There are vagrancy laws that make it a crime to not to possess an ID or no cash. Chicago charges lots of poor people with it everyday.
To the OP: Arizona’s law shouldn’t be controversial at all am stunned that it’s gotten so much negative press. There needs to be a consensus on what do with the illegals and the idea that we should turn them all into American citizens is ridiculous and not something most Americans agree with. If States can refuse to turn over/report illegals to the federal government, then the government should have no problem with what Arizona is doing. At least with a straight face. The people who are here illegal - Mexican, Serbian, Somalian or whatever - need to be rounded up and shipped humanely as humanly possible to their country of origin.
Farms that “require cheap labor” will simply have to pay minimum wage and reminded that labor for pennies this better suited for China. I’m still amused how such a heavily subsidized industry require cheap labor. If I had a crystall ball, I’d *beg *to see the natural price of produce without migrant workers. Will corn become so expensive that we import it from Alberta? Will apples go from 0.49 cents a lb to $4.90? I’m guessing just a few pennies at most.
I agree. Why is it ridiculous? Historically, the United States was open to immigrants and they and their descendants became American citizens. Why are today’s immigrants any different?
That’s what gets me about it. The same people who are applauding this law so loudly are the same people who will scream to high heaven if a National ID card bill is even mentioned.
Because we’re so divorced from history that we somehow are able to draw a distinction that views Paddy and Friedrich and Guiseppe who rode steerage class across the ocean from Ireland and Germany and Italy to come, uneducated in the ways, language and laws of America, through Ellis Island, ready to go through the door marked “push to New York” with nothing but a few pennies (or pfennigs or lire) and a dream as scrappy heroes who risked big to make a new life for themselves in the land of opportunity, but Emilio who came in the back of a truck through the desert from Mexico is nothing but scum who needs to be sent home immediately.
Gee, I wonder what might be underlying that… what could it be…
I just don’t understand how it can work here, Companies need to write off their labour costs with workers documented with a SIN and payroll taxes are withdrawn regularly and submitted to the government. Each and every payroll transaction is tied to a SIN. The only other way is for the company to swallow the tax break, pay workers in cash, and show a higher profit than it really is as far as I can see.
This isn’t entirely accurate in its conclusions. At the time, there was SERIOUS pushback about Paddy and Giuseppe. The Irish and Italians were seen as close to subhuman by the English/Scots-Irish population that was already here. You can see those attitudes in near-contemporaneous places like H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories, for example. Only with time and assimilation has that faded.
I think that may have been part of tumbledown’s point. Past immigrant populations like the Irish and Italians were called unassilimatable in their day but have since proved those claims wrong. Which indicates that current claims that Mexicans are unassilimatable are probably equally wrong.
Exactly. We have the benefit of history to look back upon. The discrimination faced by the Irish and Italian immigrants when they arrived in waves in this country is a black mark on our American story. It’s a cautionary tale, not something that we ought to be emulating, but we are. And it’s the direct descendants, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those Ellis Island arrivees, who seem to scream the loudest about sealing borders and shipping people home, ignoring that every complaint they have about current hispanic immigrants is a near perfect echo of the things that were said about their ancestors.
It must have been jaw-clenchingly fearful for the huddled, secret immigrants hiding in the storage rooms of the ocean liners, knowing that if they were caught they would be sent to Ellis Island and held until they could be repatriated to the country from which they fled.
The lucky ones who snuck past had to endure not only the stigma of racism but also had to hide from the police since they were not allowed to be in America.
Meanwhile, boatloads of huddled masses were anchored off the coast trying to get in legally but America wouldn’t let them in because there was no need for them considering all the jobs were taken by the people who snuck in.
No jobs = no illegals. When the housing collapse hit Florida and all the roofing, landscaping and construction work completely dried out entire neighborhoods of illegal aliens simply disappeared. Once they left a lot of local business that employed a lot of legal aliens had to close shop for lack of clients.
[QUOTE=Broomstick;12380301 Where are suspected illegal aliens supposed to get a lawyer from? Hire one? What, with no money? Only citizens are guaranteed public defenders, and since their citizenship is what’s in question do you really think they’ll be assigned one?
I think it far more likely that anyone underprivileged swept up by this law will NOT have a lawyer and will be railroaded through the system.[/QUOTE]
Citizens are only guaranteed legal representation in criminal matters. The vast majority of immigration violations are civil, not criminal, so there is no right to government-provided legal counsel.
There are a few nonprofitsthat provide pro bono legal services to people in immigration proceedings, but the supply doesn’t come remotely close to meeting the demand. (And many of the agencies that provide legal services only do so to certain categories of people, say, longtime permanent residents or people with U.S. citizen relatives or people with non-frivolous asylum cases.)
hire people legally, then refuse to give them the documents they need in order to stay legal. If Immigration comes calling, shine up your biggest halo, show the copies of the original (and then-legal) documents from when you hired them, and claim you didn’t know nuthin’ about them needing a letter from you to renew their work permit. If any of the workers wants to leave, threaten with calling La Migra on them.
The way it is done is by not hiring employees, and instead hiring contractors. For example, when a business has a building built, it does not hire a bunch of employees. It simply hires contractors. The expense is deductible by a business, whether the expense is an employee expense, or a contractor expense.
Here’s an example of how it works in your country.
Acme Corp owns several office buildings. It hires Maintenance Inc to keep the buildings clean. Maintenance Inc hires Toni (who is a citizen) to get the cleaning done. Toni shows up every night with a van full of his relatives (who are not citizens) who do the actual cleaning. Toni declares all his income on his tax return and pays tax on it. He does not get to deduct what he pays to his crew, but since his crew do not pay taxes in the first place, they are paid a lot less than they would otherwise be paid, leaving Toni with a decdent after tax income. The crew are happy because they earn enough to get by rather than be deported. Toni is happy because he makes good money despite paying tax. Maintenance Inc is happy because it makes a profit after paying Toni and deducting what it pays Toni from its taxes, without the embubberance of keeping a lot of employees on the payroll. Acme Corp is happy because it has clean buildings without having to keep employees on the payroll. The tax man is not too unhappy, for although the crew is not paying tax, those same funds are being taxed in Toni’s hands at a higher marginal rate. Only the immigration man is not happy, but he is too busy and underfunded to do much about it.
