An amnesty’s a good idea; but additional people will show up after any cutoff date in the amnesty. And if they have no legal way to be here, they won’t have any safe way to report crimes, either.
And if people could readily move to another job once here, that would reduce the ability of employers to take unreasonable advantage.
Most of the people here already have been here for ten plus years, have a place to stay, speak at least a little English, and have found a way to make ends meet. We don’t have shantytowns all across the southern U.S. ETA: There are some ghettos, but I’m not sure if there are many with predominantly undocumented immigrants without prospects. If there were, you’d think the government would send a raid and put an end to it. I could be wrong here.
~Max
And many of them still can’t report crimes without risking being deported. That’s a problem.
And it’s also a problem for additional people arriving; which they will.
I shouldn’t have started that post with “they’re already here”, it’s obviously confusing the matter. I wanted to point out that it wouldn’t be a problem solvable by sealing the borders (if that were even possible, which it isn’t) and also that it isn’t a brand new problem that would be created by letting people in, but is in significant part a problem created by trying to refuse to let people in.
Why would it lead to more homelessness? Seems like it could actually lead to less as economic migrants would be able to more fully integrate into society and come and go more freely if it turns out that jobs aren’t available.
Because, again, it’s not like we have this amazing social safety net that makes being homeless and unemployed in the US much more appealing than being homeless and unemployed in one’s home country. However, under our current system, if someone has already gone through the trouble and expense of arranging to be smuggled into the US (either relying on relatives to scrape together their life savings to cover the cost in the hopes you’ll be able to earn more overtime in the US, or else essentially selling oneself into debt peonage to a trafficking organization to get a chance to pay them back… or else) then there is a strong incentive to remain here in the US, even where work is unavailable and basic shelter cost prohibitive, and wait for better times rather than, as would be allowed in a more fluid immigration system, simply return home where the cost of living is cheaper and where one has an existing social safety net to fall back on (friends or relatives who can open up their home to you), then come back to the US, if ever, only when the labor market has improved.
In short, lower the bar to entry, and the bar to exit, too, gets lower for those who cannot find work.
This proposal could be a reasonable part of the next immigration bill to pass, but if the guarantee was really enforced, the new immigration streams might not be big.
I don’t think an employer is going to be willing to give up the right to fire a non-performing employee and stop paying for their housing. So it seems to me that you would get two new immigration groups. One, small, would consist of individual refugees backed by non-profit organizations, perhaps mostly religious. The bigger new stream would be families paying for other family members. The whole mechanism of a semi-effective border control catching and expelling large numbers of people trying to improve their lives, and undocumented immigrants working in the shadows, and dreamers living in uncertainty seems untouched.
Now, if you are thinking the guarantee wouldn’t have a real enforcement method, we are back to tens or hundreds of millions coming during a quick open season after which the law would be changed by a far-right wave election such as never seen before.
This next isn’t exactly a criticism of your proposal, but it seems to skip over the dreamers, who are the first object of any real-world reform bill with any chance of passage. If we can’t regularize those already here, skipping over them to make a legislative push for ever more impossible progressive ideas seems a bit strange.
Maybe you actually are in favor of a new immigration bill that would be hundreds of pages long (as any good-to-me bill will be) and are just highlighting something you would like to see in the bill.
All bills are hundreds of pages long these days, or so I’ve been led to understand.
Anyway, yes, I’m in favor of granting permanent residency status to the people who grew up here (“dreamers”) but that’s not terribly related to what was going on in the early 20th century, when we didn’t have anyone like that. I was more thinking of that aspect of immigration reform.
And I think allowing families, religious groups, friends, etc. to sponsor anyone they can afford to sponsor would have a larger impact than you suggest. A lot of those undocumented immigrants living in the shadows have family and friends with legal status, I think.
Many farmers who currently hire workers from other countries try to get the same crew each year, sometimes incluing people already known to and vouched for by the known crew; and already pay for their housing. Quite a few actually have year-round work and have trouble filling those jobs with programs designed for workers harvesting for a few weeks out of the year. I think you’d have quite a few who would jump at the chance.
For the work that actually is available only seasonally (an issue also for some types of construction work, and for quite a lot of jobs of various types in places with seasonal tourism), you could write in a workaround to say that the offer of housing could be shared among multiple people/employers, as the active seasons vary a lot in different parts of the US.
Not being able to fire at will is a problem, sure (though less of one presuming the employee is allowed to change jobs, as someone unsuited at one place may be quite willing to go elsewhere.) But it’s also a problem, and a very large one, to have to frequently train new people (different farms do things differently) and to have to worry, every year, whether you’ll be able to continue to hire people who did work well for you.
Here’s another – I’d say a bit better – way to interpret the thread title question. The word “we” applies to the people of the world, not any particular nationality.
Nothing in the thread title, or original post, mentions the United States Congress passing a bill. There is mention of the U.S. (“Ellis Island”) and “we”, but it doesn’t explicitly say who we is.
Let’s instead try a full international perspective. Most countries had a comparable shift in “early 20th century immigration policy.” (Example: fears of an influx of refugees encouraged Chilean lawmakers to restrict entry of the foreign born in 1918; also see UK; many other examples available with googling.)
So, I’m not sure why those who are in favor of reverting to early 20th century immigration policy have a preference between a U.S.-stands-alone approach, and a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
In terms of how far the two modest proposals are from political reality – U.S. vs. UN – both are far from what can be passed anytime soon. But, at least until reactionaries react, the UN idea is better for emigrants. Those who believe the U.S. is an illiberal country can go to a better one. It also would be more appealing (or less appalling) to existing U.S. citizens, who would see the temporary social services demand bump, as the third world departed to the second and first, being shared with others.
Am I in favor of a worldwide reversion to early 20th century immigration policy? No, I’m against the thread title proposal regardless. But if that proposal makes sense, it makes more sense to go through the UN (maybe with World Trade Organization enforcement) than doing it one country at a time.
In 1900 the average price of a steerage ticket coming to the US was $30, about $1000 in today’s dollars. A mule charges between $6,000 and $10,000 to get you across the border illegally today.
The US dealt with Irish gangs, the Italian Mob, and Chinese Tongs, we can deal with whatever flavor of organized crime crops up with a modern open immigration policy. Also like you noted, racism and xenophobia backed by law was the real catalyst that allowed those groups to form.
huh, interesting. Of course, if we opened the borders, we would be putting those mules out of business (I hope).
UHC could be there for all, like the way it is done in other nations. (usually Emergencies are covered but not routine care or other stuff).
In fact, when we did a study, the Government/taxpayers would save a bundle by giving some measure of healthcare to the homeless, as when they get really sick it is an ambulance or Paramedic, fire trucks, and then County hospital- and that os many, many times more expensive.
However, I dont think we can or should go back to the old pre-Clinton days of Welfare.
I doubt that as it doesnt happen in other free nations with UHC.
Sure the USA is a nice place, but much of Western Europe is just as nice or nicer.
No one is suggesting Open Borders. Immigration without quotas is what progressive want. That is not the same as Open Borders.
Open Borders means no checks, no customs, nothing. Even if we say there is no limit to the number of people who want to enter the USA, there will be a vetting process.
You only get the first two if you work, and if they work and pay in, they should be able to get the $ out.
Or you can carry drugs.
I, too, doubt the “millions,” but one factor is that much of Western Europe does not have automatic birthright citizenship in the same way that the US does: Jus soli - Wikipedia.
Yes, that’s what we would do in my ideal world.
I don’t think I said “comparable economy”…checked, I didn’t. Majority of immigrants into the US are coming from Mexico and central American countries. Their social safety nets don’t rank very high.
It’s all relative.
Withdrawn
Let’s say 5 percent of them won’t qualify for the early twentieth century criteria due a disease that can be picked up in a quick medical check, or, if early 20th century is not to be taken literally, a terrorism watch list. And another ten percent of refugees won’t come to the U.S. due to holding out for a kinder and gentler country in Western Europe. That still means thirty million that can and should, for the sake of their family, get to the U.S. right away before the astounding progressive quota-free immigration policy is reversed. And that 30 million is just the refugees.
Donald Trump’s biggest and best issue is to make false claims about immigration. It’s astounding that progressives would turn around and say, yes, we really do want to have mostly open borders, except that we insist on calling it something else due to asking for eye and terrorism checks.
Lots more Americans eventually sounds good to me. But a sustainable policy can only be achieved with gradual immigration, and that does require something looking like immigration quotas.
I would guess that the type of people immigrating would change. It wouldn’t just be immigrants doing the low-level jobs. Right now, many of the immigrants are people fleeing terrible conditions. They take any job they can here because it’s better than living under fear in their home country. But if immigration was opened up, then immigrants would cover a much wider range of people. Anyone who wanted a better standard of living would immigrate. The immigrants would be tech workers, commercial drivers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc. The immigrants wouldn’t just be doing the low-paying jobs that no one wants to do. They would be competing for the good jobs. That would likely cause a lot of conflict and push back against open immigration.
This is true to a limited degree for people at the start of their careers. American culture teaches us to prize our individual jobs over geography, friends, family… everything. But a lot of the world isn’t like that. It’s not just “where are the good jobs,” but “where is my extended family,” “what will happen to me if I don’t leave,” “how comfortable am I with other languages,” etc.