I agree with your main point--a secure border is a necessary precondition for amnesty.

But I'm not sure you're taking enough to care to state that point in a way that would actually get it implemented.  If it's just a matter of domestic workers vs. employers and immigrants, domestic workers will lose.  They are divided and poorly organized.  Therefore, any attempt at reform is going to have to unite both native and immigrant workers.  So any Democrat arguing for tighter borders would be wise to argue even more loudly for amnesty or something like it.  Perhaps it would also be wise to focuse enforcement efforts not so much against the immigrants coming over the border but against the employers who entice them to come over here.  As long as people are here wanting to hire illegal immigrants, and as long as there are impoverished people outside our borders, those people will find SOME way into our country.  Employers are inherently easier to regulate than undocumented persons.

You are right to complain that Reid will transform a de facto two-tier labor market into a legally sanctioned one, but it would be wise to focus on how two-tier labor markets are bad for both immigrants and domestic workers. (Though, in a global free trade world, any field involving manufacturing or services that can be performed over telecommunications will be inescapably two-tier anyway.)

True that there is a sufficient number of Border Patrol that would do the job of police in bad neighborhood. That is, with enough cops there is no need or incentive to enforce law through aggressive policing after the crime--it just doesn't happen in the first place. For crime prevention we don't need police-state practices like "your papers, please", just the expectation that a crime will be noticed in progress.

However, the immigration equation is different in a fundamental way. I find nothing wrong with the "sufficient-number" approach but the number may be huge. This is on reason why we have to also look at the incentives to immigration.

A second difference, not just in quantity, is that a mugging is a crime at root, at first, and that is all. Illegal immigration is a crime of legitimacy, not directly a crime. That is, going somewhere that offers a job is morally appropriate--it is the lack of paperwork that is the crime. Legitimate immigration is not like licensing, bonding, or other documentation that directly adds to the value of a worker. The legal immigrant has the same working credentials as the illegal one--none. He is just a worker.

Illegal immigration is morally gray; the damage caused by it is uncertain and diffuse. Let's look at who is hurt by it, and why.

Is it the American worker? If the job is so low-paying that not enough people show up to harvest a crop that argument seems empty. Is it the employer? Not necessary to consider. Society at large? Maybe. Workers that cost money for law enforcement or social services, as well as infrastructure needs like sewage and trash, or roads, and do not also contriibute to tax revenue, are a financial drain, not necessarily offset by the taxes from the employer's higher profits.

Note that the crucial point is tax revenue, so if illegal immigrants were paying taxes like others there is no damage and there should be no crime.

If social damage is from overpopulation it is equally wrong to have children as to have someone walk over the border.

If social damage is some subtle diluting of a preferred cultural tone that is a pretty weak argument.

So we have a crime of credentials with no direct victim. There are some secondary effects that matter, though. Uncredentialed people are troubling for issues like law enforcement in general and terrorism in particular. What is the reason to restrict credentials? A mechanical argument for controlled immigration adds up the above, crowding, law enforcement, and government services needs, to say that a regulated immigration is manageable and unregulated is not.

Since this is not exactly a barbarians-at-the-gates worry, just a beaureaucratic preference, it doen't get people hot. What does? Why is there such an argument? Arguments about job competition sound feeble and are suspected of being pure selfishness. Not that selfishness is inherently immoral--one takes care of family before neighbor, after all. Honesty requires acknowledging this. So what can be done other than some, possibly huge, number of border patrol or a Great Wall?

My proposal is: If there are no jobs no one will come. It is the existence of jobs that can't be filled otherwise that invites illegal immigration. Well-paying jobs already have lots of competition and people will not immigrate unless they have a reasonable chance of work, so if we "simply" make all jobs well-paying the problem evaporates, since those jobs will be filled.

It is of course not simple to make all jobs well-paying, but it is the root problem. The best way to stop activities that are difficult to prevent is to remove the incentive. It is easier to sell legal acohol than bootleg, and there is no problem of rampant bootleg acohol. Make it easier to immigrate legally and remove the incentive to hire illegals by making sure the jobs pay a wage that more Americans will accept.

Draconian laws against hiring or helping illegals are after-the-fact and invite moral calamities such as charity workers becoming criminals. We need a combination of the "make it easy to be legal" (alcohol) approach with "make sure crime doesn't get started" (community policing) approach.

Reid should come out from under his rock and write a bill if he wants the measures to be "realistic."  It's clear that amnesty is likely to fail across the board.  Bush's proposal is on life support and the plug may be pulled for good if Republicans up for re-election this year are not willing to endorese it.  That leaves us back at square one.

Border control is a necessary precondition for any successful immigration reform, including the only one that is compatible with the prevention of a two-tier labor market--namely, a complete amnesty and full citizenship for most illegal immigrants already here.  Here's what the agenda should be:  Control the borders first, discuss the terms of an amnesty later--oh, and, by the way, ban guest workers and all other kinds of indentured servants, apart from a tiny number of well-paid professionals with green cards.

 

I think that Lind had the basic political and substantive trade-off correct - increased border control combined with increased legal immigration (through an amnesty program that also takes into account the needs of those resident aliens and green card holders that have played by the rules).  Going down the path of a guest worker program, even if it done with the good intentions of softening the blows of unduly punitive immigration reform is extraordinarily short sighted and fundamentally un-American.

I'm concerned however that de-linking enforcement and amnesty/increased legal immigration will result in the passage of stricter enforcement, after whcih nativists and populists will conclude that immigration "reform" has been accomplished.  Lind's central concern, the existence of a two-tier labor market, cannot be addressed without both sides of the equation.  Enforcement now, amnesty later may make good electoral politics, but it doesn't make for sensible policy.   

Further, draconian enforcement shouldn't be confused with effective enforcement.  The effective crackdown on crime in urban areas in the 1990s was due to agressive, proactive policing.  There is little evidence that the harsh federal narcotics sentences had anything to do with the sucess - but they have resulted in a patently unjust system for thousands of low-level pawns languishing in federal prisons.  Democrats should justifiable treat provisions to beef up border patrols differently from provisions that seek to jail priests from servicing illegal immigrant parishioners.   Moreover, Democrats can and should demand that enforcement measures effectively target the employers of illegal immigrants before signing onto any legislation. 

I think Lind is basically right here, it's become political suicide to treat immigration as a moral issue alone, which is what too many Democrats still do.

But all attempts to solve this issue on its own fall short because they don't address the elephant in the room.  Until we stop allowing the elites of this country to escape all accountablility for the mess their free-trade policies have made of this country, there are no solutions to the immigration dilemma.  The free-trade-absolutist elites (who no doubt will come out in force here) refuse to acknowledge that we are rapidly becoming a plutocracy where fewer and fewer people are allowed a meaningful and well-paid role, and the rest are simply pushed away from the table.  The elites owe the rest of us an honest explanation of what the America of their dreams looks like.

In my field, the immigration problem is not with illegal immigrants but the constantly escalating demands of industries to allow more legal immigrants into the country under visa programs like H1B.  This is pursued as a cost-control measure. 

America simply doesn't have the same level of goods to offer immigrants that it once did.  It can't ask people to die for the country when the only job open to many of its citizens is soldier.  And we are moving inexorably in that direction.  Every year some previously-thought inviolable benefit becomes ideologically contested by the Wall Street consensus.  In 1992 we were arguing about how to provide health insurance for all.  Now health insurance recipients are accused of wanting "subsidies".  Did you ever hear THAT one before this year?

If, as is increasingly apparent, the American standard of living is in general being drastically reduced, we need to start talking about shared sacrifice instead of continually allowing larger and larger slices of the total wealth to be captured by smaller and smaller slices of the population and the multinational corporations. 

Welcome back.  You have a knack of sparking interesting discussions.

bluebell

Guest workers can't vote.  It's just another step towards oligarchy.

Guest worker programs are amnesty with another name....

That's completely untrue.  A guest worker is not a citizen, and their second-class status gives them signifcantly weaker bargaining power.

Amnesty is problematic from the perspective of deterring future illegal immigration, and to the extent that it puts illegals in front of visa-seekers who played by the rules, simply unfair.  But amnesty does have nearly the corrosive impact on American citizenship or labor rights as a guest worker program.  Its not merely a semantic difference.

What happened to Senator Kyl's (R-Az) plan on immigration.

His plan would require all illegals to turn themselves in, then leave the country, and re-apply to the federal government to return to the job/area they were in before they turned themsleves in. If accepted, they could only return for 2 years, then they would have to leave again. Wow!

Illegal immigration sounds like another hot button issue, like abortion or gay marriage, that will always be used as a distraction, and never solved as it would upset the status quo if it was changed.  

   To be sure, it is a hot button issue. I want my grandchidren to have the opportunity to go to college, I want them to have a good paying job. I want them to have Healthcare.

   It's not going to happen if we keep allowing 12 million invaders today and another 20 million tomorrow, whose sole pupose is to get a paying job in America. Creating an imbalance in the Supply/demand of labor. Willing to take any wage as long as it's better than back in their country. How do American workers get wage increases, to cover the cost of living?. How do American workers send their children to college on minimum wages? When you have a government that exports jobs oversees and what jobs are left in this country, you have 100's of applicants vieing for them, and then the Government keeps letting more applicants come across the border, driving workers to slavery. The Making the Grapes  of Wrath

I can't help thinking how well we have kept our borders closed to illegal drugs. If Americans want workers at a lower cost, and Mexco and other Latin American countries can't expand their economies no law will really stop illegal immigration.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

It's a good point Daniel. As stronger enforcement tactics are used along the border, immigration isn't stopped, it is simply made more dangerous for immigrants.  As enforcement has become more stringent near established border crossings, migrants have been forced to try their luck crossing the deserts and the rivers along the border. Many, many have died as a result.

Strict enforcement also has the unintended effect, much like counter-narcotics efforts, of rewarding traffickers, whose market value increases every time enforcement increases.

Voteless In DC

I'm not much for the nativist wing of the party (Irealize this "wing" isn't very big) but if we can all agree that illegal immigration is bad & shouldn't be incentivized, and we can agree that immigration in general is a "political" problem, and that it's good to fix political problems, then why can't we agree to something like a wall?    

What if an illegal immigrant comes in for two years and has kids here? Is the government still going to deport him? The problem with these temporary guest worker programs is that they never end up being temporary. The Republicans add these "temporary" clauses knowing that they will never be enforced. The more workers, the lower the wages will be for everybody. That's good for business, bad for the American worker and the American taxpayer.

In case you haven't been to Mexico, the country sucks and the wages down there are horrible. It's a corrupt country that privileges the rich and does nothing for the poor. There's a reason so many millions of Mexicans choose to come up here. But to be honest, I don't care about Mexico. That's a Mexican problem for Mexicans to deal with. I care about the United States, and the United States worker (of all backgrounds, as long as they are legal). I believe in high wages, strong unions, good working conditions. As long as businesses can hire a steady supply of illegals, they will not pay good wages or give their workers benefits. The sooner we shut down the traffic of illegals, the quicker wages will rise in this country.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that there is only a finite number of jobs that are available. Under the present scheme, 11 million people who are unlawfully here form the bulk of an existing 2-tier employment system and are subject to being exploited. If the argument is against creating a 2-tier employment system, strict physical control of the border without more would be tantamount to closing the barn door after the horses have fled.

Allowing those already here (excluding those who have committed crimes) to come out of the darkness with an offer of earned legalization consisting of a penalty for their past transgressions, payment of taxes (past and current), civics assimilation, and continued, but now authorized employment, should have the effect of forcing those who currently employ them to meet ordinary labor law standards as they apply to wages and safety.

I suspect that the guest worker program is in reality a red herring. If comprehensive immigration reform includes an earned legalization component, the legalized 11 million will fill the existing need for unskilled labor and the demand will dry up. The need for guest workers will be minimal, and with an enlarged labor force, the job magnet will disappear.

In addition, earned legalization would have the effect of adding a large number of relatively long-term workers to the labor pool at just the same time that the baby boomers retire.

Finally, there will be substantial homeland security benefits from having most of those now underground out in the open and registered. 

For the record, Chuckie, I find the term 'invaders' patently offensive.

My grandfather was a Swede, my grandmother German.  Their parents came to America in search of a better life - for a 'paying job in America' as you put it. They, and the hundreds of thousands of other European immigrants were also probably willing to "take any wage as long as it [was] better than back in their country," just like today's immigrants you disdain.

Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" sometime if you want to know about exploitation of European immigrant labor in the U.S.  Sinclair, like the author of Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), was a socialist.  Both thought the problem was with the system of exploitation, not with the workers themselves. I agree.

So 'Chuckie' - where were your great-grandparents from? Did they steal a job from a true 'Amercun' too?

Voteless In DC

Excellent point. Witness the problem Germany reaped with their guest worker program in which children of guest workers were not granted citizenship rights. I reckon they'd advise use against following in their footsteps. 

Voteless In DC

What Reid and Kennedy are not telling people there is no enforcement mechanism for the guest worker program once their time is up. So in practical terms it amounts to a amnesty plan for 12 million illegals. Not to mention giving a green light for millions more to storm across our border.

In addition these folks do take away jobs from Americans and place a tremendous strain on social services in southwestern states.  Here in CA we are overwhelmed by these folks and their needs. They've depressed wages for manufacturing and service jobs across the board as well. We have medium sized businesses that do nothing but employ illegals by the hundreds because they can treat these people like dirt, cheat them out of their wages and expose them to toxic chemicals without worrying about lawsuits or them calling the authorities. The janitorial industry is notorious for all of these practices.

Now if the Democrats and especially progressives were sincere in dealing with this issue they would support criminal sanctions and massive penalties against anyone who employs illegals. Furthermore given their supposed support of national security they ought to be the first to support a secure border rather than attack fellow Americans who want it as racist and xenophobic.

Because right now the Democrats look like a pack of open borders types who don't care about the average American worker at all.  BTW if Reid does do the filibuster on this issue they can forget about bringing back in independents and disenchanted moderate GOPers  to support them. They'll stay home rather than support a party that doesn't care about the ordinary American.

The Communists tried a wall and that didn't work. The big problems in  this country are not caused by the lowest level 'illegal' workers, just as they aren't caused by gays, war protestors, or people who 'hate our freedoms'.

A big problem would be if all foreigners, legal or illegal, decided one day to go home, and leave this land of 'crybabies' who love to blame others for all their problems. If this country is messed up, try holding the people who are here legally, and the governments they elect, the policies pursued, the competence level, hold them responsible.

Are you related to William S. Lind?

Sorry, but since Bush took office, 3 million US manufacturing jobs have been outsourced, and while that might not have bothered the more affluent out there too much, it started urking them when they started feeling the pain themselves. I don't have stats on non-tech white collar jobs that have gone overseas but I do know that from between 2001 and 2004, 803,000 technical jobs, including engineers, IT, NT, etc.. professionals. These were jobs from were held by qualified, highly educated/trained, well paid Americans. Many of them had to actually train their replacements... While we do need to support more math and science education, ultimately graduating more math and science majors, for the future, what would that achieve if they can't get jobs? It's mostly an excuse to hide behind.

During the last election, I met a guy who was an engineer whose job was outsourced, what made things worse was that within six months of that happening, and his still not being able to get another job, his wife had been informed that her job was being outsourced. Both were in their 50s, ages away from retirement age, they were going through what savings they had.  

Bill Gates has been funding math, science, tech training overseas, but he's not doing anything approaching that scale in the US. He's provided support for a few charter schools, and in a few rare cases provided computers to schools, but nothing that would constitute supporting math and science ed in public education. This is the guy who hired fundie Ralph Reed to push Microsoft's agenda several years ago... spare me.

Sorry bronto, but while I might have agreed with you a few years back, it's simply not true that illegal aliens aren't posing a huge burden on the healthcare system.

When they go to emergency rooms, the hospitals end up absorbing the costs. This has gone from bankrupting small community hospitals in the border states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to seriously impacting the ability of public  hospitals all across the country to offer basic care to even legal citizenry. If their budgets are so restrained, then ultimately they will not be able to properly staff and treat the uninsured. There has also been the problem of while we're told that only citizens qualify for welfare and medicaid, once an illegal alien has a child born here in the US, they automatically qualify for welfare benefits and medicaid, for the whole family. Which is getting tougher for states to properly keep up with. The Bush administration turns a blind eye to massive illegal immigration, and at the same time gut funding for social welfare, and for public education, which leads to another subject, underfunded schools in poor urban and rural areas that are having to continue to cut budgets even in the face of mass immigration into their areas.

To Voteless in DC: Your comparison of the late 19th century...early  20th century immigrants from Europe (primarily) with the influx over the past 30 years from Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Canada and Cuba,  is no t a good comparison...

The European immigrants, those 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free', came to this country almost entirely as LEGAL immigrants, and they were not workers who came with the intent of returning to their native country...They were intent on using English as a primary language mostly because itr was profitable for them to do so from the standpoint of improving their living standards...and making their attainment of citizenship easier.

They melted into the demographic pot and became Americans, even though many of their customs (folkwise) were preserved.

Unfortunately, the current wave, expecially from the south, have no primary object of attaining citizenship...they are here only to allow themselves to be exploited by low-wage-paying employers, and then, after utilizing the services paid for by American tax-payers, returning to their native lands..

I do not assign any devious or criminal intent to them (the current immigrants)...almost any people under the same circumstances in which they are born would do the same.

But to remind us that we are a 'nation of immigrants' with the implication that there is some correlation with earlier immigration to this country from Europe to our present UN-CONTROLLED borders is a false premise. 

Our present non-working system of dealing with the 'invasion' of primarily Latin immigrants (AND I AM NOT ANTI-LATINO, PER SE) is tantamount to surrendering the language, traditions, customs and genesis of our country without a fight...and we are doing so mainly because Employers want CHEAP LABOR.

You're right, and let's not forget the point that these jobs were supposed to be the ones that compensated us for the loss of manufacturing jobs.  And often the offshoring doesn't even work, if the goal is a quality product because the idiots who mandate it refuse to do the work of insuring that it to works right.  Yet their jobs are secure while the jobs of those who actually produce something are under constant attack.

I keep wanting the free traders to show us their vision of what the world looks like when their nirvana is complete.  I see walled cities of billionaires in our futures with the rest of us driven down to third world standards.  This is the trend, it's clear we're moving in that direction, but we accept it because it's not sudden.  My son enters college in the fall.  It's weird having no fricking clue what direction might be good for him to head in.

I have been waiting to post on this topic until all the usual suspects have been rounded up and accounted for.  Now that there seems to be a fairly representative collection I will add my two cents worth.

I have spent most of my life on the border except for some work time in places like Michigan and Washington, D.C.  As a bilingual "Anglo" with many friends and relations whose roots are in Mexico or even that portion of the United States that was formerly Mexican or in the beginning Spanish, I have an opinion that differs broadly from most of those heretofore presented.

First, it is too late to be arguing about sealing the border or even trying to change radically the de facto status of either the twelve million or so Hispanic illegals already in the U.S.A. or the next twelve million who are on their way.  The only thing to do at this point is to accept the benign invasion, as it were, as a unique circumstance calling for a unique response.

I work every day with a crew of Spanish-speaking men and women some of whom are citizens of the U.S.A. and some not.  Some of them regard themselves as permanent residents and some as Mexican residents just here for a day, a week, or a few yeers until they have enough saved up to go home.  They have in fact roots on both sides of the border, which for them is no more than an inconvenience -- wall or no wall -- that can be dealt with as just another affront to common sense, rather like having to drive an extra mile or so on their way home to find a good tortilla shop that does not sell the cardboard variety found in most supermarkets.

Like them, I cross the border as best I can, putting up with my own inconveniences in doing so -- though I must say that to their credit the authorities in Sonora are no longer requiring car permits for Americans as a way of boosting tourism.  In Mexico itself, even way down in Sinaloa or Nayarit, one sees American license plates from nearly every state and, no, they are not all stolen cars, but rather the cars of people working in the U.S.A. just home to visit the family or waiting to go back.  Every family I know of in Mexico has someone living north of the border or someone just returned from there.  Rich and poor alike, they talk about places in New York, in California, in Iowa just like anyone back from holiday.  And they laugh endlessly about this or that crazy American law, policy, or just plain stupid attitude they encounter in the simple task of moving back and forth seeking no more than to make a living and get on with their lives.

What I am saying here is that our political posturing -- whether motivated by economic concerns, respect for the law, or racist and cultural distinctions (on both liberal or reactionary sides of that one) -- is and will continue to be of no consequence unless we find a way to embrace the reality of this wider world while at the same time continuing to locate and disarm the bad guys. some of whom are narco-terrorists or exploiters of immigrant laborers and some of whom are our own Congressmen or residents of the White House.  

I have no immediate answers to the problem. only these few observations to offer.  And I look forward to another visit to the local Waffle House later this morning, where I will sit with my Mexican and American friends and laugh gently at the spectacle of a new wave of Minutemen just in from Oklahoma, sitting at the next booth with their red, white, and blue paraphernalia and talking loudly about what an important role they're playing in defending their country against the foreign invader.

RG

This attitude helped to inspire the switch of most Americans to the Republican Party.

At worst, perhaps 10% switched, going from 55%/45% to 45%/55%.  And the Civil Rights Act had a lot to do with it too.

What law has he violated?  I would be willing to bet that there is no such law.  It would be the employer--not the employees--who have violated the law.  And in any case, he never says that the people he works with are illegal.  Just that some of them are Mexican. 

If you can define the rule of law, then I'm sure we'd all live happily ever after.  I haven't seen a working definiton of it yet.  Are you using Dicey?  Or Fuller?  Or Aristotle?  As for me, I'm not sure that one even needs laws as a logical prerequiste to "just" outcomes.  But that's another debate.  

What repels me about your post is the claim that it is somehow bad that a just immigration policy would increase immigrants from famine plagued African nations.  What is it about African immigrants that you don't like?  If they come to the U.S. and are productive, what is wrong with them coming?  

I rather do believe that no rightwing reaction could land the Minutemen in Congress and innocent people in jail.  But then again, we have a government of limited powers, which, for all I know, may be indistinguishable from the rule of law.

Ellen

I think you are exactly right.  Pete Wilson, in contrast to Governor George Bush, took an extremely tough stance in regard to immigration.  Not only did Wilson alienate Hispanics and to a lesser extent Asians from the Republcian Party, but many well-off Republcans in agriculture also turned against Wilson.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Correct on all counts, Reece.

Anyone who reads my response with an objective and logical attitude irrespective of his or her own status or point of view would recognize instantly that I am not advocating illegal activity, just reflecting on what is actually happening along the border.  And I know some Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement personnel who would validate my observations in a heartbeat of they felt Big Brother was not watching and listening.

As I wrote originally, I have no solution to the problems of drug trafficking, inequitable labor conditions, social and cultural dysfunctions, or the negative effects of immigration on our current population.  I am simply telling the truth.  That is something most politicians and pundits are either unable or unwilling to do as they grind their axes. 

RG

  Call the game what it is. Exploitation. Exploiting the undocumented workers and exploitation of American workers/citizens. Capitalism wants cheap labor. Cheap labor means more profits. I suppose the capitist would like to return to child labor next, if they thought they could get away with it. maybe when enough families find both parents working barely supports the family,it will become permisible to put your kids to work.   Mine safety to expensive? Katrina victims, hell move,  so we can create expensive beach front property. Does capitalism really consider the plight of the immigrant or the citizenry? No!!! it's all about profit. Immigrants = Cheap Labor.   

   Profits not shared. But by God,  if American interest are under assault send the Marines, but if its American workers, tough.  

   I am not against legal immigration, but at what point would you say we should stop? Should we become an overpopulated third  world country, with diminishing resources? How many more immigrants should be allowed?

   Someone earlier suggested they were offended when I said we were being invaded. What do you call 1000's of unknowns crossing our borders ILLEGALLY. Are they all upstanding citizens or are some crossing the borders, criminal. Are they all of Mexican decent or is AlQaeda amongst them?  

   Didn't we a few years back give amnesty and warned of the consequences? When these new immigrants send back billions of dollars back home, how does that help the economy in America? 

   But I guess its easy to say cheap labor helps the economy, but whose? It sure appears to help the modern day slave masters.

   To those so fond of this massive immigration, can you at least admit that it depresses the Wages, it prevents demands by workers for benefits.

   Do you think you could ask your boss for a wage increase, knowing 1000's of less fortunates would cut your throat for your job and do. 

   Tell me those who think all this immigration is so good, how does this affect the American worker?

It probably is to late, both the Democrats and Republicans are afraid of the Latino vote. Expect, White Flight North. It's already happening, Californian's are moving to Oregon and Washington leaving the Southwest.