Having Our Cake
The issue of illegal immigration is heating up again this election year. Nearly half a million immigrants enter the US annually, most through our southern border, and most come to work. That last factor, immigrants coming for jobs, is rarely mentioned by those who prefer instead to harp on the canards that these people are lawbreakers sneaking into the country to collect welfare, to educate their children, and to get free medical care, all at the expense of American tax payers. What these politicians fail to realize is that their biggest enemy in trying to halt illegal immigration is not the Democratic Party, but the US Chamber of Commerce. Big business doesn't want to end illegal immigration. It depends on it. Today's NY Times lays out the dynamic at play.
IT may seem that the United States government has declared all-out war against illegal immigration. During the last decade, the budget dedicated to enforcement of immigration laws has grown by leaps and bounds. The Border Patrol has about three times as many agents as it did in the early 1990's, and the southern border has been laced with high-tech surveillance gadgetry.
Yet a closer look reveals a very different portrait of immigration policy. It seems designed for failure. Most experts agree that a vast majority of illegal immigrants who make it across the border every year are seeking work. But the workplace is the one spot that is virtually unpoliced.
In a strategy document in 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service put monitoring the workplace last among its five enforcement priorities. Today, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has replaced the I.N.S. and is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, devotes about 4 percent of its personnel to enforcement in the workplace, down from 9 percent in 1999.
Demographers estimate that six million to seven million illegal immigrants are working in the United States; that is some 5 percent of the nation's work force. Yet in 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the immigration authorities issued penalty notices to only three companies.
Employers might not favor a guest worker program to allow immigrants to work here legally, if such a program included harsher policing of the workplace. "A guest worker program would offer secure legal access to immigrant labor, but at the risk that this labor would come in smaller quantities or with more strings attached," Professor Hanson [an economist with the University of California-San Diego] said. [Emphasis added]
Whether its a canning plant in central Wisconsin, a Tyson chicken packing plant in Arkansas, or a corporate farm in the Central Valley of California, big and small businesses depend on immigrant labor, legal or not. This workforce is ideal for the bottom line: it will work cheap (often for below minimum wage) for long hours and under appalling conditions (often against state and local labor laws). The workers don't report these violations because it would mean deportation at the very least.
The Guest Worker Program suggested by the current regime would end all of that insofar as it would reduce the flow of cheap labor and might involve more policing at the employer level. The House bill passed at the end of last year would go even further. No, big business likes things just the way they are. And, as we've seen the past 5+ years, they're calling the shots.
IT may seem that the United States government has declared all-out war against illegal immigration. During the last decade, the budget dedicated to enforcement of immigration laws has grown by leaps and bounds. The Border Patrol has about three times as many agents as it did in the early 1990's, and the southern border has been laced with high-tech surveillance gadgetry.
Yet a closer look reveals a very different portrait of immigration policy. It seems designed for failure. Most experts agree that a vast majority of illegal immigrants who make it across the border every year are seeking work. But the workplace is the one spot that is virtually unpoliced.
In a strategy document in 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service put monitoring the workplace last among its five enforcement priorities. Today, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has replaced the I.N.S. and is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, devotes about 4 percent of its personnel to enforcement in the workplace, down from 9 percent in 1999.
Demographers estimate that six million to seven million illegal immigrants are working in the United States; that is some 5 percent of the nation's work force. Yet in 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the immigration authorities issued penalty notices to only three companies.
Employers might not favor a guest worker program to allow immigrants to work here legally, if such a program included harsher policing of the workplace. "A guest worker program would offer secure legal access to immigrant labor, but at the risk that this labor would come in smaller quantities or with more strings attached," Professor Hanson [an economist with the University of California-San Diego] said. [Emphasis added]
Whether its a canning plant in central Wisconsin, a Tyson chicken packing plant in Arkansas, or a corporate farm in the Central Valley of California, big and small businesses depend on immigrant labor, legal or not. This workforce is ideal for the bottom line: it will work cheap (often for below minimum wage) for long hours and under appalling conditions (often against state and local labor laws). The workers don't report these violations because it would mean deportation at the very least.
The Guest Worker Program suggested by the current regime would end all of that insofar as it would reduce the flow of cheap labor and might involve more policing at the employer level. The House bill passed at the end of last year would go even further. No, big business likes things just the way they are. And, as we've seen the past 5+ years, they're calling the shots.
posted by Diane at 5:34 AM
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