Thread: Fresh way to legal status for undocumented (illegal alien)

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February 12, 2007

Fresh way to legal status for undocumented


If every illegal immigrant was shipped back to his home country tomorrow, the American economy would collapse -- primarily from hunger. With half the nation's fruit and vegetables coming from California, and most of those being harvested by migrant, and usually illegal, immigrants, there'd be no one left to pick food. Meatpacking and poultry plants in the Great Plains and the Midwest would face crippling labor shortages. Citrus groves in Florida would steep in the sour smell of rotting fruit.

The economy would be hurt by a lack of workers for other types of services, whether it's the fernery workers in Pierson, where most of the labor force is made up of migrants, the dishwashers and bus workers in many restaurants, or the child-care workers whose presence enables many Americans to hold higher-paying jobs of their own while their children are cared for. It's easy to complain about illegal immigrants and wish them gone. It would be difficult, if not immediately impossible, to do without them. The contradiction takes the form of various hypocrisies in the debate over immigration. But it also appears to be inspiring new ways of resolving the problem.

Congress failed last year to agree on an overall immigration reform bill. It may yet agree on a narrower bill that would give migrant workers such as Pierson's more protection. Agricultural interests want such a bill because they face chronic labor shortages. Crackdowns on illegal immigrants, like the Department of Homeland Security's Christmas season raids on a Swift & Company meat processing plants in six states, don't help. Migrant workers and their advocates would love more protection. Migrant workers without documents are notoriously vulnerable to employer abuse.

The proposal in Congress is called the Agriculture Jobs Opportunity and Benefits Act, sometimes packed into the acronym AgJOBS. It's not a perfect bill. Under the proposal, undocumented migrant or farmworkers would get a "blue card" on two conditions. Those who qualify would have to pay a $500 fine up front. They also would have to provide proof of having worked in the United States 150 work days out of the past two years. The terms are more lenient than previous proposals, which included $1,000 fines, the payment of back taxes, more extensive proof of employment and the requirement that those workers here for only a few years would have to go back to their country of origin before becoming eligible for a worker's permit -- with no guarantee that they would.

The "blue card" proposal is more realistic, more forgiving, less expensive, and it opens a road to the Green Card, an immigrant's first step toward citizenship. If any illegal workers deserve such a set of forgiving, opportunity-enabling breaks, farm and migrant workers do. They provide too much of a vital service at too little cost not to be entitled to more decent treatment. The easier road into legal working status would have an immediate effect in communities like Pierson, where workers could establish themselves and their children with more stability, be less afraid of seeking out health or housing assistance, and less afraid to challenge punishing working conditions if necessary.

Unfortunately, one powerful pressure group -- the American Farm Bureau Federation -- has not endorsed the legislation for just one reason: The bill also would raise wages for farmworkers. There are efforts in Congress to kill that provision. That would be a shame. But if the rest of the bill survives, it's still worth supporting as higher wages may, in any case, trickle from workers' more protected immigration status. One month ago U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., helped reintroduce the AgJOBS bill in the Senate. This is one immigration bill that has the making of bipartisan success. It also may show the way to more comprehensive, compassionate immigration reform.



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NO! NO! NO! It makes me sick when twits write articles like this. AS IF it were even possible to magically deport all of the illegals overnight. The reality is that with our CURRENT laws enforced we would see self-deportation and any voids would be filled by legal Americans. Even if it took as little time as a year for all of them to eventually go back to their own countries that still leaves plenty of time for our economy to absorb the change. They love to try to convince everyone that America cannot live without them. I think WHEN we eventually do get rid of all of them our lives as Americans will improve greatly. I look forward to the day when ALIPAC will have served it's purpose and will no longer be neccessary!

Can someone explain to me how this will solve our illegal immigration problem? Just because we give one group of workers a blue card, millions of others will still come. And bring their families AND never go home.

I still have not heard how the senate amnesty bill will compel all the illegals here less than 2 years to go home.
Even Bush's Guest Worker program will not stop the invasion. There are just too many poor in the world and America can not support them all.

Originally Posted by Texan123

Can someone explain to me how this will solve our illegal immigration problem? Just because we give one group of workers a blue card, millions of others will still come. And bring their families AND never go home.

I still have not heard how the senate amnesty bill will compel all the illegals here less than 2 years to go home.
Even Bush's Guest Worker program will not stop the invasion. There are just too many poor in the world and America can not support them all.

NOTE!
The amendment by kennedy & intoduced by kerry is a COMPLETE AMNESTY / SPP/ NAU concoction with a BINATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM inclusive w/mexico.

This amendment, while not accepted for the MINIMUM WAGE BILL, will surface again either in part or en toto in one or more of the great number of bills being introduced in Congress as we speak.

S9 - Comprehensive Immigration - currently sitting in the Senate Judiciary committee with kennedy as chair:
NO text available!!!
http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=53595

They're attempting to pull every trick and make any end run available to screw us to the wall.

This article is stupid because deportation and self-removal would be gradual.
It will take at least 2 years to have a viable national work permit with internet- based verification up and running. There needs to be a website with the picture that accompanies the name on the card in order to reduce document fraud.

Giving any illegal a path to citizenship is crazy. These people have broken the laws of the US. Supporters of amnesty for illegals are not the ones who will pay the bill. They want the american taxpayers to pay and pay. There is no way that any illegal should receive any amnesty, blue card, green card, or anything until our borders are secure, visa's are enforced, and the federal does it job. Giving illegals anythign will only encourage more to cross the borders.

If every illegal immigrant was shipped back to his home country tomorrow

And if every police officer doesn't go to work tomorrow...

The rest of the article is meaningless because of the first sentence.