Thread: Immigration: Understated risks

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER- Bleeding Heart Editorial
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/3 ... ioned.html

Immigration: Understated risks
Last updated August 13, 2007 4:59 p.m. PT

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

We're taking some serious risks in our scramble to fix what's wrong with our immigration policy -- and there's plenty wrong with it. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says the consequences of these new changes will be "unhappy" ones for the economy, prompting us to consider his estimation as a contender for "Understatement of the Year."

Turning employers into immigration enforcement agents (lest they face fines) after some of the measures take effect, which will be soon, seems hasty. According to the L.A. Times, the error rate of Social Security data -- what employers would need to rely on -- is about 11 percent. Naturally, more crackdowns and raids are to be expected. As more of our 12 million undocumented immigrants worry about their employment prospects in the U.S, fewer are sending money home.

Last week, the Inter-American Development Bank released the results of a survey showing that fewer Mexican workers in the U.S. are sending money to their families back home -- down from 71 percent to 64 percent in the first half of the year. In some states, it dropped to 56 percent from last year's average of 80 percent. That translates to roughly 2 million Mexicans losing the remittances they depend on for survival.

It's counterintuitive to hurt our own economy with these new rushed rules as well as to destabilize the economy of our neighbor and trading partner, which also happens to be a major source of labor for us. There's got to be a better way.

Personally, I think it will bring about changes - some inconvenient.

Business that have been relying on illegal labor are going to have to scramble to keep up or fold.

Some innocents are going to face problems also, that's just going to happen. We may have to really help some out. Without the added burden of illegals, we can afford to do that.

We will have to have a rebirth, that's a fact. Every birth has some pain involved.

We just have to remember the result will be worth the pain and the alternative is unthinkable.

"New rushed rules" ?????

The rules have been around for 21 years!

Originally Posted by Cribster

"New rushed rules" ?????

The rules have been around for 21 years!

I was thinking just that.. They may have tweaked them a tad.. but...