May 18 2007
Guest Worker Program Success
Addendum: It seems that all across the right side of the blogoshpere the sky is falling! LOL!. I am so glad I am an independent. Hysterics over documenting undocumented workers is the exact kind of reaction I said would marginalize the right. The far right has officially jumped the shark. The far left has too. And contrary to the doom and gloomers, America will survive and we will elect serious leaders with serious ideas and prosper. Enough already with “the end of the world” wailing. You folks bet the farm and lost. Get over it. – end update
Yes, I know many on the right feel the effort to bring the immigrant workers out into the open and under a more controlled program is tantamount to treason, but I just cannot share these “Drama Queen” fears. And I know my visits will take another hit (as they always do when I post on my support for Bush’s plans for immigration) but so be it. The fact is the Rep Congress had their little test of wills and lost. And now that they do not run Congress Bush is able to do what he needs to get this needed program going. And from what I see it is pretty good plan (not everything I wanted, but I never expected to get what I wanted):
The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S. A separate program would cover agricultural workers. New high-tech enforcement measures also would be instituted to verify that workers are here legally.
…
The key breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so- called “point system” that would for the first time prioritize immigrants’ education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards.
…
The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a “Z visa” and—after paying fees and a $5,000 fine—ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.
They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.
These features (and many more the media is just not reporting on) will deal with the 12 million illegal workers here now (and presumably who have some significant time in – like 2 years minimum). The entire national security component of this plan is to separate those associated with the minor infractions (working without proper papers) from those who are violent criminals and terrorists. Finding a needle in a haystack (the terrorists) is not hard when most of the hay will walk up and move out of the way so you can deal with the bad stalks and the needle you need to find ASAP. This is why those interested in National Security support Bush’s plan because it is the best balance of dealing with the compounded issues involved with illegal immigrants. The plan optimizes and expedites this separation process.
And for new workers the program is really reasonable all the way around
A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called “triggers” had been activated.
Those workers would have to return home after work stints of two years, with little opportunity to gain permanent legal status or ever become U.S. citizens. They could renew their guest worker visas twice, but would be required to leave for a year in between each time.
This is clearly not amnesty. With a fine and back taxes, and limited immigrant worker time and opportunity to stay permanently this is light years ahead of what we have now. I am looking forward to having my prediction come true. And while I will warn my friends on the right not to get all aggitated and angry and spewing names at people who don’t agree with them, sadly I know they will not listen. The anger on the right over this issue is as mindless as the anger on the left over the 2000 election. Logic will not penetrate it. But by the same token, the moderates in America will not tolerate disrespectful and demeaning attacks. So that fastest way to marginalism is to rant and rave about what was an obvious result of the far right’s attack on Bush – which started with Harriet Miers. Many times I predicted we would lose the next three years of the conservative agenda over the civil war the far right started with Miers (see here and here). The far right went from Miers onto Schiavo onto Immigration – and they lost the conservative agenda for 3 years – as I predicted.
I am fairly positive there will not only be hesitency, but outright resistence to the far right if they react in the same fashion which put them on the sidelines in 2006. The Immigration solution is well balanced. It is not driven by partisan ideology but by pragmatic prioritization. It is not out to ‘win’ but to pogress. And anyone who lashes out in anger because the ‘pure’ did not win out over the ‘best’ is going to get shunned. OK, I have given my warning. I am glad to see this success come about in the middle of the battle of partisan wills over Iraq. It shows some semblence of seriousness we have been missing for over year in DC.
I dont buy that argument. I know plenty of people born and raised in this country who work under the table. And what makes you think they work for less than minimum wage? Just TRY going around to a Home Depot around here and pick up a casual laborer for under $10 an hour. You can’t do it. You will be lucky to find one for 12-15.
Hmmm….so then this article is full of crap?
“Today, the processing and packing plants are largely staffed by low-paid non- union workers from places like Mexico and Guatemala. Many of them start at $6 an hour.”
Which is still above minimum wage. And that article says pretty much the same thing I was saying. If those inexpensive workers go away, you aren’t going to see Americans in those plants making three times more, you are going to see the chicken farmers and processing plants move to Mexico or somehow the plants convert to robotic operation. There is no way people are going to pay the cost of $18/hr union scale labor in the price of a package of chicken wings. Not going to happen. Union labor has simply priced itself out of the market.
Also, that $6 wage might be fine in Arkansas but here in the SF Bay Area I don’t believe anyone pays less than $10/hr for anything, even delivering flowers.
CP, Even if what you say is true, and I think you are way below the ball here, can’t you admit that the presence of labor that cheap drags down the pay of labor for all?
Do all of you really think that we can bring tens of millions of non educated non skilled laborers with little or no education into this country and it will not destroy our standard of living and wages? If you do, you are a complete IDIOT! IT CAN NOT HAPPEN! Have any of you ever studied business or economics?!? EVER?
While I applaud whoever came up with the idea of a point system to determine how valuable a person may be to enter and work in the United States, this is never going to happen. Over 60 percent of the 12 Million here now don’t have high school diplomas. And Excuse me if this sounds racist, but getting an education is not the highest priority in the Mexican culture! This requirement will be one of the fall offs after the bill is passed.
Nobody is saying t o “bring in” any at all. We are talking about giving a legitimate WORK PERMIT to those already here. I have heard no viable alternative. People seem to always be opposed to whatever kind of solution is proposed yet offer no solution. Okay, say you build another Berlin Wall across the Southern border with orders to shoot to kill. Then what? You STILL have 12 million illegals here with more arriving every day since that border only accounts for half of the illegals. What then?
At that point the people who are here illegally will NEVER leave on their own. If you give them work permits and allow them to cross at legitimate crossing points, they might go home in the winter because they know they can come back in the spring.
You are never going to get rid of the 12 million that are already here. It is a physical impossibility. We don’t have the resources to hold 12 million deportation hearings. What do you do with them? If you legalize their work status you get proper taxes paid from them. You know who is here. Right now we have no clue who these people are.
What is your suggestion? How do you address the problem of 12 million here already and more arriving through ALL border crossings every day and staying beyond their visas? Jobs aren’t going to be the problem. We are getting ready to face a severe worker shortage in this country. In the next 15 to 20 years 1/3 of our entire workforce is going to retire and the generation in the pipeline to replace them is smaller in number. In the next 15 years 50% of our government workers are going to retire. A: Who is going to fill that 1/3 workforce in the private sector to pay the social security of those retiring?
We are seriously going to face a major labor shortage. This is NOT the 1970’s when we had an economy straining to support the boomers coming into the job market. We are facing the opposite problem with the boomers LEAVING the job market.
The comments thread over at Captain Ed’s is getting pretty shrill. What cracks me up is all the hard-liners are basically crying out, “We need another Ronald Reagan back in the White House”
Hello….? 1986 Amnesty anyone? Reagan’s illegal immigration policy makes Bush’s current policy seem positively Buchananesque.
What are these, Young Republicans? Maybe they weren’t alive back then?
AJ ,
Which dem other than possibly Lieberman would you trust not to lie directly to your face?
The problem is not amnesty,it is that the amnesty will be in place before the security. The “triggers” will be ignored,or pushed back,or deemed not practical,or who knows what to get the Dems what they want. The illegals are not going anywhere,they can’t.
Mexico is in terrible shape and getting worse.Pemex their nationalized oil company gives up 70% of its profits to the gov’t and is going down hill quickly. That is the #1 contributor to their GDP
,#2 as you probably know is the remittance money from the folks here in the US.Calderone will do his best I am sure,but it is a 70+year feudal mess down there and not looking to get much better any time soon.
The 12 million ,or however many are here have no place to go back to.There are no jobs for them,and Mexico would be bankrupt and in revolt. So they are here to stay.
But that does not mean that we shouldn’t do everything possible to first secure our borders. The dems won’t do it unless forced to. They think that the amnesty would create a whole bunch of new Democratic party members(I’m not so sure that they are right) but this is the incentive to get them to guarantee border security enforcement. This suggested bill is not strong enough on the security enforcement,and you have to know that the Dems will do everything possible to wiggle out of it.
CP,Bikkerken,
The minimum wage for ag workers has been lower than the “Federal” minimum wage since the days of the bracerro program,I think it is currently$.75/hr lower than regular minimum wage.CP if you would go to Watsonville or Salinas,and could get someone to give you an honest answer,I think that what you would find is that they are being paid ag minimum,when they are not working at “piece” wages.The Bay Area is a special case unto itself,but I would still bet that you would find that a lot of these folks are not being paid even regular Calif minimum wage.
Flick, do you think that it is a positive for this kind of cheap labor to expand in the U.S.? I have spent most of my life traveling to other countries and I will say this, If we lose our middle class, we are a third world country. I believe that this immigration bill will take us miles down that road and for some inexplicalbe reason, there are some supposed conservatives who are totallally allright with that. I can only surmise that they have other very personal reasons for disregarding their country so.
It’s not just about the wage and work impact. You also have to process all these people through the hoops.
I have already seen estimates of over 2.5 billion to get the job done.
The Regan amnesty was known for how any paperwork was rubber stamped just to get the process done.
Read this for more info on today’s environment and the issues.
http://tinyurl.com/27g2yx
Immigration “Reform†Will Be National Security Disaster
By Bill West
Also I have seen a provision in the bill reported that illegals under 30 who were drug across the border by their parents have a shortcut head of line privilege. We already have the anchor babies who are home free and now the little ones drug along have a “special” route where they pay no fines or anything and are eligible for a green card after 3 years.
The major provisions of the bill fit head of households.
Also the schedule for this bill passage has been reported that the actual physical bill and the release of it will occur sometime after the bill is voted on.
Now that is simply crazy for an item with such far reaching impacts.
When 125 people validate their eligibility with the same utility bills from one house and the same address I will call BS but will the software catch that “little glitch”.
So we are rushing this thing to judgment with only a draft bill that is being altered minute to minute.
I am sure the founding fathers would have signed of on an outline of what the Declaration of Independence was gonna be.
Then we have to get a Senate version and it then goes to conference to bash out all the differences.
Will Nancy then have to spend a few days reading the bill final form before submitting it up the chain of command to meet a certain date.
There are all sorts of diverse opinions on the blogs about this issue. This is not a simplistic oh well piece of legislation.
This is something that can impact the entire shape of our country for generations to come. The long term impact has to be looked at.
Many sites and blogs point out that even if this bill goes down in flames, that by 2050 the majority of this country will be Hispanic in origin. I am only posting that only as a pragmatic fact. Will we by then be Mexico north or Spain west?
Since the bill reportedly requires that those covered be paid at “union wage scale” does that mean that a Z card holder can go to work at a non union Toyota plant and demand union scale wages over the American workers there?
Perhaps this is the poison pill that guarantees that they can’t meet the continuous employment requirements to hold their Z card.
The clock is ticking and the bill that is already reportedly over 640 pages that are yet to be printed or even has the chance for the ink to dry is moving forward.
Correction on graph in my prior post.
Can an EXISTING illegal worker who now gets a Z card at the Toyota plant demand the union scale wage under the requirements of this bill?
Lots of issues like this can pop up.
After the Regan bill there were literally thousands of lawsuits to settle side issues it created. And this was with only 3 to 5 million effected.
There are gonna be so many issues created by this situation that John Edwards has a future beyond his run for pres.
I can visualize the class action suits now.
Merlin,
There were going to be issues no matter what we did. Looking at it that way, as Ed Morrissey pointed out, is to be for doing nothing.
This angry comment got a few “amens” on Lucianne this morning:
AJ
That boils down to “do something even if it is wrong”.
Shear action does not equate to wisdom. I have many trades in my stock portfolio that testify to that.
This is not just about today or this week or the coming months.
This is about a whole direction that will shape and form the future of our country.
I know you have few who can compete to in your personal position to challenge you for jobs as a NASA consultant, but even your home town has had issues with the “temporary worker” problem.
Yet you are in the nexus of the high tech area that is comparable to the silicon valley disconnect from average america.
Let me bet that there is not a single gardener now out there who cant compete against a certified welder after they get their Z card. Let anyone tell me that the floor polisher for Walmart can’t push hubcaps on to wheels at a lower price than GM now pays for union workers when they farm that out to the new “independent contractors”.
Aj, just look at the thread count on this, it should be a wake up call.
This is not settled law or a settled issue.
And you are only one blog, read around, not just at the posts themselves but the commentor reaction. It speaks in volumes.
Devil in the Details
Implementation – as always – will be the key. Part of the reason that recent trade agreements have worked out poorly is no enforcement mechanism. NAFTA and GATT agreements call for treaty signees to allow the work force to organize and for environmental concerns to be addressed. When foreign countries refuse to comply with what they’ve agreed to, US workers wind up competing on uneven ground and getting the short end of the stick.
The proposed “compromise” immigration bill could work – but
1. will contractors for the fence and security infra-structure be appropriately supervised, and penalized if they rip off the taxpayers?
2. will the border actually be secured; if another 5 million can come across – when will the next amnesty program commence?
3. can the next administration(s) – of either ilk – be able to effectively implement and oversee so that a positive outcome is achievable?
Cross,
You can pay an illegal $10 an hour if you don’t have to purchase worker’s comp insurance, health insurance, payroll taxes, and the accountant to figure all of that for you. And come out ahead. Just because they pay them more than minimum wage doesn’t mean they will still do so when all of the other costs of legal workers is figured in.
And I don’t think anyone has addressed the added cost of the social services that almost all of these workers will be eligible for once they become legal.
I am no longer sure what we fought for at the Alamo. It was a good run while it lasted. Mexico has now taken Texas back and if you don’t believe me look up who is the minority in Texas today.