian, and Somali communities in our area. Not to mention, that non-English speaking European immigrants just had to figure it out, even without a bag of peanuts or a roll of paper towels labeled in Polish.

I realize that you are referring to what some consider unfair quotas, but the knee-jerk accusations of racism are getting really tired.

We are at least partially complicit in their being here...and you have to look at it practically, there really is no good alternative that improves the situation...

Uh, no. EOM

He waited his turn to come to America. His brother has been waiting 2 years. This man has no use for the illegals.

any alien who can get a job to be legal in some way.

If that is the case, then the alien workers cannot be exploited at less than minimum wage. They are thus competing on equal terms with the Americans. Thus the job market can take care of it.

Punishing employers does not work. There are not enough visas available, so some of they may honestly not be able to get the visa, and that is going to be smaller employers - big companies are the ones that snap up the legal visas.

We've let it go so long we have 12 million undocumented; that is too many people to deport and there is little we can do to stop them from returning. The border is very long and it is impractical to think it can be "sealed."

Trying to enforce the employer sanction laws on top of that - how much do you want to pay in taxes to regulate something that the market can regulate just fine and always has? At no cost? And the government will just collect more in visa fees. Further, we will know who is here.

Thinking they are going to deport themselves is living in lala land. A total fantasy that never will happen. They just go further underground.

Human migration is and always will be a force of nature and a fact of life. We have to learn to live with it rather than have unrealistic ideas that we can safely create the police state that would meet people's fantasies of "sealing the border" and deporting every undocumented person.

The people working illegally and their employers are already violating numerous state and federal employment laws, including OSHA regulations and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

You claim that existing laws are unenforceable, but new ones will be. It's not a good argument.

That's how the employer saves $$ and the very reason that the employer prefers undocumented aliens. They have no rights.

Take the case of the union busting where the employer was ordered to hire back employees he had fired and then said, well I can't because they were undocumented. Too many laws and they start conflicting.

If the aliens can join the unions and demand the same treatment without threat of deportation, then they are not cheaper than Americans and the market will decide whether they get hired or not.

It doesn't necessarily even have to be a direct path to citizenship - though I think there should be for those who stay long term.

This way all the government would have to enforce is OSHA, FLSA, NLRA, etc. It would have more resources to enforce those laws, being let off the hook for immigration laws that don't meet the labor market anyway.

It is the only logical way to deal with it - using reality rather than fantasy as the basis. Pretending that there is somehow magically the right job for each American always available and that no one will ever want to hire a foreigner is living in a dream world, which is, inherently, illogical.

Exactly the same way unionized US citizens have been. You yourself said it was impossible to prevent employers from doing so.

The problem with your solution is that you assume a finite number of illegal immigrants. There's not. History clearly shows that additional illegal immigrants quickly replace immigrants granted amnesty.

There isn't an endless supply of undocumented aliens. Only so many people can afford to get to the U.S. Plus, if they were getting visas, then they'd have to have a job to get the visa. The jobs would be taken up, and anyone who couldn't land a job couldn't get documented, but would not have a job to come to.

That's why I'm saying give someone a visa if they can land a job.

People aren't going to immigrate to a place where they can't get a job. All migrations follow the money.

If all other things are equal, employers are going to hire the worker who speaks English over the worker who doesn't. I'm not really sure how many immigrants there are that choose not to learn English. I know that there are some and I know whatever that number is it is exaggerated by right wing xenophobes. Regardless, there would be much more incentive to learn English when you have to compete with people who already know English.

They announced a crackdown on companies hiring illegals in our neck of the woods. My first thought was, "good, go after the employers".

My second thought was, "but what are their former employees going to do? Are they going to 'go home'? Or stay here and find 'alternative' employment?"

The answer to those questions are both obvious and precedented. Back when there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant (because we let anyone in who wanted in), what was the result of the "Irish need not apply" campaign? Organized crime! While they ultimately graduated from organized crime to political parties (humorous, but true), the Irish and the Italian crime syndicates put this country through a bloodbath in the interim.

I see another such bloodbath on the horizon if we fool ourselves into believing the illegal immigrants in country today are ever going away.

The employer crackdown is a great preventative measure, and one I wholly support. Nor am I bothered by increased border patrols, etc. But law enforcement is not the answer to those already here. Legalization is the solution to that half of this puzzle.

I think that too many have forgotten that part of our history.

Besides we needed them to fight the Bloodbath called the Civil War.

the deportation of 12 million illegals?

Yes, I copied my reply verbatim from SaveElmer below. There you said you wouldn't have to deport them. That simply forcing them out of their jobs would do the trick.

Up here I point out the problem with doing nothing more than dis-employing them and give an example of exactly what happened when the Irish faced that problem. I could used Blacks to make the same argument. The high crime rate in the Black community is the direct result of generations of them being barred from good jobs.

How are you going to address this problem? Ignoring it simply creates a very large criminal class.

Such as....?

People can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that companies want them because they are illegal. Once they become legal, they are of no use.

If there truly isn't a workable solution to this problem, then how about this. The illegals get to work, the employers get to employ them and the rest of us get the option of picking a (nonviolent) offense of our own (just one) and we get a "get out of jail free card" of sorts for our favorite misdemeanor or whatever. :shrug:

maybe that way, nobody feels like somebody else is getting away with breaking the law while the rest of us have to abide by it.

Now, which law would I pick to break with a free pass?.....hmmm, let me see........let me spark this fattie up and I'll get back to you on that one :D

You have 12 million illegal aliens in the country...what do you do with theM?

I was being tongue in cheek and a bit silly in that last post, but as far as what to do with 12 million illegals, I really don't know. About the only thing I can think of, if we want to solve the problem is to really get rough on those who break the law and employ them. I can't say I blame the poor people who are leaving Mexico because there is nothing there for them but poverty and an utter lack of opportunity.

On the other hand, I have a hard time condoning law breaking for some and not others. I do think a lot of animosity from the anti illegal immigrant crowd comes from the perception that we have some people that are being allowed to break the law while they are not.

I have illegals living in the house across from me. They have callers at all hours of the day and night for little baggies of things. They pack firearms that I doubt are registered.

Once you're on the wrong side of the law, the rest of it tends to go too. I mean, if you're going to get busted just for being here, you ought to make the most of it.

Either we have law, or we don't. I don't like this gray area where laws serve the interests of the rich, and the laws are enforced accordingly.

If the police are just thugs with guns, I can deal with that. If they are enforcing the law equally, I can deal with that too. I can't deal with the "Heads I win, tails you lose" situation that seems to be in play.

if Mexican government would end their "free parking" policy for Mexican citizens who have committed crimes in the U.S. and fled back across the border to avoid jail time.

When the work dries up they can get home on their own.

:smoke:

Then say, "Free pass, remember?"

but remember, if you get caught blazing a fattie while patronizing a hooker, you're screwed, only one to a customer :smoke:

if I can't have a job, then you can let me browse at all my favorite stores for what I need.

Hey, this is such a good idea!

The deportation of 12 million illegals?

they'll stop hiring them. Once the jobs dry up, they'll go home on their own.

And, hopefully, start pressuring the Mexican government to reform itself.

Of course, they didn't go home. Instead they started an underground economy that led to the creation of modern organized crime.

I see a crimewave of epic proportions on the horizon should we simply dis-employee these people.

We need both prevention (border security and employer crackdowns) and naturalization. They are already here. That can not be ignored.

Yes, it really solved the problem. Back then they gave amnesty to some 2 million illegal aliens. Now, 20 years later there are an estimated 20 million. I guess the next amnesty after this one we will have to do it for 200 million?

Amnesty is not a solution to the immigration crisis, it is a solution for what to do with those here. Without comprehensive immigration reform I agree, more will come here...which is a point I believe I made...

But for those that are here...what would you propose?

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli Act (IRCA), Pub. L. No. 99-603, 100 Stat. 3359 (November 6, 1986) (signed by President Ronald Reagan) is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law. The Act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status, and granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986


We didn't follow through with this law, we won't follow through with a new law. You're right, give them all amnesty. Hell, lets get rid of any immigration control at all! No more long lines at JFK for passport checks, no more back-ups at the bridge from Windsor?

Make hiring an illegal alien a fatal business decision. Make it a mistake which could shut down a business.

I agree that does have to be part of what prevents new illegals from coming here...but that does not solve the problem of those that are here now...

What incentive would they have to go back...no jobs there...at least here they will be able to get some basic services...emergency care etc...not to mention the patronage of relatives living here...

All that would succeed in doing is make them even more desperate, and more likely to turn to crime than they are now...

An increased labor pool decreases wages for citizens. I am sure it is music to your ears being a business owner but for the rest of us it makes life harder.

The impoverishment of millions of Mexicans thrown off their land by NAFTA probably has something to do with why they come here.

I don't know how much NAFTA has played a role, but exploitation of Mexican and central american workers has been going on for a very long time...

Because nobody was actually willing to enforce them.

NAFTA's main harm to Mexico was that it allowed the United States to continue to subsidize corn which put a lot of Mexican corn farmers out of business.

That forced many more people off their land.

is that every nation on this planet has immigration laws, why should we apologize for having those very same laws?

We shouldn't. No other country should either.

rule by international morality.