I can't believe you mean to legalize the currently illegal wages and conditions - but isn't that the argument employers make when they say without these "illegal" options, their businesses would suffer - perhaps fail - and hence the economy would also suffer? Do they really need tomato-picking to stay at 1.5 cents per pound rather than the 2.5 cents per pound that would be required if they paid minimum wage to legal immigrants?
I won't speak for Phil, but I doubt that anyone here wants to legalize the current wages and conditions. What I'm talking about is decriminalizing the people, not the employers.
But, the argument of the businesses making the 'indispensable to the economy' argument, as far as I can tell, is that the sub-minimum wages are *needed*, otherwise the(ir) economy will suffer. I don't think that's what Phil meant; but I am not familiar with the spectrum of 'economic necessity' arguments - can either you or Phil enlighten me?
I don't think I'm picking nits here, either... I think everyone agrees that laws against the *employer* are woefully under-enforced, and I suspect that the times they are enforced are either for political advantage or perhaps political punishment ('give to my campaign, you don't have to worry about an INS raid' - I have no evidence of that, just a suspicion). So, I wonder if the economic argument is mostly a red herring.
For one thing, those who have been patiently observing the law ARE the new *legal* immigrant workers, and always have been. That hasn't changed, nor will it.
But how many are there? I've asked this question before (many months ago), and no one had an answer, that I can recall. However, I did some digging just now, and I found out that we actually *have no maximum* for immigration from Mexico, apparently! And legal immigration has varied anywhere from 90,000 to 900,000 over the last 20 years (highest in 1991, lowest in 1995), with legal immigration over the last 5 years (02 to 06) being 218k, 115k, 175k, 161k and 174k (
numbers from the Migration Policy Institute)... so apparently there is no waiting line, per se... can anyone verify this is true, or not true? Because that would eliminate the argument I thought I had (that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants hurts the ones waiting to immigrate legally..)
Unfortunately, the only way to get employers to stop breaking the law is to enforce it, and until the corporations can be guaranteed continued profitability at an acceptable level, I don't believe that will not happen.
True to the first part, about enforcement. The second part, I still think is just a red herring. They have higher 'profitability' because the laws aren't enforced; the laws aren't enforced because they skew the political and legal system with bribes and lobbyists; they can pay bribes and lobbyists because they have higher profitability. Rather than guarantee them acceptable profitability if they obey the law, I think it would be just as (or more) effective to guarantee them non-profitability if they don't!
This is not by way of argumentation, it's just a response to your comments.
Understood. Also, it can't be argumentative, because I still don't understand the problem enough to even think of what position I might have!
I still haven't definitely verified that there is not really a 'waiting list'; and I still don't know how these workers are indispensable, and what would happen if we didn't have them, or if they were all legalized and were paid a legal wage. I have heard reasonable arguments both ways - in fact, I am somewhat more convinced that the U.S. economy would be better for those at the bottom, virtually the same for those in the middle, and worse for those at the top... one good summary of this aspect is in
this article. In the end, though, no matter what position I might take, I have to agree that:
1) It is simply not feasible to deport all 12 million illegal immigrants (I would add that in some cases, especially where children have been born and raised here, it would be immoral to do so.) At the same time, there should be some penalty for those that have broken the law.
2) Whatever laws we have, including the current ones, should be enforced *especially* against the employers - because they are the ones that are unfairly profiting from an illegal action, and without them providing an illegal incentive, there would not be illegal immigrants.
Beyond that, I have to learn more.
