Stringent Immigration Laws Backfiring
// May 2nd, 2008 // Uncategorized
Arizona's experimentation in tough anti-'illegal' immigration law seems to have backfired as the very politicians who voted for tough sanctions against employers that hire undocumented workers are now proposing a state guestworker program to draw undocumented immigrants back to the state. Faced with the reality of business outcry due to labor shortages in agriculture, construction, hospitality and other propitious jobs, politicians in Arizona are willing to compromise on importing laborers from Mexico due to the incompetency of federal immigration legislation on guestworkers.
The now-famous Prince Williams County in Virginia may follow suit soon. Along with the $6.9 million annual cost of catching and apprehending undocumented workers, Prince Williams County is losing a significant sales, business and property tax base as undocumented immigrants are leaving the county. Already, the county is softening–now police officers can only interrogate criminal suspects about their immigration status after they are arrested as compared to the more stringent earlier rule that law enforcement had to check the residency status of anyone who is detained, no matter how minor the offense.
As more states come down hard on undocumented workers, it shall be interesting to study and document the effects of tough immigration legislation.
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It might be helpful if you didn’t refer to agriculture, construction and hospitality workers as having “menial” jobs. Kinda’ smacks of elitism and being out of touch with the working class. I would warrant many of them take great pride in what they do. Do you know how to frame a house?
Thank you – Corrected.
So, when a company claims to be “unsuccessful at hiring U.S. labor,” which is one of the suggested criteria for hiring undocumented workers, is that inability a result of the employer being unwilling to pay a livable wage plus reasonable benefits to that U.S. worker? Or is the employer unable to pay a livable wage plus benefits? Who will make this determination for the purposes of allowing undocumented workers into the U.S. to work?
I find it difficult to see how any program that allows the hiring of undocumented workers will differentiate between jobs picking food in a field and jobs serving food in a restaurant. That politician is trying to create the impression that we NEED our food picked, but not served. That’s absurd on many levels, one being that if the food is being picked in order to ship overseas, then how does picking that food at a reduced wage help out the average American consumer/citizen?
Seriously, the “thinking” that is on parade in this video has more holes in it than a ten-pound brick of swiss cheese.
The same “thinking” applies to professional non-immigrant visa categories like H1-B and EB–employers have to prove that the hiring of a foreign worker is not displacing an American citizen from a job. I don’t see any self-righteous American citizen complaining about that.
There is a category for guestworkers but it is bogged down by bureaucracy. The problem with the system is that it doesn’t really go after the source of the problem like you mention–employers willing to make a profit out of just about anything and exploiting their workforce. No, ICE just nabs workers and puts them in detention centers and the employers get off with some meager fines most of the time. And if the state comes down hard on the business, than business confidence decreases and true to capital flight, it simply goes elsewhere in search for cheaper labor. Capital is the problem–not labor.
Re “I don’t see any self-righteous American citizen complaining about that.”
This self-righteous American citizen does, to my representative, both of my senators, and to the editorial board of my local big-city paper. And every other public school parent I know who’s knowledgable about this situation feels the same as I do.
It drives me crazy when Bill Gates gets up in front of Congress and tells them how bad it will be for America if we don’t expand the number of these visas. They all listen to him like he’s reading from the holy oracle. His last explanation was so convoluted, explaining how many jobs for Americans are created around each and every engineer/scientist we hire from India, or China, or wherever.
And the way he claims to know how to “fix” our public school system is unbelievable, even though none of his kids are enrolled in a public school. He thinks the achievement gap between Americans and other nations is because our inner city kids don’t have PCs and laptops. Unbelievable.
We need to throw out NCLB, because it’s an incredibly bad piece of legislation, and then sit down and develop a comprehensive national education policy, with goals that make sense, unlike the goals we have today, that involve scores on standardized tests. Then, and only then, will we have a citizenry that collectively gets how badly we’re getting screwed by our legislators and the so-called experts, including education consultants who are making $$$ off of the standardized tests and the “wraparounds” that support the tests, and people like Bill Gates who have convinced them that his accomplishments at starting a technology company and then growing it to a point where he’s a billionaire make him knowledgable about America’s public school problems. Heck, HE didn’t succeed in the academic environment he’s trying to foster. NCLB and H1B’s would have worked against his own success.
What on earth is wrong with giving visas to talented and creative professionals who provide a need that can’t be met here and who contribute to the advancement of technology or the arts in this country, not to mention millions in tax revenue.
Also, Bill Gates has created hundreds of thousands of jobs that have enabled probably millions to have a good life. Not to mention that he is one of the world’s great philanthropists and his foundation and associated charities give literally billions of dollars to the needy.
No doubt the state of our education system is in disarray and needs to be fixed and NCLB is a pretty pathetic piece of legislation. American students should be held to higher standards and we need to refocus our priorities away from standardized test scores if we want to compete in the global workforce. At the same time, immigrant entrepreneurship has really helped this country. See this study from Business Week:
“Another striking finding was the fact a quarter of the technology companies studied had a foreign-born chief executive or lead technologist as a founder. More importantly, these immigrant-run companies accounted for pounds 26bn in sales and 450,000 jobs in 2005. In particular, Indians were the key driving force, founding more technology-based businesses in the past 10 years than all the other immigrant groups combined. The real contribution of these immigrants, though, is to be found in their intellectual contribution to the US, with a quarter of US-originated international patent applications authored or co-authored by foreign nationals living in America, a three-fold increase on the 7.8% recorded in 1988.”
And that’s just an economic contribution — now I don’t think that allowing educated and skilled professionals (and this includes a lot of DREAM Act students) more visas to work in this country is hurting anyone. It’s the companies–again, capital flight–moving the jobs overseas to these workers which is a bigger problem.
Every situation is different and to assume that all companies outsource jobs for greed and profit is wrong. As an example, there are countless companies who outsource web design overseas. Why? Because one can’t afford to have it done here. For example, a decent flash site can cost from twenty to forty thousand dollars here and higher, when you can have it done in another country for $2,500 to $5,000. The same goes for monthly upkeep and maintenance.
As for H1B visas and immmigrant entrepreneurship, there is no question as to the contributions of immigrants to this country. We are a nation of immigrants and always have been. We are all immigrants except for Native Americans.
Clearly, the right thing to do is to apply for a visa legally from one’s country and not to come here or anywhere else illegally. Most countries have strict laws on immigration; especially Mexico.
Oh, if only our commitment to provide a world-class public education system to Americans was as strong as our commitment to hiring from abroad and outsourcing, in order to reduce labor costs.
Our Iraq war vets would LOVE to be able to afford a college education that would provide them with the skills to compete with these H1B visa and outsorced jobs, but since WE lack commitment to our own citizens to acquire these skills, these returning vets will end up lowering their expectations for themselves, serving up lattes to the H1B visa engineers working here in the US.
Read “Empty Promises — The Lure of the GI Bill.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/04/INTF10B92B.DTL
Re “What on earth is wrong with giving visas to talented and creative professionals who provide a need that can’t be met here and who contribute to the advancement of technology or the arts in this country, not to mention millions in tax revenue.” Nothing. And I didn’t say there was. What on earth is wrong with committing to a national education policy that will provide our own citizens with the skills needed for these jobs, too, instead of a policy that provides a huge income stream for the five or so testing companies that currently control our public school curricula? Read “A Public School Mantra to Benefit All Students.”
http://goodgirlroxie.blogspot.com/2008/03/public-school-mantra-to-benefit-all.html
Re “Also, Bill Gates has created hundreds of thousands of jobs that have enabled probably millions to have a good life.” Please back up that statement. Of course he’s created jobs. Who can dispute that? What does that have to do with US neglect of our own public school system, including our public universities?
Re “he is one of the world’s great philanthropists and his foundation and associated charities give literally billions of dollars to the needy.” Yes. No one can dispute that either. People, like me, who are following his Gates Foundation’s work are hopeful that his efforts will solve the problem of the international AIDS epidemic, and other problems as well. However, his expertise does not translate into formulating a public education policy, which he is trying to do. He wants to invest in computers and software that will increase brand loyalty worldwide for Microsoft products. Inner city kids need books, good teachers, people who will read to them and work with them one-on-one. A lack of computers and software is not the reason our citizens lack critical thinking and creativity skills today.
Obviously education is your issue here; there is no arguing that improvements need to be made to our public education system. The problem is basically a matter of priorities and either Democartic candidate if they have a participatory and like-minded Congress will start to effect such change. Education is an entire and complex issue unto itself.
The fact still remains that millions and millions of motivated Americans attend public schools and universities and do very well. If you have parents that emphasize education and reading and you are motivated to do so, there are no significant obstacles that stand in one’s way of getting an education. One can go to community college, get good grades and get into a good university after two years.
@ We need to win – Well, your first paragraph proves my point – I didn’t say the words ‘profit’ or ‘greed’ but ‘capital flight’– and cost-cutting as you show in your example is a capital flight factor as is escaping environmental and tax regulation. That would be IDS 101.
Immigrants–legal and illegal–are not a homogeneous group of people but we unfortunately treat them as such. Everyone is told to ‘get in line’ or apply legally. Thousands come here seeking asylum and refuge only to be locked up, against international law. Explain ‘legally apply for a visa’ to a 2 month baby or 12 year old who was brought here illegally by their parents, who grew up American and cannot do anything to get in line because there is no avenue available to her or him. Trust me, if that undocumented American could become legal, they would do anything–even military service out of desperation (9 illegal immigrants have died in Iraq fighting for the USA and given posthumous citizenship). We have invested in these people, put them through K-12 and now they are simply wasted talent (10 undocumented students are at Harvard alone with no recourse to legal residency) or being deported to countries like Nigeria (a friend of mine), where they don’t even speak the language, forget culture. Or try telling that to a young teen whose parents came here legally on visas but applied for a permanent residency for themselves which made her lose her student visa because she couldn’t be a ‘non-immigrant’ when her parents were classified ‘immigrant.’ If her parents had not applied to get in line, she would still be studying here legally and would have gone elsewhere but leaving now means separation for 10 years from her resident parents. Or explain it to a child who waits 10 years under their parents PR petition, only to age-out at 21 and come under a different slower category with a 245i or just be deemed illegal when her parents are legal American residents. Many times, paperwork is lost or shelved (happened to my own grandmother) or your lawyer might forget to mail something and wham! you lose your status. Things are not as simple as arriving at Ellis, staying for 5 hours for some medical checkups and being waved in. The average waiting time is 10 years for just a PR through family. And guestworkers have it worse. And almost everyone has some sort of USCIS horror story–there are some lucky few who get by. Right now, UCSIS is rendering more than 1 million people as ineligible to vote in this election due to their delays.
Yep the right thing to do is to apply “legally” but some of our parents did not have the resources or proper advice before jumping into the pond. Not everyone is born with a full deck of cards to play with.
I hope to see the same commitment to education that countries like Sweden give–free higher education for everyone–and that means everyone. And it is possible if we stop spending billions in war, military intervention.
I am less clear on guestworkers from Mexico–sure there are some Americans who would do tasks in construction, food, hospitality and agriculture if paid proper wages. At the same time, the trends in migration tell us that people would cross the border to come here and work seasonally (and the U.S. govt encouraged it) and then go back when jobs were not available. Now, with stringent border restrictions and enforcement, they simply risk to come here and instead of going back, stay around. And I won’t deny that some of us enjoy the convenience of going out to Home Depot and picking an undocumented worker to mow the lawn, clear the hedges, paint the garage etc instead of advertising and filling out paperwork upon paperwork for it. And no one can deny the contribution of undocumented migrants to this economy–to say the least, they are keeping social security solvent at the moment and we are exploiting this fact. Rather than revamping social security, we would rather just use undocumented migrants to shoulder the burden.
What we need is an honest discussion about these gray issues–not the racist Minutemen or alarmist NumbersUSA on one side and the open borders lobby on the other end. And while we are at it, we really need to give priority to building a world-class public education system like goodgirlroxie said.
Re “What we need is an honest discussion about these gray issues–not the racist Minutemen or alarmist NumbersUSA on one side and the open borders lobby on the other end. And while we are at it, we really need to give priority to building a world-class public education system …”
AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s deal in the practical world shall we? Having never-ending discussions about these gray issues is pointless. Why? The discussions have taken place already, every advocate on every side has expressed there points of view and what matters now is some semblance of moderate compromise if there is any hope to effect CIR at all. Congress and the president must sense substantial public support for an issue if it is to move forward through the legislative process.
Unfortunately dreamactivist’s patronizing manner of preaching on a blog will do neither and absurd sarcasm such as the comments about a two year old child only serve to alienate.
The fact remains that parents have some responsibility for their children. Many parents do things that are not in the best interest of their kids. There are countless American kids that suffer through all sorts of life-changing but legal adventures due to their parent’s actions.
The “mentalidad” of the American people as sculpted over the last few centurys is in large part built upon obeying the law, fairness and responsibility. THESE are the issues you must make American feel good about vis-a-vis your cause if you are to achieve anything meaningful. So far that seems to be lacking in your arguments that I have observed here.
This isn’t about me, it’s about garnering support of the American public.
You are correct ‘We Need to Win.’ Parents have responsibility for their children so hold THEM responsible. Of course, American parents do things to mess up the lives of their kids. But there is not one legal case or statute that punishes kids for the criminal acts, misdemeanors or simply forgetful behavior of their parents. Therefore, the analogy does not fit.
What is so absurd and sarcastic about pointing out that cases of young babies growing up American and being deported to foreign lands exist? They exist in the thousands. If we are indeed talking about the law, justice and fairness (instead of scapegoating a marginalized and under-represented group of people), undocumented students did not commit any crimes or break the law and there is something very unjust and unfair with punishing them for it. It’s mind-boggling to send me 5000 miles away from my entire family and home for 10 years when my entire family is legally here as citizens or permanent residents and the only reason I am not is due to ridiculous USCIS laws. Trust me, with my advanced degree I would have left for a society that appreciates my talent if it wasn’t for my ailing citizen grandmother, my aging permanent resident parents, and my citizen 2 year niece who doesn’t think of me as any different from anyone else. Ripping up a family and community is never fair and just.
Policy-wise, it is also absurd and illogical to export our homegrown investments overseas after 18 years and petition for thousands of H-1 B visas for foreign workers when we have the talent right here at home. We can just be practical and give legal residency to our homegrown talent. But of course, the moment I point out the fact that some of us have gone to Ivy League schools, we are labeled ‘privileged’ and resented even more, especially by working class Americans–the people I stand shoulder to shoulder with on a daily basis. And I cannot begin to express the sense of betrayal and alienation when those you feel solidarity with and work alongside are indifferent, ambivalent or scapegoating us. People feel free to take out their failures and frustrations on us–who have overcome many ordeals to be in this position.
It is true that a lot of what I say does not really make a difference when people are not willing to read or hear our stories. But those that do make an effort to understand and look beyond the racialized foreigness of our national characters do see and understand us for who we are. The problem is we cannot lobby Congress or be ‘visible’ on our own to make these moderate compromises on our own — for that we need educators and allies to stand up and thus far, the movement exists in small divided fragments.
Some good points. In light of your situation I certainly understand your passion about this. It’s a difficult situation to say the least, especially in the context of all the other political gymnastics of today. Iraq, gas prices, food shortages, jobs, many Americans are bitter and angry about a myriad of issues. Keep it moderate in perception, don’t alienate the American people, be sensitive to their perspective on fairness and you can probably get where you want to go; especially with a Democratic congress and president.
Thank you for your suggestions. I do plan to keep them in mind because I know I have been given a space here to represent Dream Act students and I certainly won’t use it to advance my own political or intellectual beliefs that are not representative of these students. Most of us are adamantly against illegal immigration since we know the devastating consequences of those actions. The daily alienation is a cruel reminder.
You know I use those myriad of issues that are causing bitterness and resentment to escape from the own limbo of my life. It’s a welcome distraction at times and undocumented students are not anywhere on the list of national concerns, you are right. As an American, I wouldn’t spend much time on immigration issues either–in my own studies I barely do. I believe it is a wanton distraction from other more pressing political matters. So who do we point to when we cannot afford to send our children to college or don’t have health care or proper public education? That’s when ‘illegal immigration’ becomes a blanket term, a political issue from an administrative one. And that’s when we have to fight tooth and nail, show facts and figures, make rational arguments justifying why we belong here when all the time we should really move on and focus on more pressing matters. I was too young when gay rights activists were trying time and again to show how we are ‘naturally’ gay so we could get some fair anti-discrimination legislation but it probably feels the same when I have to defend my status here–something that happened without my consent or choice. And I need to rein in the defensiveness I feel about it.
Trust me, I wish to move on. The moment I get the legal right to stay here, ironically, I need to get out of this country and see other places and experience new things. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and reading my sermon
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You’re welcome I enjoyed the exchange.