I could for a business who has a high rate of turnover and employees only for just a few days at a time, or those that don’t employ computers in their ordinary course of business.
I’m not sure why jail needs to be the only consequence. There’s lots of other avenues of enforcement before jail is on the table. Combined with the fact that jails are currently overcrowded in lots of places, that doesn’t seem workable. A more viable solution could be similar to underage alcohol sales or underage gambling. There is liability created at the point of sale. In Nevada, not only is the employer responsible if an underage person is allowed to gamble, but also the dealer that facilitated. In CA, there is liability for the sales person that completes the sale of alcohol, and the store owner.
It’s not universally collected, but upon request by ICE the records are required to be submitted within 72 hours. See info here:
I think the main solution would be a more open border, though that is politically impossible to accept.
The only real incentive for illegal immigration is the fact that wages in the United States are up to ten times their Mexican equivalents, and the gap is even greater elsewhere. That’s it. Health care, social services, education or housing are not draws. Those are needs that emerge as people stay for more extended periods.
Historically, most undocumented Mexican workers were fine with arriving, doing work, collecting some cash and going home for a while to support their home communities and supplement their earnings at home. Health care was cheaper at home. Migrants only began staying in large numbers for prolonged periods when easy movement across the border became difficult. The border fence is the main reason millions of illegal immigrants permanently stay. If not for the barriers, we would have the seasonal migration we had in the past.
I also think that this debate is somewhat antiquated, as migration from Mexico has actually leveled off substantially over the last five years. The real cause of this debate today, in my view, is that these immigrants and their families are less in the shadows and increasingly visible and their cultural and demographic impact is being felt. The peak years of migration were actually from around 1982 (Oil glut) peaking after 1994 (NAFTA) to 2008 (The Great Recession).
Got it. That was more or less what I understood; just the way you said it made me think you were saying something else. :smack:
The link reiterated what I already pretty much understood about the process.
The incentives for illegal immigration are great-free education, free healthcare, access to public housing (almost free), ad a much higher standard of living. The problem will only go away, if illegals are promptly caught and deported. That Mexican man who killed the woman in SF had no fear of being deported-he’s been 5 times, each time got right back in.
As far as who benefits from illegal immigration-it is small business owners who can pay less for labor, and face little or no penalties if caught. The losers? The US taxpayers-who foot the bill for the “free” education, medical care, housing, and transportation back-if they get caught.
The main problem with illegal immigration is the “illegal” part. Make it legal. Immigration is good for the country and migration should be treated as a human right.
Education is an economic factor. Better education means better jobs.
My own first long-term stay in the US was working as a TA at a university. You get a job that if you’re in the right field, the right place and know how to pinch pennies till they scream is enough to live on; then you get a diploma that’s well-considered; and then you can have a job in the US.
At least in theory. In my case that job in the US started legal but ended when the employer’s legal department and my lawyer decided that it was “best for all parties” if this party stopped having a work permit; later the HR manager discovered that at any given time 1/3 of their employers were working illegally (all had been hired legally). From my point of view, something that would help there is if the filter was more weighted towards the original entry and less toward all those years between entering the country legally and getting that green card. Other attractive countries (Australia, Canada) seem to be a lot better that way.
That American diploma involved very little new knowledge. Over 95% of the coursework material was repeated from my undergrad, and I’d had better training on research from that same undergrad. But the American diploma is more prestigious, and would have been even if it was an online degree from the University of Phoenix (I’ve got several coworkers whose only degrees are from UoP, and you guys should heard how reverently our managers say “he attended an American university!”).
Maybe so, but that’s the law where I live in London. Before you can get a license to rent out a house you have to full in a 35-page form, and citizenship checks are part of it.
Actually, the penalties for business owners who knowingly hire illegal immigrants can be substantial. See the links in Bone’s post.
Secondly, there are quite a few illegal immigrants who pay taxes. I once knew a guy from Italy who was able to get a good paying job even though he was here illegally. He was able to purchase a counterfeit green card/Permanent Resident Card that looked totally authentic with his name and stats on it. He also got a SSN with it. He very definitely had Federal and State income tax as well as FICA deducted from his pay each week by his employer. There are more people than you probably realize working in the US in similar circumstances. An employer can be in complete compliance as far as filling out I-9 forms and still have employees who have fake documents. I don’t know how to tell a fake green card from a real one, do you? The only thing an employer is required to state on the I-9 is that the documents presented appear to them to be genuine.
As I have mentioned a couple of times already, until there is legislation requiring employers to use E-Verify or a system like it, situations like the one I described will continue to occur. I suspect it is more common than most people realize.
I’m in favor of turning the US into a post-apocalyptic hellhole. That’ll keep 'em out.
What fucking “incentives?” Do you mean how most of the US has not yet turned into the land of Mad Max? How things are nicer in much (not all) of the US than they are in the slums of Mexico City? The only good way I can see to make the US less attractive would be to improve things in the other countries, but I can’t imagine many US politicians going along with that.
I’m not sure if you’ve read the thread based on your comments. One incentive people come to the US for is jobs. Reduce the lure of jobs and less would come. Reducing employment of undocumented immigrants is the express purpose of E-Verify.
This worked well when the cost and difficulty of international travel was much higher.
Now it’s a political non-starter, and for the rational reason of how massive would be the volume of migrants.
Personally, I am for generous immigration quotas. But potential immigrants should have to get approval of US consular officials abroad who can, in most countries, screen for some level of educational attainment and do criminal background checks. Fail to do that, and you destroy political support for generous immigration quotas.
They won’t if it means pumping US tax dollars into those other countries, but, then, that doesn’t usually work well. (The Marshall Plan worked well because the target countries needed to be physically rebuilt and had few other problems.)
US politicians can sometimes go along with allowing the economies of poor countries to grow by selling exports to the US.
NAFTA, on balance, helped Mexico, and in a likely factor in why undocumented immigrants now more commonly come from Central America (not in NAFTA) than Mexico:
I’ve read that the country likely to benefit most from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is Vietnam. So we might see fewer undocumented immigrants from there.
Your link is based on undocumented people who were apprehended in the US or trying to get in. This link seems to indicate the percentage of people from Mexico who are currently in the US illegally has increased from 55% in 2000 to close to 59% in 2012. Not that I have much interest getting bogged down in a debate about where the people in question are coming from. The more important issue to me is what can we do to change things so the situation is better for everyone.
And, deporting them all and building a big wall is not the solution.
It’s not actually that expensive–
We spend less than 1% of our GDP on foreign assistance. And collectively, it’s working spectacularly. More than a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last 15 years. Gender parity in school enrollment is almost even. HIV infection rates have fallen 40%. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, child mortality rates are dropping spectacularly.
Mexico is a potential powerhouse. And it will realize that potential eventually. This won’t be a problem forever.
