Thread: ED: Getting Immigration Right (This is totally stupid!)

I like this guy's response in the comment section:

Another typical Times editorial on immigration. Any fact is twisted to justify a less restrictive immigration policy. The Times claims that restrictionist policies get worker protection backwards. Only by legalizing immigration in whatever volumes want to come, according to the Times, can we protect workers.

Yet it is the Times that gets it backwards. The Times is waging a valiant struggle, not only against the elementary economic Law of Supply and Demand, but the Law of Cause and Effect. It is because there are too many immigrants desperate for work that employers can pay so little, offer no medical insurance, and force workers to accept such horrible working conditions. There has never been a true shortage of less skilled workers in this country, just a shortage of workers willing to accept the miserable conditions and pay that the Times PRETENDS to bemoan. There is probably no job in America that can't be filled at middle class salary and decent benefits. In a market system, when something is in short supply; whether it be oil, housing, or unskilled labor, its price goes up. Yet the Times continues to repeat the old canard that there is a shortage of labor even as the real wages of these workers decline.

If this country were to eliminate the pool of surplus (immigrant) laborers it would create a situation that would make it impossible for employers to attract a workforce to accept these miserable wages and conditions. Then employers will have two choices: 1. Either downsize or even go out of business or 2. They can improve wages and working conditions to attract workers. Until all American workers have the opportunity to obtain work at decent wages and conditions, then there is no demonstrated need for more immigrant workers.

The fact that people are desperate to leave their home countries and accept any work they can find here is not evidence that this country needs them. Neither is it evidence that this country needs more workers that employers are always willing to hire at lower wages.

Just as labor shortages are the market mechanism that raises wages, illegal immigration is the very mechanism that depresses wages in this country. Legalizing illegal immigration will not change that any more than legalizing heroin will make heroin safe.

It is time for the Times to give up on its vacuous, doctrinaire, and intellectually untenable defense of illegal immigration.

— Kevin Rica, Maryland

The first was tragic: a notorious 1995 raid at a sweatshop where Thai workers were kept in slave conditions behind barbed wire. The second is less well-known but far more encouraging: a present-day hiring site for day laborers at the edge of a Home Depot parking lot. The Latino men who gather in that safe, well-run space uphold an informal minimum wage and protect one another from abusive contractors and wage thieves. It’s good for the store, its customers and the workers.
Ms. Solis is a defender of such sites and has opposed efforts in other cities to enact ordinances to disperse day laborers and force them underground. She understands that if day laborers end up in our suburbs, it is better to give them safe places to gather rather than allow an uncontrolled job bazaar to drive wages and working conditions down.

First, I would do my best to avoid Home Depot where I would get swarmed in the parking lot. How is it good for the store, when customers stay away? And how is it good for the workers at HD if business diminishes because of the parking lot onslaught and the workers may be in danger of being laid off because of lack of business? Her ethnicity seems to trump any defense of those Americans who contribute more to this economy than illegals do.

Originally Posted by SOSADFORUS

What crap...rights are for American citizens NOT illegal aliens.

I like the way SOSADFORUS summed this up But unfortunately here's more "crap":

Jennifer's Immigration Issues Blog

By Jennifer McFadyen, About.com Guide to Immigration Issues



Realism, Sanity and Lawfulness? We Could Hope
Saturday December 27, 2008

Any article that begins with the hope to "restore realism, sanity and lawfulness to [the country's] immigration system," is sure to get my attention. A Christmas day editorial in The New York Times talks about merging immigration and labor in "Getting Immigration Right."

Although the piece mentions cabinet nominees Janet Napolitano (Homeland Security) and Bill Richardson (Commerce), labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis takes center stage. The NYT author points out that Obama and Solis both grasp that "If you uphold workers’ rights, even for those here illegally, you uphold them for all working Americans. If you ignore and undercut the rights of illegal immigrants, you encourage the exploitation that erodes working conditions and job security everywhere." At first pass that sounds good. But to what extent are we willing to support the rights of undocumented immigrants?

Illegal or not, we have a responsibility to support their basic human rights. If a raid discovers unsafe working conditions then the undocumented workers should be removed from the place immediately to ensure their safety. If undocumented workers' health is negatively affected by dangerous work performed in our country then we have a moral obligation to treat those people and punish the employer.

If we're talking about basic human rights, I'm on board. Where I start having difficulty is with statements in the editorial such as, "Illegal immigrant workers are deterred from forming unions." Well, of course. As well they should be. People who are not legal residents of this country should not be allowed to form a union and decide how American citizens should run their businesses. Some would argue that denying undocumented immigrants the opportunity to form unions just encourages slave labor and dismal wages, and unions would help undocumented persons from being subjected to those kinds of conditions. My response stays the same: undocumented workers are not entitled to the privilege of deciding how American businesses are run. Legally they should not even be working. Offer a path to legalization for those who want the opportunity to work and use enforcement to take down the shady businesses that refuse to play by the rules.

In the editorial, we are told that we must change the previous administration's focus on raids, detentions and "foolish, inadequate enforcement schemes" like the border fence. Enforcement doesn't solve the problem, "But it also was a strategic failure because it did little or nothing to stem the illegal tide." Really? From what I've read, illegal immigration is dropping, albeit slowly. A report from the Pew Hispanic Center tells us that "inflows of unauthorized immigrants averaged 800,000 a year from 2000 to 2004, but fell to 500,000 a year from 2005 to 2008 with a decreasing year-to-year trend. By contrast, the inflow of legal permanent residents has been relatively steady this decade." Pew says that the turnaround happened in 2007, a fact supported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE's annual report called fiscal year 2007 "a break-out year for the agency as ICE set new enforcement records... ICE can point to an unparalleled record of success in the last fiscal year." Whether the decline in illegal border crossings is due to beefed-up enforcement and security or is a reflection of the downturn in the economy we don't really know, but at some point you have to concede that enforcement is playing a role in its decline.

"It’s a system," the NYT editorial reads, "that the grubbiest and shabbiest industries and business owners — think of the hellish slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, running with immigrant child labor — could not have designed better." Ok, sure. To avoid being shut down, undocumented, under-the-table work is forced underground often resulting in horrible working conditions. But are we supposed to stop enforcement altogether? Provide a path to legalization and hope that the grubby, shabby industries and business owners suddenly play nice? It's not going to happen.

I believe that we have an obligation to treat all people, regardless of their immigration status, humanely and with dignity but we are not obligated to provide undocumented workers with all the same rights as American citizens. This is where the NYT editorial suggests that Solis will make a stand.

The daughter of immigrants living in Los Angeles, Solis has been according the the NYT editorial a "defender of [hiring sites for day laborers] and has opposed efforts in other cities to enact ordinances to disperse day laborers and force them underground." Solis supports the workers' own initiative to set an informal minimum wage and look out for each other. She does not appear to be advocating equal rights for undocumented workers, but rather trying to make the best out of a difficult situation. With obvious demand from the communities for the laborers' services and without an alternative such as a path to legalization (something that Solis has supported in interviews and on her website), Solis' position seems reasonable. It also conflicts with a statement that appears earlier in the editorial, "Without a path to legalization and under the threat of a relentless enforcement-only regime, [illegal immigrant workers] cannot assert their rights." Apparently they can.

Food for thought as we enter a new year and a new administration.
http://immigration.about.com/b/2008/12/ ... d-hope.htm

"Without a path to legalization and under the threat of a relentless enforcement-only regime, [illegal immigrant workers] cannot assert their rights." Apparently they can.

They must think we are all a bunch of fools...you don't even need intelligence, all you need is some common since to figure out how this illegal immigration is going to work...

and it is not going to work by repeating all the same things we did in 1986 and for the last 22 years......and that is give amnesty, (or pathway, all the same) pass a bunch of laws, ignore them and then do not enforce them for the next 20 years.....WE CAN NOT ACT WITH INSANITY THIS TIME AROUND THERE IS TOO MUCH AT STAKE!!!!!

We all know they will not enforce the laws once they can make all these people legal... THE MADNESS HAS TO STOP THIS TIME!!!!

I hope illegals take over ALL the Newspaper people's jobs!
Now that, would be funny....
hahahahhahahahahah