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Good Morning!
And here is a blog on an issue that a fine Wyoming voter is interested in hearing more about.
The immigration issue is on many voters list of important items this election, and rightfully so. Like so many other issues, there are a lot of angles to be considered.
Historically, we are a nation of immigrants, although it is true that most of them came legally. Of course the laws regarding immigration have changed over the years as well, the USA has accepted many more in the past than it does now.
I'm sure I have read that at one point in our history, after a large wave of immigrants from Germany came over, that fully 30% of the U.S. population spoke German as their first language. If true, that is an astounding statistic.And something to keep in mind.
I do believe that we have to control our borders, all of them, because that is one of the basic responsibilities of a national government. It's a darn good thing there are not all that many actual terrorists trying to get into the United States, because with the Southern border situation they certainly could have gained entry by now.
There are an estimated 12 to 15 million illegal residents of the U.S. currently. We are not going to be able to deport them, that is just the fact of the matter. There should be a reasonable and prompt path to citizenship for those folks. We would be much better off as a nation to have them in the fold legally. And it would be better for them as well.
If they were legal, they would be paying all taxes and otherwise participating in our society. As it is now, they have to live the life of a semi-fugitive.
There also should be a reasonable guest worker program so that workers could come to our country to work for a while, and then go back home after the work runs out. Right now, they are afraid to go back because of the increased security at the border.
For many years, the border with Mexico was intentionally left porous. Corporations needed the workers for cheap labor, the workers needed to support their families and there was no work back home. These folks may have broken the official law of the land, but for the most part they are not criminals.
As a final thought, we need to think about our own futures for a minute. Our governmental insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare depend on young workers paying in for the solvency of the programs. Therefore we need to consider that by adding all of those illegal workers to the roles of legitimate taxpayers, we are actually helping ourselves.
3 comments:
Guestworkers are not "afraid to go back because of increased security at the borders". If they're in a guestworker program, they're not illegal; they have temporary work visas. Border agents usually like people who have visas! lol...
Also, you might find out more about guestworker programs before recommending that they be a significant part of comprehensive immigration reform. Companies that should have to prove there really is a worker shortage in an industry before being allowed to bring in guestworkers to make sure they're not just using it as a way to avoid providing the wages and working conditions necessary to attract U.S. workers. Especially in a bad economy.
And guestworker programs are notoriously riddled with abuses (e.g. the infamous Bracero program, 1941-1964). Guestworkers lack the economic bargaining power of workers in the U.S. Their visa ties them to a single employer and they cannot seek employment with other employers while they're here. If they complain about getting cheated on wages or deplorable living conditions here they risk not being invited back the following year. Many paid high recruiters fees back in their home countries and arrive extremely in debt.
And guestworker programs have been repeatedly shown to depress wages for U.S. workers. Here's an example from the south Florida sugar cane industry, which used the H-2A agricultural guestworker program for 50 years until the early 1990’s when the harvest was mechanized. A group of Florida employers that did not hire guest workers were found to pay their U.S. workers a piece rate of 7 cents for cutting one linear foot of seed cane a crop row. The H-2A program employers, however, paid a special "task rate." The U.S. workers at the non-H-2A employers earned substantially more from the 7 cents per foot piece rate than did employees at the H-2A employers. In 1990, the task rate workers earned an average of only $8.32 per hour while the piece rate workers at 7 cents per foot averaged $13.58 per hour.
Encouraging companies to hire temporary foreign workers instead of raising wages and working conditions up to standard U.S. levels does NOT sound like smart immigration policy to me.
I don't know a lot about guestworker programs - so I am not arguing with you. What would be a better way?
And when you say "Encouraging companies to hire temporary foreign workers instead of raising wages and working conditions up to standard U.S. levels does NOT sound like smart immigration policy to me" - are you talking about raising wages and working conditions for the foreign workers?
Thanks, Keith. I was mostly interested in knowing your stance on companies bringing in temporary workers from outside the borders (when I was a kid growing up in Maine, it was Jamaicans for apple picking season, and still is) as opposed to raising wages (it's ludicrous, in my view, to consider $6.55, in this day and age, to be a reasonable minimum wage) to liveable rates for American workers. We live in a country in which jobs are disappearing quickly. Those who claim that American citizens aren't willing to work the low-paying jobs that Meixcans or other immigrant (illegal or not) or migrant workers fill here, well... I just have a problem with that. I know it's tough for small businesses. My Mom ran a country store 7 days a week until she burned out and had to close because she couldn't afford to bring in help, but at the same time, she could have raised her prices a little and people still would have bought there. I'm not an economist, and I know the immigration issue is an incredibly complex one because of economic, social and political implications. Your mention of letting those who cross the border gain legal status is right on; we complain that "those people" are using our schools, hospitals and so on, yet they aren't paying for those services? That's because we aren't making that a possibility. Anyway, I just wanted to hear a little more indepth on your bullet points in your Issues statement and appreciate the time.
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