Immigration

[doodle]

mzmztljab2q51.png (146.65 KiB) Viewed 1370 times

Hmmm....again, why doesn't Trump go after the capitalist tycoons if he wants to stem the tide of illegal immigrants? The vast majority of which are just here for jobs...

[Hal]

Is there a penalty in the US if you knowingly employ an illegal immigrant?
And if so do they enforce the law?

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/0 ... sa-slaves/

[doodle]

When they do raid a meat processing plant or some other such factory they generally arrest and prosecute workers and the owner gets off with nothing or maybe a slap on the wrist. There are laws but our countries laws and justice system is so beholden to wealthy elite that they are never charged. President Trump has been found to have frequently hired undocumented workers on his construction projects.

[WiseOne]

Yes, this is true. And I wonder if it's why Trump never put forward a national E-verify mandate, which would stop all forms of illegal immigration in its tracks.

This is something I hold against Trump. It is completely inconsistent with his push to build the wall. I don't know if it's because he tried and it was considered too politically unpalatable (probably because it would work very effectively and swiftly), or if it was due to some form of self-interest.

BTW there is indeed a penalty for hiring an illegal immigrant, but it's very selectively applied. I remember it was used against one of (I think) Clinton's nominations for a Cabinet position. It was a woman who had hired an illegal immigrant nanny. I can't remember her name.

[yankees60]

Yes, this is true. And I wonder if it's why Trump never put forward a national E-verify mandate, which would stop all forms of illegal immigration in its tracks.

This is something I hold against Trump. It is completely inconsistent with his push to build the wall. I don't know if it's because he tried and it was considered too politically unpalatable (probably because it would work very effectively and swiftly), or if it was due to some form of self-interest.

BTW there is indeed a penalty for hiring an illegal immigrant, but it's very selectively applied. I remember it was used against one of (I think) Clinton's nominations for a Cabinet position. It was a woman who had hired an illegal immigrant nanny. I can't remember her name.

This is what you are referring to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannygate

Two of Clinton's nominees for Attorney General (Zoe Baird & Kimba Wood) two months in a row were derailed.

I don't believe that either were assessed any penalties for hiring an illegal immigrant (though I'm sure the IRS collected taxes that should have been paid). The major penalty was that both nominations ending up being withdrawn.

Vinny

[Tortoise]

I agree 100% with the main point of this thread. Building big walls and going after illegal immigrants directly is incredibly inefficient and ineffective.

If the government were to merely (a) enforce the existing illegal immigration laws in a handful of high-profile cases involving large companies and (b) get rid of free public benefits for illegal immigrants, it seems obvious that illegal immigration would fall dramatically within just a few years.

In the case of (a), the obstacle is that money talks. Big businesses will always lobby and bribe politicians to prevent it. In the case of (b), the obstacle is that blue state populations prioritize feelings over reason and logic and will never vote for such a "cruel, heartless" policy. So illegal immigration continues to be propped up by the two pillars of business interests and leftist politics.

[doodle]

I agree 100% with the main point of this thread. Building big walls and going after illegal immigrants directly is incredibly inefficient and ineffective.

If the government were to merely (a) enforce the existing illegal immigration laws in a handful of high-profile cases involving large companies and (b) get rid of free public benefits for illegal immigrants, it seems obvious that illegal immigration would fall dramatically within just a few years.

In the case of (a), the obstacle is that money talks. Big businesses will always lobby and bribe politicians to prevent it. In the case of (b), the obstacle is that blue state populations prioritize feelings over reason and logic and will never vote for such a "cruel, heartless" policy. So illegal immigration continues to be propped up by the two pillars of business interests and leftist politics.

It's a mess. I don't understand why it is so difficult to create a sensible immigration policy in this country. If we can't tackle such a simple issue I don't see much hope for getting anything else of substance done for much more complicated problems. Both sides of the political aisle are at fault here. The solution to build a wall is a pandering populist ploy to make people think someone is serious about the issue.

[WiseOne]

I agree 100% with the main point of this thread. Building big walls and going after illegal immigrants directly is incredibly inefficient and ineffective.

If the government were to merely (a) enforce the existing illegal immigration laws in a handful of high-profile cases involving large companies and (b) get rid of free public benefits for illegal immigrants, it seems obvious that illegal immigration would fall dramatically within just a few years.

In the case of (a), the obstacle is that money talks. Big businesses will always lobby and bribe politicians to prevent it. In the case of (b), the obstacle is that blue state populations prioritize feelings over reason and logic and will never vote for such a "cruel, heartless" policy. So illegal immigration continues to be propped up by the two pillars of business interests and leftist politics.

It's a mess. I don't understand why it is so difficult to create a sensible immigration policy in this country. If we can't tackle such a simple issue I don't see much hope for getting anything else of substance done for much more complicated problems.

If I remember Trump's 2016 campaign correctly, he did promise universal, mandatory E-verify in addition to the wall. Then the E-verify got dropped. I am very curious as to why. I am deeply suspicious that the idea was strangled by congress on both sides of the aisle, for exactly the reasons Tortoise said: a) it would be immediately and thoroughly effective, driving out literally millions of illegal immigrants almost overnight, and b) it would immediately end decades of wage suppression across the entire labor pool. This is bad for Democrats, because they'd lose millions of votes and the population loss from blue states would reduce their representation in Congress. It's also bad for Republicans because of the obvious business advantages of low wages.

I think this answers doodle's question about why immigration policy is a mess. Until that logjam is broken and E-verify can become universal, we can't have any sort of immigration policy. It's been a free for all for decades now and very few people want that to change.