Revealed! The Key to Reducing Unauthorized Immigration in The U.S. Is…
Any immigration reform proposal serious about reducing unauthorized immigration must focus on creating tools for U.S. business, not chains for U.S. business. Past attempts at addressing future flows have been chains instead of tools. Today's H-2A visa for seasonal agricultural work is a good example. It is so cumbersome and expensive to use that the vast majority of American farmers—who depend critically on migrant labor—refuse to use it. The program doesn't help farmers get the labor they need, doesn't help connect them to workers by facilitating recruitment; it exclusively puts up costly barriers for farmers to fight through in order to access legal migrant labor.
If you're concerned about the phenomenon of unauthorized immigration or the plight of unauthorized immigrants, pay less attention to the path-to-citizenship. Keep one question foremost in your mind as you read the forthcoming details of the Senators' and president's proposals: What are they offering U.S. farmers to get the labor they need without going under? What are they offering U.S. parents to get the childcare they need without breaking the bank? These are the provisions that will shape unauthorized immigration for tomorrow's America.
That's from Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development, which is about the most interesting organization covering issues of migration, economics, and prosperity. Drawing on the work of economists Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny, Clemens points out that illegal immigrants (he prefers unauthorized) come mostly for work opportunities, with citizenship being a secondary issue at best. So if you want to decrease the number of people defying immigration laws, you need to figure out a way to make them legal. That needn't involve citizenship because they aren't coming for that. They're coming to work, so let them work openly. Here's a chart and commentary from Orrenius and Zavodny:
"These experiences show the importance of enacting a legalization program only in the context of comprehensive immigration reform designed to reduce future unauthorized inflows as much as possible. Flows increased following IRCA [late 1980s' comprehensive reform] because the amnesty did little to reduce the demand for unauthorized workers […]"
As Clemens notes, in 1986 Ronald Reagan signed off on a plan that gave most the country's illegal popluation (about 3 million at the time) a path to citizenship. By 1990, "You couldn't even tell that anything had happened." All the immigration-reform proposals bandied about so far talk a good game about increasing the number of work permits available to low-skilled workers and their employers, but Congress has never delivered on that in the past. And if they don't this time, history will repeat itself when it comes to the number of illegal/unauthorized folks in the U.S. of A. Because (as the chart also shows), the only way to keep immigrants from coming is by tanking the economy.
Read about President Obama's record-setting attacks on employers of immigrants here.
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RESPECT MAH SOVEREIGNTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
If you are worried that the pending amnesty will do nothing but set the stage for the next amnesty, you need to look at who is getting amnesty: illegal immigrants.
One way to shrink the pool of illegal immigrants is to make the ones who actually do come here for work into legal immigrants with a “wide gates” policy of EZ work visas. With functional work visas, there will be much less of an incentive to “go illegal”, and the pool of illegals that we will inevitably amnesty down the road will be shrunk.
For that matter, I don’t know why we the amnesty has to be a path to citizenship (however obfuscated). Just make sure a history of being here illegally isn’t a barrier to getting an EZ work visa.
Obama, you can’t court us and deport us
Wanna bet? I would say he just did that in 2012 and it worked out swimmingly. Why on earth would he ever agree to immigration reform and kill such a good issue going forward?
Reminds me of Blacks who voted for Woodrow Wilson. He thanked them by segregating the Federal government. It never did dissuade the great majority of them from continuing to vote Democrat.
And I think it was at least a pretty good bet that a RINO like Romney would have rolled over and sold out Republicans on immigration. Obama has no reason to pass immigration reform. It would take a winning issue off of the table.
Now, if large numbers of Hispanics had voted for Gary Johnson, things will be different. But if Hispanics want to join blacks on the liberal plantation, I have no sympathy for them.
A lot of them don’t want to stay here. They want to come, save some money and go home. You could solve this whole problem by just giving them all green cards. But they don’t do that because the pro immigration side doesn’t give a shit about immigrants. They want Democratic voters. And if they can’t vote, they couldn’t care less about them.
“You can’t court us an deport us.”
Uhm, apparently he can.
“Obama can’t court us and deport us”
Uhm, yes, yes he can. And here’s how much Si Se Puede:
2012: 71% of Latinos voted for Obama
2008: 67%
So no only can he deport you, he can actually increase is percentage of you.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/…..index.html
1. I’m not even sure how you can accurately estimate the number of people who, on paper, do not exist.
2. Many people come here illegally, not just to work, but to suck of the government teat. Work alone probably wouldn’t get them to come here if they didn’t have access to all of the other free shit our system provides.
I’m amazed how you can read the minds of millions of people you’ve never met. You should be in government
Don’t have to read minds….you only have to observe what happens.
So if you want to decrease the number of people defying immigration laws, you need to figure out a way to make them legal.
No, you can also make sure there aren’t jobs for them to attract them in the first place, not all of which require importing people to fill the jobs. For example, a national universal mandatory service rerquirement ? “Okay, kid, you’re drafted, now you want to go to Afghanistan with a rifle in your hand, or pick crops?” ? could be structured to appeal to Senators McCain and Rangel both.