Meh ,that’s too easy. Can’t we do something that requires billions of dollars in technology and staffing, that threatens civil liberties, and just acts as a fig leaf that will not prevent anyone from breaking the laws that choose to break those laws?
As to that, I don’t disagree with the privacy implications. But, you are right, if people were serious, if this really was the number one priority, we could get it done.
Agreed. As long as they are being paid over the table, with all appropriate taxes and accoutrements.
They used to be paid under the table, but not so much anymore, due to the IRS cracking down on Employment taxes and “plausible deniability” to ICA. The IRS is the scary one, since they are quite capable of padlocking your business due to unpaid employment taxes.
There would be no extra burden, as business are already required to check and see if you’re legal to work in the US. So a business that is hiring illegal aliens, isn’t checking anyway. So, a business that is following the current law and checking the status of their employees, ie made a good faith effort, wouldn’t need to ask for anymore documentation then they are already. Really the only business that need to worry are the ones who are ALREADY breaking the law.
As far as your tree goes, assuming you’re hiring it out, the business you hired would be responsible to checking their employees, if you just hired someone off the street that didn’t have a business licensed, (which would be foolish on your part as you’re on the hook for any liability), you’d still be off the hook as they aren’t your employee, they are a contractor. The person you hired would be on the one responsible and responsible for any fine. You have no control over when they show up, if they show up, when they start or stop work, you have no control over any employees, you can only refuse to do business with them, you can’t bind them to a contract with anyone else, so strictly speaking they aren’t your employee. Now, if you hire someone to remove trees as a business, then you’d check to see if they can legally work in the US or not, as you’d have the business license, you’d be able to fire them, withhold taxes, etc. Again no problem.
To you last points, it would still be a free market, as business that follow the law are already checking, so the vetting is already being done, but without a very stiff fine on those business that are willing to break the law, to pay people under the table, or who just don’t want to pay the wages they’d have to pay a legal worker will keep doing so. Again why are most illegal aliens here, to work.
Heck even the threat of holding business responsible is having an effect on business hiring illegal aliens.
The proposed measures are an extra burden. Currently the process is that I ask for proper forms off the I-9 (one from A, or one each from B and C), and, assuming that they seem to be real and they seem to relate to the new hire, then I must accept them.
Everything else, from e-verify to biometrics to contacting DHS to have them interview a prospective employee is an additional burden.
In my industry, there is a bit of a problem of employers misclassifying employees as contractors. Right now, that is more or less entirely an issue with taxes and payroll taxes, but if we go that route, then it is going to be an issue with eligibility as well.
And, having been in the landscaping/tree trimming business, I can guarantee you that the vast majority of customers do not check credentials. If you had a Yellow Pages ad (in the 90’s), or a website (now), then you seem legit enough to be hired. (Also, having been in the landscaping/tree trimming business, I would highly recommend that you do check.)
Be very easy for a group of eligible workers to go around doing cash business. Of course, since they are not legal residents, they won’t be paying any taxes or anything either.
I agree with under the table pay, as well as underpay. Those are two things that a business is very much aware that it is doing, and it is harmful to the community and to the employee. Go after them all you want.
If someone is an ineligible worker, but they present proper documentation, then you cannot underpay them or under the table. You will hire them as any other employee, you will have to pay at least MW, they will pay taxes, you will pay payroll taxes.
Holding a business liable for accepting in good faith fraudulent documents, especially with the multimillion dollar fines proposed in this thread, means that no employer can take that risk. 20 million dollar fine is much bigger than a payout from a discrimination lawsuit, so I’d probably start discriminating in hiring practices. Even if you present to me proper documentation, if I think that there is any reason that I don’t believe you, then I will not hire you. That will have a harmful effect on legal minority US citizens, where anyone who looks hispanic is going to be essentially unemployable.
I’d say the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are here to work. The difference is, is that I consider that to be a good thing. We’ve got a lot of work that needs doing in this country, and not enough people willing to do it.
There are many problems with that cite saying what you want it to say.
First, it being from 2010 means that it not really a reaction to what is going on today. Then, the fact that the Snopes article was made because people thought that that was a reaction to laws passed in 2010, when it had actually happened 2 years prior. Then there is also the fact that this was the opinion of local legislators, not based on any studies.
Most of these people came in on agricultural visas when those were something that you could get. When those were heavily restricted, then they just came in illegally. What you are seeing is really a reaction to that restriction on visas, only delayed because for a time, coming in illegally was a viable enough option that losing the visas did not cause as much damage to the agriculture industry or the workers.
And the effect is that crops are rotting in fields, price of produce is going up, and people who used to come in on agricultural visas, then came in illegally once that program was restricted, are now left unable to feed their families.
What exactly is our endgame here? What is our goal? Unless the priority is to just keep brown people out, then all of this activity that is harmful to not only the hopeful immigrants, but to us as well, is all in an attempt to stop a problem that does not exist.
Given the number of employees that I hire that are surprised to be getting an actual paycheck rather than cash under the table, I’d say that that practice is still going strong.
While the conversation here seems to have drifted well beyond the poll, here are my objections to the wall:
I object to the wall far less than what amounts to legal hostage-taking in order to attempt to gain funding for it.
If the Dems had given in, then Trump and the GOP would have used a shutdown the next time they wanted something the Dems wouldn’t otherwise give them. And then next time. And the time after that.
In many places, the wall is impractical, but not for the reason given in the poll. It may or may not be an effective way to secure the border, but: a good chunk of the border is the Rio Grande. You can’t put the wall in the middle of the river, and of course Mexico’s not going to let you put it on the Mexican side.
So that means putting the wall on the American side of the Rio Grande, effectively ceding to Mexico the Rio Grande and a good chunk of land on the north side of the river, between the river and the wall. Why on earth would we want to do that?
And of course, there will be a shitload of property owners whose land we’d be seizing in order to build the wall through it. Property rights used to be fairly high up on the seemingly ever-changing list of fundamental conservative beliefs. Guess it’s not so fundamental any more.
It’s just Texas, a state with only… <checks notes>… 38 electoral votes. Why wouldn’t the GOP want to put us in play as to secure South Dakota and its… <check notes>… 2 electoral votes through 2028?
I mean, when the fates offer you a chance to sever your left leg because your right pinky-finger has a bug bite, ya gotta take it!
And what’s the real ‘reason’ that Trump wants WALL?
Here it is -
The narcissistic Trump wants something to put his name on. Doesn’t matter how badly it fails, or how much it costs. He’ll blame that on others. That’s his SOP.
He wants to come through on his asinine false promises that got him the moron vote. The only way that asshole is going to stay out of prison is to remain president (he must be listening to his attorneys sometimes). So he needs to keep his base happy.
You seem to not understand the situation. “Checking” can simply be ask for a SocSec card. That’s it. They dont have to do any more. And in fact, there is no way for a business to actually confirm legal or citizen status.
And pretty much ,* all *businesses are doing the legal minimum, at least. Sometimes they use that Check system, but that is unreliable.
I agree that most illegal immigrants are here for the work. Good for them, but not good for us. They suppress wages of Americans, in two ways. One is that they often work for lower wages, which brings down the wage in the sector for all. Two, even if they manufacturer documents that allow an employer to somewhat treat them just as they would a legal worker, they create a glut of labor in the market, which also reduces wages for legal workers.
We constantly here how wages are stagnant, particularly for low- and semi-skilled workers. Well, one of the best way that those wages would get raised is if there is not an over abundance of available labor. For the people actually doing the work, the best case scenario is a slight shortage of workers, which places them in higher demand.
As far as there being work in this country, but people don’t want to do it, I’d say a more accurate statement is that the people don’t want to do it for an artificially suppressed wage. Allow the market to set the wage and, by definition, you will have people ready to do the job, whatever it is. Sure, that will likely result in a higher cost of goods, but the price would be a fair one. Also, since a great deal of what we’re talking about here is agricultural jobs, it’s helpful to be aware of just how much that increase would be. The cost of labor for most fruits and vegetables is just 10%. So, if a head of lettuce costs $1.00, you could DOUBLE the wages of those in the field and wind up with a head of lettuce that now costs $1.10.
Regarding your first sentence, are you stating that the substantial majority of illegal immigrant workers in the US are paid at or above a fair minimum wage? To be clear, what I’m classifying as unfair is results based wages where only a handful of workers are able to achieve the state’s purported minimum wage. If that is your premise, I’d like to find out more about it. Could you please point me to a relevant study?
Regarding your third point, you probably have unstated qualifiers. However the presented statement violates microeconomic supply/demand theory. Would you refuse to pick fruit if offered an hourly rate of $1000/hour?
I worked a project with the US treasury, and yes, they were getting paid above minimum wage.
Many farmworkers are paid an hourly rate higher than California’s minimum wage—$10.00 or $10.50 an hour in 2017, depending on whether the employer has 25 or less, or 26 or more employees, respectively—and workers who are paid piece rates, which reflect how much they pick or prune, often earn $12 to $14 an hour. Many young male farmworkers aim to earn $100 a day, which is $12.50 an hour for an eight-hour day and $14.30 an hour for a seven-hour day.
If we had Unicorns, they could pick the strawberries. which makes as much sense as your 1000 hr joke. :rolleyes:
*Growers who can afford it have already begun raising worker pay well beyond minimum wage. Wages for crop production in California increased by 13% from 2010 to 2015, twice as fast as average pay in the state, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics…But the raises and new perks have not tempted native-born Americans to leave their day jobs for the fields. Nine in 10 agriculture workers in California are still foreign born, and more than half are undocumented, according to a federal survey…But Silverado, the farm labor contracting company in Napa, has never had a white, American-born person take an entry-level gig, even after the company increased hourly wages to $4 above the minimum. And Silverado is far from unique.
U.S. workers filled just 2% of a sample of farm labor vacancies advertised in 1996, according to a report published by the Labor Department’s office of inspector general. “I don’t think anybody would dispute that that’s roughly the way it is now” as well, says Philip Martin, an economist at UC Davis and one of the country’s leading experts on agriculture.
Indeed, Chalmers R. Carr III, the president of Titan Farms, a South Carolina peach giant, told lawmakers at a 2013 hearing that he advertised 2,000 job openings from 2010 through 2012. Carr said he was paying $9.39, $2 more than the state’s minimum wage at the time.
He hired 483 U.S. applicants, slightly less than a quarter of what he needed; 109 didn’t show up on the first day. Another 321 of them quit, “the vast majority in the first two days,” Carr testified. Only 31 lasted for the entire peach season…Or perhaps farms are just not a place where native-born Americans want to work. The job is seasonal, so laborers have to alternate between long stretches without any income and then months of 60-hour weeks. They work in extreme heat and cold, and spend all day bending over to reach vegetables or climbing up and down ladders to pluck fruit in trees.
“You don’t need a deep analysis to understand why farm work wouldn’t be attractive to young Americans,” says Martin, the agriculture expert.*
So- no, Americans can’t & won’t do the work for any reasonable wages.
I didn’t say they did. The point is that they work for wages that are lower than the employer would have to pay otherwise.
Which is GOOD for America workers, because it increases their wages. When the supply of something becomes tighter, the cost of it goes up. So, if you like the idea of workers, particularly on the lower end of the economic spectrum, being able to receive a higher wage, a low unemployment rate is a very good thing. If, on the other hand, your interests are more aligned with business owners who will have to pay more for their labor, I can understand your displeasure.
Ha. You don’t know that. Let farmers offer $100/hr for agricultural work and see just how popular those jobs will be. Do you really think there wouldn’t be a line for those jobs? Let the market set the wage with the available workforce. After Americans fill those jobs, IF there is still a need for additional labor, fine, set up a guest worker program that allows foreigners to come work here LEGALLY, at the same wages. Similar to what Canada has.
To be clear, if we need additional workers, they should be legal. Needing more workers is n to a rationale for allowing people to sneak in illegally and then work illegally.
Why should people on the lower end of the economic spectrum suffer artificially low wages so you can eat strawberries? And it appears you don’t grasp the math of how much of the cost of produce is labor.
Then secure the border and start a guest worker program.
Also, there seems to be this notion that the only way to have migrant workers—IF we need then—is by keeping the border porous. That’s a fail in logic. There is zero reason to not have a secure border and be able to know who everyone is who enters our country.
