Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it.
It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
That sounds like a grossly inaccurate generalization to me. A lot of "illegal immigrants" are an absolutely essential part of the economy, performing jobs like picking oranges in the Florida heat/humidity, doing roofing work, washing dishes, etc. Interview farmers in the south and ask them how many American born workers are willing to even take many farm jobs.
These people most definitely are not "sucking the system dry". And a system that can be "sucked dry" has a design flaw which should be rectified anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/california-farmers-bac...
I don't know why its so uncomfortable for conservatives to admit that illegals play a role in our economy[1]. If they didn't they wouldn't be here as the market would choose against them. This is why Democrats have been fighting for amnesty programs for long time illegals, to keep this labor and the work it does here. Native borns aren't fighting to pick oranges for 12 hours a day at minimum wage, but these guys will and do.
On top of the moral argument that these people have kids here and are rooted in our culture and schools and dragging their parents off to Mexico and breaking up families is just inhumane.
Thus far Trump has not addressed any of this. He has a "jail and deport 'em at high noon" attitude that does no one any good. Disregarding the labor they do is foolish just as Trump supporting California farmers are starting to learn.
[1] The only people I know who are definitely employing illegals are a white wealthy couple with an illegal Mexican nanny. Funny how that works.
An economist would say it's because the wage being offered is too low. Businesses don't get to have access to unlimited labour at whatever wage they choose in a market economy.
Regardless, why aren't we jailing those who hire these people and cause these problems then? Oh right, they're Trump loyalists, political donors, and white.
I guess I'd call myself a conservative (I think) and I don't get uncomfortable at all admitting that, but that doesn't mean that the fact they do "play a role" is right or correct. You're implying something that I think is quite dangerous: that the US economy can't function unless we allow people to break our laws to be here. That sounds like a caste system by another name. I genuinely don't understand arguments from the left that attempt to minimize the importance of State Sovereignty in the context of these debates. "Native borns" used to be able to find that work...until we started importing illegal immigrants willing to work for fractions of the cost.
This is politics not engineering. Flaws are part of the design. Every flaw is designed to appease one group or another. Restricting access on any arbitrary basis would lead to calls of racism, xenophobia, class warfare, etc.
> Interview farmers in the south and ask them how many American born workers are willing to even take many farm jobs.
Working hard is not the issue. Working in the heat is not the issue. Plenty of American citizens do that. The issue is of pay. Southern farmers can not afford to pay above minimum wage which is why they sometimes resort to hiring illegal immigrants or prisoners.
Why can't they pay more than minimum? Because they're competing against border states, like California, who have: illegal immigrants working below minimum wage, large economies with well developed public infrastructure, and the greater take of federal and state subsidies.
Without subsidies or this cheap labor, a lot of agr. would cease to be profitable.
This is what kind of gets me though. Supporting illegal immigration is supporting indentured servitude. I've especially noticed it in NYC, it boils down to "I'll support your right to stay here as long as I can still find a $6 burrito and a cheap nanny".
Now, you might argue that without migrant labor, he should just pay a decent wage, but what is a decent wage for hard manual labor? Would you be ok with paying $10 an apple at the grocery store because someone was paid $30-40 an hour to pick them?
The narrative that illegal immigrants are all criminals is deeply flawed and inaccurate.
Illegal immigrants are, by definition, all criminals.
Then he may have to pay over minimum wage!
If you compare food prices in nordic countries where labor is more fairly priced, you'll see how dramatically more expensive everything is.
Not paying farm workers acceptable salaries otherwise things at the grocery store will cost 5x don't seem to pass the math smell test...
So even if you had to pay domestic workers $30/hour, and you could pay migrants nothing, that still only comes to charging 3 cents a pound more. Not $8.
[1] Just an example, but others say the same: https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/jobs-making-money/side-gigs/...
Much of the price of that apple comes from the farmhands who loaded the truck, the truckdriver who drove it, the gas that the truck burned, the warehouse that stored it, the shopkeeper that stocked it, and the cashier that sold it. I don't know the prevalence of migrant workers in each of those industries - but looking around, I'd guess that lots of cashiers, lots of farmhands, and maybe a few truckdrivers and gas station attendants are also immigrants. If you had to pay them $30-40/hour, would the apple still cost a dollar?
Point being, this "$10/lb" is extreme exaggeration.
Now, it's probably true that orchard owners would love the free 3 cents a pound (or 2, or 1). And they're not going to leave money on the table when others can get away with hiring cheaper illegal labor. But the idea that apples have to be that much more expensive is pushing it.
It's notable also that some of the worst-affected Americans happen to be black, and that wealthy liberals aren't hiring black housekeepers. It's as if there might be some fear of certain Americans, so we find foreigners to hire instead.
The original poster said that immigrants pay taxes. Do you not agree? He said they contribute to US companies. Do you not agree? He said they make the US more powerful. Do you not agree? He said they don't contribute these same things to their home country. Do you not agree?
If you are going to make an argument, make one.
As for supply and demand. I believe the supply and demand of the job market as a whole is exactly what is causing immigration. I believe those market forces will continue to pull in immigration, legally or not. Market forces have a hard time understanding law.
I don't know, man. The state of California and the federal government take their rightful 38% share from my income. I'm not a citizen.
My girlfriend also pays her rightful 38% share of income. She is a citizen.
And my income is a bit higher so in absolute terms I contribute more as an immigrant than my girlfriend does as a citizen. Percentagewise it's the same because we're in the same tax bracket.
Anecdata, yes, but my point is that everyone who is in X tax bracket pays Y% taxes. Want immigrants to contribute a higher percentage of their income to local communities? Give them higher salaries. ;)
EG: I pay 6.2*2=12.4% as social security, but unless I contribute for at least 10 years, those contributions are lost. So many H1B holders end up paying 12% more in taxes than their American counterparts...
And unlike an H1B, my O-1 visa is not dual intent. That means I get to stay in constant purgatory. Haven't really looked into it, but I probably should.
Either way, legal immigrants contribute just as much, if not more, as citizens do.
Edit: Looks like they support sending social security payments to foreign countries, if you meet requirements. That's neat. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf
There's two types of immigrants in that regard. One has family back home that they support by getting a better job abroad. They might be the majority, I don't know.
Then there's the young person who moved abroad right after college or studied abroad in the first place. They're looking for better opportunities for themselves. Many start families abroad and their children are citizens.
Many if not most immigrants are hybrids of above. One family member moves abroad with the goal of sending money back home to provide for their family. But the endgame is to eventually bring the rest of the family over once the first immigrant finishes bootstrapping their new life.
I would wager that most immigrants who do have family back home, would love nothing more than to bring the rest of the family over to their new country.
Are you seriously suggesting that immigrants of all backgrounds are equally likely to be beneficial to this country?
I'll be very clear. Immigrants and non-immigrants are not equally beneficial to the country. No one is equally beneficial to the country.
That doesn't mean none of those types of legal immigrants cause problems for those people, it means they don't cause enough problems to draw the ire of those people.
In fact, if you were to collect samples of natural born American citizens in the same two sets of places you'd reach the exact same biased conclusions about Americans.
In fact, if you were to collect samples of natural born American citizens in the same two sets of places you'd reach the exact same biased conclusions about Americans.
What conclusions are you referring to, in particular?
The respective ones. If you collected statistics about Americans in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals (shocker of shockers). That's the point: it's just about the silliest, most extreme way to bias your sample.
Police officers have a completely different view of immigrants than do people on college campuses.
I'm challenging you on that. I think your statistics would show that certain classes of Americans are comparatively very criminally oriented, and certain classes of Americans are not. Similarly, if you collected statistics about foreigners in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that foreigners here without a visa of any kind are much more criminally oriented than foreigners here on, for example, a student visa. You seem to want to dismiss the usefulness of those statistics just because they're only dealing with a particular segment of the population.
I didn't say anything about certain classes of Americans. I said that if you sampled the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals in general. That is the point. Asking a police officer about their experiences with immigrants is extremely biased. Just as asking a surgeon about athletes is biased (hint: surgeons have a lot more contact with injured athletes than the average person).
So I ask again (and I won't use students this time, since you didn't get the point the first time): If you asked police officers about their experiences with immigrants here on E1 visas, would you conclude that people here on E1 visas are a bunch of criminals? What does that tell you about people here on E1 visas?
Chat with an immigrate in a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the feeder high schools (mostly Irish Catholic) that make police and fire departments fraternal, recalcitrant, racist and corrupt.
Cities don't have immigration officers (especially sanctuary cities, which are cities that refuse to have their law enforcement act as immigration enforcers for the federal government.)
And local law enforcement is usually the biggest proponent of sanctuary city policies, because their job is made vastly more difficult when immigrant communities see them as immigration enforcers; cooperation with law enforcement in those communities (and not just by undocumented immigrants or even just non-citizens in those communities) drops radically when they are sending in that light.
Undocumented immigrants, by definition, are going to be hard to track down. Businesses on the other hand have to have an office, be reachable, file taxes, etc. They're also probably breaking a host of other employment laws as well (easy to do when your employees can't go to the authorities). If the availability of jobs dried up, people would have no incentive to come here illegally.
Of course, that would involve arresting rich white people instead of poor brown people, so it will never happen.
Or we could eviscerate the welfare state and be richer, freer, happier, and healthier! [1]
[1] Gratuitous Milton Friedman plug: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman...
"[A] national system of free health care and education for everyone, job training, subsidized child care, a generous pension system and fuel subsidies and rent allowances for the elderly." [1]
And on top of that, better healthcare (#11, 14, 23 are Norics, 30 is Canada, 31 is USA [3]), low wealth inequality, low income inequality, low gender inequality and high happiness (#1, 3, 4, 5 are Nordics [2]). By all metrics, those people in the welfare states are happier, freer, richer and healthier than your average American -- some of the most in the world -- and they live longer too (#15, 18, 20, 30 vs. US at 43rd [4]).
Americans in my experience tend to equate socialism with Venezuela not Canada and the Nordics, etc. Sounds like based on empirical evidence the way to improve these metrics is to expand the welfare state not cut it back. There's a reason nobody in Canada is itching to repeal single-payer.
[1] http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/how-denmarks-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_rank...
[4] http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/life-expectancy-c...
It doesn't follow that a comprehensive social welfare system requires state ownership of the means of production, arduous regulation on business formation, weak property rights, weak rule of law, or anti-business labor laws. All of these countries do very well when on these factors; the citizens simply choose government services (through voting) in areas of the economy where the government performs well (health care, social insurance). Sweden was capitalistic enough to refuse to bail out SAAB during the financial crisis, you can't say the same for the US and GM.
If you don't want 85,000 of the best talent in the world per year to power US companies' and academia's growth, that's fine. Go ahead and limit the visa program and risk that talent going elsewhere.
#1. Academia and non-profits do get H1-Bs that are cap exempt
#2. There are people who got jobs in FB et al. who did not win lotteries and went home.
#3. A significant portion of the 85K are people working for "sweatshops", there are enough charts out there
So, yes, its actually a good thing to return to the original intent of extra-ordinary talent.
In the mean time, some conflation to chew on.. http://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pro...
So let's therefore demonize the majority smart diligent legitimate immigrants by lumping them in with the less than stellar ones!
That's the sentiment that is persisting with this trumpkin mess of epic proportions.
Vast majority of illegal immigrants perhaps just keep their head low and work hard. Also, they barely get anything from welfare and work below minimum wages. It is probably the criminal aspect that is sucking the system and good solution for that is to decriminalise drugs and help American companies sell drugs for a profit instead relying on Mexican cartels.
I have never understood why Mexican citizens cant get a 30 day to 1 years temporary below-minimum wage job permit
> not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
I know founders who had employed 10+ American being rejected visa and sometimes entry for no good reason. I have seen cops, CBP officials and other government departments harassing these individuals all the time.
> It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry
And you apparently carry a user name that matches your posts, at least this one.
Stuff like your last sentence is something that is heard (in Germany, at least) only on the right-to-fringe-right sphere. It's long since I have seen such outspoken racism here.
BI just noted that the problem is a bit more widespread, it also affects the affluent "masses" in the Hamptons:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hamptons-are-facing-an-op...
(Unfortunately, yours seems to be the prevailing attitude towards my "roots" here in northern California with its conflicting culture that purportedly prides itself on being free of stereotypes.)