This seems like it would greatly increase the number of immigrants coming here, since the incentive is now that much greater. So I imagine there would be a lot more opposition than there already is from the "nativist" sorts of people who think hispanic immigrants are bad for society. ESL programs would expand, permanent spanish speaking communities would sprout up everywhere, etc. would be the argument.
Also, it seems like your plan depends on people initially getting here illegally, which seems to be an odd legal position. Unless I'm misreading it, and that's just a means to get to your stage 2 plan.
The restaurants compete with each other. If prices went up, people would go out to restaurants less. Essentially, though, increasing the cost of restaurant labor is one of the goals. The restaurant experience is subsidized by underpaid workers without benefits.
yeah, that's an irregular use of the word "subsidy".
Obviously they shouldn't. But they do. And unless there's an amnesty period for employers who currently have undocumented workers, some of those employers may be hit with more fines and financial responsibilities than they can bear. Of course, then you'd have scuzzy companies like Wal-Mart, whom you want to get hit, taking advantage of it (either that, or locking their employees in the stores at all times).
This seems like it would greatly increase the number of immigrants coming here, since the incentive is now that much greater.
No, the incentive is supposed to be lesser. Under this system, no one will hire an undocumented worker -- the penalty is just too onerous. If the demand for undocumented workers dries up, the undocumented workers will stop coming. (And then, I expect, we'd end up loosening legal immigration and letting many of the same people in legally.)
I dropped a sentence in 10. Restaurants might go out of business because fewer people went out, but if the laws were applied evenly, no restaurant would lose business to any other restaurant. I strongly doubt that the drop would be 75%.
Not because fewer people go out, but because restaurants are notoriously staffed largely by illegal immigrants (in the kitchens, anyway), and if they all went out and became legal, simultaneously giving the restaurant a huge financial burden, that could easily cause a lot of problems.
The lag time between stopping illegal immigrants from coming and allowing more workers in legally could be a problem, but I don't know how serious a concern that is.
Also, I've heard people talk about wanting the workers without putting them on the path to citizenship, but again I don't know how relevant that would be in practice.
Wolfson -- there might be a rough transition, but once the malefactors went out of business, new restaurants would open up to replaces them which would be more careful about hiring illegals. After having lost the illegal-labor subsidy, these would be more expensive and fewer people would go out.
This is all fantasy, of course. There will never be a law which harms the interest of a large, organized group of property-owners.
A job for a month? Or jobs for a month? Because if it's the former and I'm John P. Restauranteur, I'm hiring illegals and cutting them loose at 27 days.
Maybe I've missed something, but I think I would open a store called, "Work for a Month," sell jobs there for slightly more than the current cost of acquiring an illegal green card. When the govt. came knocking, I'd declare bankruptcy. They get green cards, I get cash, and the govt. gets screwed.
In the short term, I think this would increase the number of people trying to get into the country illegally because they would have so much more to gain under LB's proposed system. That would probably also lead to more border-crossing deaths (hundreds of people already die each year while trying to cross the border). The illegal immigrants who make it across the border would have to work in a never-ending succession of shitty jobs (because they can't work for anybody for longer than a month).
Perhaps this would help cut down illegal immigration in the long term--migrants will stop coming in large numbers if they hear it's so awful that staying in their home countries is actually better--but I see this having disastrous consequences in the short term. But, hell, maybe that's what needs to happen because I really have no idea what a good solution would look like. So much of the problem has to do with the political and economic situations in migrants' home countries.
So here's the problem: Why couldn't I and my fellow restaurant owners gang together and create the illegal immigrant employer cartel? Any undocumented employee is fired 29 days after s/he starts. The restaurant down the street hires them. Or perhaps hires a fresh set of undocumented workers from across the border (since we've just dramatically increased the incentive to cross the border, they're all doing it). So now there's a large large pool of illegal immigrants all here with the hope of being employed for a month, we're busy hiring and firing them within a month, wages are going down because there's just so much supply, illegal immigrants are still livign shitty lives, racists have all their worst fears of their pure whiteness being overrun by dirty Mexicans from south of the border confirmed in spades....
Wolfson's Nathan Newman link is pretty good. The AFL-CIO has stopped supporting employer sanctions, in favor of stricter enforcement of labor law in general, for legals and illegals alike.
The real problem with LB's proposal is that it would would make large groups of employers unhappy, along with their customers and associates, and the political pressure would quickly become unbearable and the law would either be rewritten or nullified by non-enforcement.
For the same reasons, I doubt that the Newman / AFL-CIO labor laws would go anywhere; they'd have a similiar negative effect on employers who depend on cheap illegal labor.
The decline in labor's political influence has been pretty steady since about 1976. Strong opposition to unions has always been a core Republican belief (even of "moderate" Republicans) and a fair proportion of Democrats are effectively anti-union. So I don't see the AFL-CIO proposal getting far without an enormous change in the political climate.
Well, you could just make it a lot easier to get green cards or guest-worker cards-- perhaps by just allowing any able-bodied person to have one. Why require them to work for a month?
It is suggested that making it easier to get into the country encourages people to go back home more often, maintain ties to their hometowns, and eventually return there...
Proposing an increase in legal immigration as a solution could be a very good wedge: it forces anti-immigration people to admit that they just don't like Mexicans.
25: A solution there might be personal liability for whoever is responsible for making hiring decisions -- if the corporation goes under, the person who did the hiring is individually liable.
24, 30: So cut it down to two weeks. There is some length of tenure under which it's not worth the hassle to keep hiring people (that is, if you have to hire a new dishwasher every two weeks, it would actually be cheaper to hire a legal resident for minimum wage.)
29: You're right that the short-term disruption would be a problem, until potential immigrants realized that undocumented work was no longer going to be freely available in the US. There are probably measures that could be taken to minimize that disruption (publicity campaigns explaining the situation in countries that are large sources of undocumented workers?) but I'm not saying that the transition wouldn't be hard.
22, 31: Oh, absolutely it's fantasy -- the employers who profit from undocumented labor now would never let this happen.
The AFL-CIO approach has some commonalities with this idea -- they're both trying to make undocumented workers no longer outlaws -- in my case by bringing them into legal status, in the AFL's case by expanding legal protections to cover undocumented workers. I don't like the AFL approach, because I have a real problem with any policy that rests on not enforcing laws, rather than changing laws that should not be enforced, but it does address the same problems.
A solution there might be personal liability for whoever is responsible for making hiring decisions -- if the corporation goes under, the person who did the hiring is individually liable.
Say goodbye to anyone who looks Mexican, even if they are citizens, getting hired for any job, anywhere. Why take the personal chance? Enron goes belly-up, and you're responsible personally for the social services of a 100 person cleaning crew, for example? Or even 10 traders?
You'd have to couple it with either a large increase in legal immigration or issuing green cards retroactively to illegals that have already worked 30 days (preferably both).
Otherwise some businesses would go belly up, and other sectors (agriculture) would have wage-based inflationary pressures.
But, I really like the root of breaking the illegal-employer alliance.
Maybe this falls outside the purview of the hypothetical, but after the Republicans regain office in part by taking advantage of immigration transition mayhem sparked by the Breathian administration, they will extend/reinstate employer amnesty. I think the transition costs are too steep, but I'm not sure where to tweak them without (as BWo noted) giving the major abusers a free ride.
I think that SCMT's point that nobody who looks even vaguely Mexican, even if the individual is a citizen, will ever get hired if this strict individual liability is implemented.
And where is apo to say that alldark people are Mexicans? Because I have another serious comment to make, and I could use his help deriailing this thread. I don't read daily kos regularly anymore, but digby linked to this story by mbw (who writes wampum) which you must all read. And most of the comments are good too. This really needs to get out into the MSM. It's the Jack Abramoff story that nobody's covering outside of Indian newspapers. Abramoff has been using Indian gambling money and, no doubt, funds from the extractive industries to operate a slush fund to buy off Republicans to prevent an audit of oil/gas/ranching industry books. Such an audit would show that the Indians have been massively underpaid for the minerals in their lands. Conveniently enough recordsat the Department of the Interior have been destroyed. pre-Republicans there were a lot of delaying tactics from the Clinton administration, but it's probably Norton who destroyed the records. Ironicallyenough, there's now pressure on the Indian tribes to settle fr pennies on the dollar, since Abramoff is now tainted goods. If anyone can think of reporters who might be intereted in getting this story out, do e-mail them.
Otherwise some businesses would go belly up, and other sectors (agriculture) would have wage-based inflationary pressures.
As I said, to a degree these are goals. Both restaurants and agriculture depend on cheap illegal labor, and prices will go up without it. There'd be a creative-destruction event, and the companies who could function in the new environment would stay in business.
I like the realism of the proposal. A few potential problems and questions:
1. How is the illegal alien going to show that he has been working for the required period of time? If he does not have any reliable way of demonstrating this, then he will be less likely to risk his stay in this country by going to the authorities. And if he is not going to risk going to the authorities, then the scheme may not work.
2. Your proposal will drive a wedge within the illegal immigrant community as well, especially between new illegal immigrants and those who have been here for a number of years. What will the effects of this wedge be, though? Will strong norms develop against reporting employers, in an effort to allow family members and friends to successfully cross over to the US too?
3. What type of liability are we going to impose on the employers? Strict liability? What type of liability do we currently impose? If we pierce the corporate veil, are we still going to hold the corporation liable as well?
4. Is it really the case that illegal aliens represent the desired skill-set that we want to allow into the country?
5. Why not just build a huge wall, pour money into border patrols, and gradually reduce the illegal immigrant population via aggressive investigation and deportation? (I'm not proposing this, mind you) Aren't we just rewarding illegal behavior and encouraging it as well?
I like LB's post. Right now illegal immigration policy is rather like attempting to stop underage drinking by picking up the kids from the bar and driving them across the street onto campus, or, better yet, guarding the main intersection but allowing the side streets to remain unpatrolled.
We could curb underage drinking by patrolling all areas in front of bars, or we could, as we do, fine bars and shut them down if they don't comply with the law.
I do think it's an unelectable plank, though. Easier to blame it on dark poor people speaking a different language. (Arguments I've heard: Hey, if Mexico had a good economy, no one would come over! It's THEIR FAULT. Why should we pay for their (citizen) kids to go to school?)
[i haven't read any of the comments, and am in rush, but...]
how is the solution not a form of "amnesty"? as the Prez has discovered with his (not entirely bad) immigration proposal, anything that has the slightest whiff of the a-word is a political non-starter.
Andrew, isn't 5 a bit of a red herring? If it's sanctioned, then the argument 'we shouldn't encourage illegal behavior.'
4., also. There may not be an educated skill set, but it does seem to be a skill set that is needed but that no employer wants to pay minimum/living wages for. I think the right reaction would be to go after the employer, or the minimum wage (depending on your bent), but denying that the skill set is needed doesn't seem to be the right approach.
"to a degree these are goals. Both restaurants and agriculture depend on cheap illegal labor, and prices will go up without it. There'd be a creative-destruction event, and the companies who could function in the new environment would stay in business. "
I'm not sure we're discussing the same thing.
If LB's proposal was implemented as written, I figure there would be a substantial labor shortage - there are more jobs currently filled by illegal aliens than there are unemployed people willing to take them. That would be huge, and would have really big effects. That would be a bad thing, and is what I was addressing.
If LB's proposal was implemented with properly increased legal immigration, then wages would increase to the minimum wage (potentially more, that's not obvious to me) as the current illegal-employer alliance is broken. As you note, some businesses that depend on sub-minimum-wage labor would go belly up.
PTM: "Wage-price inflationary pressures" means that the price of food would increase. Anything that forces agriculture to pay a living wage will do that. I say it would be a good thing.
Same for restaurants.
If you were just talking about the shock of the immediate impact, there are various ways to minimaze that. But what you said applied to the long-term impact too.
I agree w/ #45 - with all this talk of restaurants and agriculture, I don't think anyone is really grasping the extent to which our entire economy depends on cheap, illegal labor.
Whenever someone starts up with the anti-immigrant rhetoric (usually using the very loaded word 'swarming'), I always ask two things -
1. Do you really think white Americans would take these jobs?
2. And then: do you really want to pay seven bucks a head for lettuce? The price of everything's going up but a thirty dollar salad seems to be the only analogy that resonates for some reason.
It would ruin various industries - which is why, I think, no one has every seriously tried to do anything other than build fences. It satisfies the Minutemen types while ensuring that Big Business remains robust.
Naive questions (I'm frightened of poliblogging because I don't really know anything): isn't at least one of the industries we're talking about (agriculture; I understand that restaurants are genuinely low-margin) both heavily subsidized and overproducing? Doesn't that imply that in fact they could absorb a somewhat higher labor cost without increasing the cost on the consumer end, if subsidies remained in place?
I wonder if there would be some kind of way to implement something like the graduated international minimum wage in a guest worker program, that would guarantee some American labor protections for guest workers, but not all? It might help restaurants, etc. keep operating but put an end to the most egregious exploitation of illegals.
To me, the idea of more expensive lettuce and more expensive restaurants is not merely thinkable, but a good idea, for the reasons I've stated.
And Americans already do work in restaurants, and sometimes in agriculture too. A lot of the Americans who do agricultural work are underpaid Mexican-Americans, but I'm not Mexican-American, and spent close to a year altogether doing farm work in my early days.
Whichever restaurants are most dependent on cheap labor. The "Chinese family-owned" question is a red herring.
Ultimately, if there's a real labor shortage, more immigrants will be invited in to become citizens and work as Americans under the rules other Americans work under -- just like 1900.
What's happening now is all about cheap labor and a two-tier labor force.
Doesn't that imply that in fact they could absorb a somewhat higher labor cost without increasing the cost on the consumer end, if subsidies remained in place?
While I'm probably equally ignorant, I am less frightened of pontificating despite that -- I think you're right about agriculture, or at least that labor inputs are a small enough portion of costs that substituting with documented workers shouldn't make for a crippling rise in food prices. Restaurants, on the other hand -- why shouldn't prices go up to the point where the workers can be paid legally?
If LB's proposal was implemented as written, I figure there would be a substantial labor shortage - there are more jobs currently filled by illegal aliens than there are unemployed people willing to take them. That would be huge, and would have really big effects. That would be a bad thing, and is what I was addressing.
This is a serious question: what's so bad about a labor shortage? The tight labor market in the 90s was rather pleasant, as I remember it.
No, it isn't. The restaurants most dependent on cheap labor are the smallest ones, often owned by immigrants themselves.
I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I'm just pointing out that going after "employers" doesn't mean going after wealthy boardroom executives, and that's worth considering.
This is a serious question: what's so bad about a labor shortage? The tight labor market in the 90s was rather pleasant, as I remember it.
A good question, and of course you're quite right that the late-90's tight labor market worked out rather well. My somewhat baseless intuition is that (short-term, John Emerson is right with his implicit point about long-term balancing) this would be much more extreme.
If one group of immigrants is exploiting a different group, we shouldn't support that. If they can't run their business while paying decent wages, they should get jobs and work for wages themselves.
A lot of the abuse of illegal labor comes from big companies. I don't say it's all of it.
It will make startups harder. I basically deny your premise, that illegals are mostly hired by struggling startup companies. I don't deny that some of those will be hurt, and the low-wage propagandists will make them the poster children for the cause, but I don't think that we should take that stuff seriously.
To put it differently, immigrants can use as much of their own sweat equity to get started as they want, but they should be able to squeeze people who aren't in on the game.
The true family operations will do fine, since they do all the work themselves, but when they try to expand they won't have the advantage of low wages. But they'll be competing with companies paying the same wage they do.
One thing to note is that objections along the lines of the $30-salad apply to any attempt to minimize illegal employment, whether it's done by shipping immigrants back over the border or by penalizing employers. The resulting effect on produce prices is a problem any solution is going to have to face.
Someone, somewhere (Drum?) pointed out that farm labor is a really, really, really small part of the cost of a head of lettuce. The $30 salad is made with red herring.
If our immigration policy is effective at driving wages up, won't that mean that people in immigrant communities will have more money to spend as well? Perhaps that would cushion some of the impact on small businesses that are forced to raise prices.
I think a real problem with this proposal, or with employer sanctions, is that it gives employers a real incentive to basically enslave workers (as happens in, say, Southern Florida). If this system is in place, and I'm an employer who hires illegals, then I'm gonna do two of three things: outsource my labor to someone who's willing to take the risk in exchange for high profits; lie to my employees about their rights, and in order to keep them ignorant, isolate them in employer-provided housing; categorize them as "independent contractors" or some bullshit like that, maybe institutiong a sharecropper-type system.
I don't really know what the answer is. I kind of suspect, though it galls the human rights advocate in me, that the probable solution is something like giving illegals green cards after X amount of time, as long as they haven't committed a felony or anything, and just accepting that employers are going to pay them shit for, say, the first six months they're in the country, and that employees will accept that as the cost of getting into the U.S.
I suspect, though IANAE, that in the possible world where we solve the problem of illegal immigration, that while the immediate sticker shock would be surprising, after time the market would adjust.
And as SCMT said, $30 a salad is probably on the outer rim of possibilities. Lettuce would have to go up more than 300 times in price to get that sort of effect. (counting a tenth of a head of lettuce per salad, current price about $1.50 ;- ) ) My only point was that people were advancing these arguments seemingly against LB's solution, where it really applies to all.
I basically deny your premise, that illegals are mostly hired by struggling startup companies.
This misses the point. The majority of illegals may or may not be hired by larger companies. The majority of companies that would be hurt by this proposal would be the "startups."
As for whether or not a family business needs to hire employees, it depends on what kind of business you're running and how big your family is. If you own a dry cleaners, then maybe you don't. If you own a restaurant or a grocery store, then you probably do.
Again, I'm not necessarily trying to shoot this idea down. But there are real costs, and the more immigrants you actually know the more noticeable those costs are going to be. If right-wingers try to use them as poster children or whatever in order to avoid any reform at all, then by all means deny it in the political arena. But this here is a policy debate.
I guess my position here is that even if the exploitation of undocumented immigrants is necessary to support small immigrant-owned businesses, I don't care -- it's still wrong. Wrong because of the exploitation, and wrong because a system where violations of law are customary and winked at is wrong.
If the success of the small businesses that will be injured as a result of ending the availability of undocumented workers is important, then pass subsidies and help them directly. Helping them by allowing them to exploit workers who have been deprived of the protection of law is unacceptable.
The effects of illegal immigration generally are positive for the upper middle class and bad for the lower middle class and the poor. Cheap restaraunt meals, cheap nannys, cheap yardwork are benefits that accrue to the upper middle class almost exclusively. Poor people don't have nannys.
Since 1970, the real wages of people without college degrees has declined. To a large degree, this is due to illegal immigration. Illegal immigration doesn't really effect the jobs of the upper middle class. Illegal immigrants aren't taking lawyer's jobs.
66: I heard of a California case where immigrant advocates wanted to go to barracks to explain to the immigrant workers what their rights were. These workers didn't have a proper lease, so the owner of the land argued that he had the right to exclude the advocates, because their coming on his property was an interference with his rights--especially since they were informing his workers of their rights in a way that could injure his financial interests. I think that this was a while ago, befor ethe Pacific Legal Foundation got going strong with their absolute property rights stuff. (They were, BTW, pretty pissed about Roberts, because he argued on behalf of teh Tahoe authority (or whatever the combined California/Nevada agency is called) that the regulations restricting development around Lake Tahoe were not a permanent taking.
Certainly there will be costs. Indeed, those who will pay the heaviest costs will be the illegal immigrants themselves. However, as was pointed out (albeit in different words) upthread, if you end up paying a dollar more for your take-out Chinese food, the additional cost you pay is not a cost you should be allowed to avoid. Rather, it is eliminating from the prior price the subsidy you received because the employer and the illegal employee were breaking the law. You were not entitled to that subsidy in the first place.
The practical shortcoming to LB's suggestion is that there likely would be many unintended consequences--reluctance to hire the foreign-born, even more use of independent contractors to shield the larger employer from liability, more use of day laborers etc.
Another point is that exploitation runs along a continuum. Not every employer of illegals is a greedy villain rubbing his hands and cackling like that guy from Dirty Pretty Things. Some of them are struggling to get by themselves. Some even end up paying wages that resemble minimum wage + FICA, and hire illegals not so much for the economic benefits as to hire people from within their communities.
I'm all for employer-based solutions, but I just think the punishment ought to be less harsh for employers who are operating under a certain amount of economic duress - and these employers do exist. But as stated, the punishment is effectively more harsh for them, and that isn't right.
JP, I don't deny that some startups and small businesses will be hurt, and that some of them will be immigrant-run. But I think that you're misrepresenting the scope of it.
In general, well-capitalized businesses are obviously better equipped to handle any event whatsoever. Shoestring operations have problems of many different kinds deriving from that. Life is tough. They should still have to abey labor laws. (I imagine that the abolition of slavery hurt some marginal folk too.)
A lot of the startups are competing against each other already, so to a degree it will even out. They'll still all be trying to get in on the bottom rung of the ladder. Prices will have to be higher for all of them, but everyone above them will have raised prices too, so their relative position will be about the same. I guess that the startup capital needed to pay the higher wage will be a bit higher.
However, this kind of thing is true of everything. Forcing restaurants to handle food in a sanitary way increases the startup cost, and fire safety regulation increases the startup cost, and so on.
You were not entitled to that subsidy in the first place.
Listen, I shop at Target and Trader Joe's just like you, so this really isn't about me. But when I raise these concerns about people who might suffer, I actually have in mind specific people whom I've met. I don't approve of their actions, but it bothers me that comfortable white-collar professionals (no offense) can so casually point the finger at them and advocate policies that will drive some of them out of business. It's easy for you to say.
John, I am aware that these policies have a trickle-up effect. But at least some actual human beings are going to be hurt here, as you yourself acknowledge. I'm not saying that we should excuse them completely, just that some of them should be given some accommodation. If I thought they were the face of evil, I wouldn't care, but it really isn't that simple.
I'm not saying that we should excuse them completely, just that some of them should be given some accommodation.
In my 68, I suggested that to the extent that this is a problem, it's one best solved by subsidy. Regardless of how much small employers deserve help, we are not morally entitled to help them by allowing them to exploit undocumented workers. If we want to help them, give them money, give them credit, assist them however you like. Just don't give them an outlaw workforce they can pay and treat as they wish without restraint of law.
I have no objection to that per se, but I have my doubts as to how effective subsidies are. Too many people are unaware of how to take advantage of them (and this is especially true of immigrants and other "unsophisticated" people).
In any case, if John is right and the majority of illegals are employed by large companies, then giving small businesses a break on how harshly they're punished shouldn't affect the results of the overall policy too much.
JP--how do you deal with LB's point in 76: if we accept the current state of affairs we are (1) turning a blind eye to lawbreaking by workers and employers and (2) allowing a situtation to continue that often results in workers being exploited. The only way legally to address the problem I see you raising is to lower the minimum wage and give out more green cards. I would not have too much problem with that, but I suspect that I am the only commenter here who holds that view. Otherwise, people who are employing illegal workers are going to have to take an economic hit.
We should not lose sight of the fact that in most cases, these employers employ illegal workers not out of love for immigrants, but because it lowers their costs below what they would be if they employed legal workers, contributed to social security, etc. It may be hard for these small employers to make a go of it, and it may--as you say--be easy for me to say, but I do not see why we have to be so concerned about people who are breaking the law by underpaying their workers.
Yes, if we enact any policy that succeeds in lowering the number of illegal immigrants who are around, then it's going to result in all of these employers taking some kind of economic hit. That doesn't necessarily mean that that policy has to hit all of the employers with the same "hefty fine." I think I've made it pretty clear on numerous occasions that I'm not advocating that we "accept the current state of affairs."
JP: I'm not really middle class except in education, and I have known as many illegals and migrants as I have startup businessmen. Their bosses treat them pretty badly. You are really skewing your concern toward the employers rather than the people working for them.
DeLong and libertarians make a different argument: the one who will be really hurt is the guy stuck in Mexico. This applies to any attempt whatever to restrict immigration or trade, by any means. It amounts to protecting American labor against cheaper labor on the other side of the border.
So my argument is somewhat nationalist: treat Americans in America right, and if there aren't enough people to do the work, bring new people in, make them Americans, and treat them right too.
Otherwise we end up with a two-tier labor market, with the illegal tier dragging the other tier down, and we have a big population of helots with no legal rights. Or at worst, a global race to the bottom for wages, which won't end until everyone in the world is employed and there's nowhere else to export jobs to.
I really don't think it's a small business issue. If small businesses hire illegals b/c they are cheaper, it's because they are competing against larger businesses that have the advantage of economies of scale--and because our decision to put the burden of a lot of public interest issues (healthcare, OSHA, etc) on employer-based payroll taxes gives both employers and employees a major incentive to have some folks work under the table, if only in terms of saving on paperwork.
How bold of you.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:21 PM
Fixed. Proofreading, as we can all see, is not my strong point.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:23 PM
And how long do you think those immigrants who turn themselves in to get a green card will remain employed?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:23 PM
30, 40 seconds. But they'll be in the country legally, and can find another job.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:24 PM
And the employer is hit with a heavy fine and is on the hook for any social services consumed by the worker for the rest of their lives.
75% of restaurants, most of which have pretty thing margins, would go belly-up.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:28 PM
This would be a great wedge issue. There are major Republicans on both sides of the line.
Simply enforcing ordinary labor laws would end some of the problem. A lot of illegals work mostly under the table.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:29 PM
And so they don't hire the undocumented worker in the first place. If they can't afford to hire a worker legally, they shouldn't be hiring.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:29 PM
This seems like it would greatly increase the number of immigrants coming here, since the incentive is now that much greater. So I imagine there would be a lot more opposition than there already is from the "nativist" sorts of people who think hispanic immigrants are bad for society. ESL programs would expand, permanent spanish speaking communities would sprout up everywhere, etc. would be the argument.
Also, it seems like your plan depends on people initially getting here illegally, which seems to be an odd legal position. Unless I'm misreading it, and that's just a means to get to your stage 2 plan.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:31 PM
7 to 5.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:31 PM
The restaurants compete with each other. If prices went up, people would go out to restaurants less. Essentially, though, increasing the cost of restaurant labor is one of the goals. The restaurant experience is subsidized by underpaid workers without benefits.
yeah, that's an irregular use of the word "subsidy".
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:32 PM
Obviously they shouldn't. But they do. And unless there's an amnesty period for employers who currently have undocumented workers, some of those employers may be hit with more fines and financial responsibilities than they can bear. Of course, then you'd have scuzzy companies like Wal-Mart, whom you want to get hit, taking advantage of it (either that, or locking their employees in the stores at all times).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:34 PM
This seems like it would greatly increase the number of immigrants coming here, since the incentive is now that much greater.
No, the incentive is supposed to be lesser. Under this system, no one will hire an undocumented worker -- the penalty is just too onerous. If the demand for undocumented workers dries up, the undocumented workers will stop coming. (And then, I expect, we'd end up loosening legal immigration and letting many of the same people in legally.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:34 PM
I dropped a sentence in 10. Restaurants might go out of business because fewer people went out, but if the laws were applied evenly, no restaurant would lose business to any other restaurant. I strongly doubt that the drop would be 75%.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:34 PM
And unless there's an amnesty period for employers who currently have undocumented workers,
And this sort of thing is certainly possible -- a year's warning before the program kicked in or something like that?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:36 PM
Not because fewer people go out, but because restaurants are notoriously staffed largely by illegal immigrants (in the kitchens, anyway), and if they all went out and became legal, simultaneously giving the restaurant a huge financial burden, that could easily cause a lot of problems.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:37 PM
Anyway, I'm going to bed -- I'll discuss further tomorrow.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:37 PM
Hey—what? You can't do that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:38 PM
12-Ah, ok, I see.
The lag time between stopping illegal immigrants from coming and allowing more workers in legally could be a problem, but I don't know how serious a concern that is.
Also, I've heard people talk about wanting the workers without putting them on the path to citizenship, but again I don't know how relevant that would be in practice.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:39 PM
An US economic collapse would also help decrease the demand for immigrant labor. Like in the 1930s.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:42 PM
"An US"?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:42 PM
Lots of deportations in the 30s, too. That's probably what the grace period would look like.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:43 PM
Wolfson -- there might be a rough transition, but once the malefactors went out of business, new restaurants would open up to replaces them which would be more careful about hiring illegals. After having lost the illegal-labor subsidy, these would be more expensive and fewer people would go out.
This is all fantasy, of course. There will never be a law which harms the interest of a large, organized group of property-owners.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:43 PM
It was "an economic collapse," and then I realized I should specify the country. Then I didn't preview.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:44 PM
A job for a month? Or jobs for a month? Because if it's the former and I'm John P. Restauranteur, I'm hiring illegals and cutting them loose at 27 days.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 8:55 PM
Maybe I've missed something, but I think I would open a store called, "Work for a Month," sell jobs there for slightly more than the current cost of acquiring an illegal green card. When the govt. came knocking, I'd declare bankruptcy. They get green cards, I get cash, and the govt. gets screwed.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:19 PM
Does the title of this post imply that you are an illegal immigrant, Liz?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:40 PM
One thing I need to know to evaluate this, and don't, is why employer sanctions turned out to work so horribly last time they were tried.
OK, here's some of it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 9:43 PM
LB, if I ever get elected to political office, I'm hiring you.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 10:56 PM
In the short term, I think this would increase the number of people trying to get into the country illegally because they would have so much more to gain under LB's proposed system. That would probably also lead to more border-crossing deaths (hundreds of people already die each year while trying to cross the border). The illegal immigrants who make it across the border would have to work in a never-ending succession of shitty jobs (because they can't work for anybody for longer than a month).
Perhaps this would help cut down illegal immigration in the long term--migrants will stop coming in large numbers if they hear it's so awful that staying in their home countries is actually better--but I see this having disastrous consequences in the short term. But, hell, maybe that's what needs to happen because I really have no idea what a good solution would look like. So much of the problem has to do with the political and economic situations in migrants' home countries.
Posted by singular girl | Link to this comment | 02- 5-06 11:35 PM
So here's the problem: Why couldn't I and my fellow restaurant owners gang together and create the illegal immigrant employer cartel? Any undocumented employee is fired 29 days after s/he starts. The restaurant down the street hires them. Or perhaps hires a fresh set of undocumented workers from across the border (since we've just dramatically increased the incentive to cross the border, they're all doing it). So now there's a large large pool of illegal immigrants all here with the hope of being employed for a month, we're busy hiring and firing them within a month, wages are going down because there's just so much supply, illegal immigrants are still livign shitty lives, racists have all their worst fears of their pure whiteness being overrun by dirty Mexicans from south of the border confirmed in spades....
Posted by wi | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:16 AM
Wolfson's Nathan Newman link is pretty good. The AFL-CIO has stopped supporting employer sanctions, in favor of stricter enforcement of labor law in general, for legals and illegals alike.
The real problem with LB's proposal is that it would would make large groups of employers unhappy, along with their customers and associates, and the political pressure would quickly become unbearable and the law would either be rewritten or nullified by non-enforcement.
For the same reasons, I doubt that the Newman / AFL-CIO labor laws would go anywhere; they'd have a similiar negative effect on employers who depend on cheap illegal labor.
The decline in labor's political influence has been pretty steady since about 1976. Strong opposition to unions has always been a core Republican belief (even of "moderate" Republicans) and a fair proportion of Democrats are effectively anti-union. So I don't see the AFL-CIO proposal getting far without an enormous change in the political climate.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 5:11 AM
Well, you could just make it a lot easier to get green cards or guest-worker cards-- perhaps by just allowing any able-bodied person to have one. Why require them to work for a month?
It is suggested that making it easier to get into the country encourages people to go back home more often, maintain ties to their hometowns, and eventually return there...
Proposing an increase in legal immigration as a solution could be a very good wedge: it forces anti-immigration people to admit that they just don't like Mexicans.
Posted by Aaron Weber | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:34 AM
25: A solution there might be personal liability for whoever is responsible for making hiring decisions -- if the corporation goes under, the person who did the hiring is individually liable.
24, 30: So cut it down to two weeks. There is some length of tenure under which it's not worth the hassle to keep hiring people (that is, if you have to hire a new dishwasher every two weeks, it would actually be cheaper to hire a legal resident for minimum wage.)
29: You're right that the short-term disruption would be a problem, until potential immigrants realized that undocumented work was no longer going to be freely available in the US. There are probably measures that could be taken to minimize that disruption (publicity campaigns explaining the situation in countries that are large sources of undocumented workers?) but I'm not saying that the transition wouldn't be hard.
22, 31: Oh, absolutely it's fantasy -- the employers who profit from undocumented labor now would never let this happen.
The AFL-CIO approach has some commonalities with this idea -- they're both trying to make undocumented workers no longer outlaws -- in my case by bringing them into legal status, in the AFL's case by expanding legal protections to cover undocumented workers. I don't like the AFL approach, because I have a real problem with any policy that rests on not enforcing laws, rather than changing laws that should not be enforced, but it does address the same problems.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:42 AM
A solution there might be personal liability for whoever is responsible for making hiring decisions -- if the corporation goes under, the person who did the hiring is individually liable.
Say goodbye to anyone who looks Mexican, even if they are citizens, getting hired for any job, anywhere. Why take the personal chance? Enron goes belly-up, and you're responsible personally for the social services of a 100 person cleaning crew, for example? Or even 10 traders?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 7:50 AM
You'd have to couple it with either a large increase in legal immigration or issuing green cards retroactively to illegals that have already worked 30 days (preferably both).
Otherwise some businesses would go belly up, and other sectors (agriculture) would have wage-based inflationary pressures.
But, I really like the root of breaking the illegal-employer alliance.
Posted by ptm | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:19 AM
Maybe this falls outside the purview of the hypothetical, but after the Republicans regain office in part by taking advantage of immigration transition mayhem sparked by the Breathian administration, they will extend/reinstate employer amnesty. I think the transition costs are too steep, but I'm not sure where to tweak them without (as BWo noted) giving the major abusers a free ride.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:22 AM
I think that SCMT's point that nobody who looks even vaguely Mexican, even if the individual is a citizen, will ever get hired if this strict individual liability is implemented.
And where is apo to say that alldark people are Mexicans? Because I have another serious comment to make, and I could use his help deriailing this thread. I don't read daily kos regularly anymore, but digby linked to this story by mbw (who writes wampum) which you must all read. And most of the comments are good too. This really needs to get out into the MSM. It's the Jack Abramoff story that nobody's covering outside of Indian newspapers. Abramoff has been using Indian gambling money and, no doubt, funds from the extractive industries to operate a slush fund to buy off Republicans to prevent an audit of oil/gas/ranching industry books. Such an audit would show that the Indians have been massively underpaid for the minerals in their lands. Conveniently enough recordsat the Department of the Interior have been destroyed. pre-Republicans there were a lot of delaying tactics from the Clinton administration, but it's probably Norton who destroyed the records. Ironicallyenough, there's now pressure on the Indian tribes to settle fr pennies on the dollar, since Abramoff is now tainted goods. If anyone can think of reporters who might be intereted in getting this story out, do e-mail them.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:23 AM
Otherwise some businesses would go belly up, and other sectors (agriculture) would have wage-based inflationary pressures.
As I said, to a degree these are goals. Both restaurants and agriculture depend on cheap illegal labor, and prices will go up without it. There'd be a creative-destruction event, and the companies who could function in the new environment would stay in business.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:23 AM
Damn, I forgot to provide the dkos link.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:32 AM
I like the realism of the proposal. A few potential problems and questions:
1. How is the illegal alien going to show that he has been working for the required period of time? If he does not have any reliable way of demonstrating this, then he will be less likely to risk his stay in this country by going to the authorities. And if he is not going to risk going to the authorities, then the scheme may not work.
2. Your proposal will drive a wedge within the illegal immigrant community as well, especially between new illegal immigrants and those who have been here for a number of years. What will the effects of this wedge be, though? Will strong norms develop against reporting employers, in an effort to allow family members and friends to successfully cross over to the US too?
3. What type of liability are we going to impose on the employers? Strict liability? What type of liability do we currently impose? If we pierce the corporate veil, are we still going to hold the corporation liable as well?
4. Is it really the case that illegal aliens represent the desired skill-set that we want to allow into the country?
5. Why not just build a huge wall, pour money into border patrols, and gradually reduce the illegal immigrant population via aggressive investigation and deportation? (I'm not proposing this, mind you) Aren't we just rewarding illegal behavior and encouraging it as well?
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 8:49 AM
I like LB's post. Right now illegal immigration policy is rather like attempting to stop underage drinking by picking up the kids from the bar and driving them across the street onto campus, or, better yet, guarding the main intersection but allowing the side streets to remain unpatrolled.
We could curb underage drinking by patrolling all areas in front of bars, or we could, as we do, fine bars and shut them down if they don't comply with the law.
I do think it's an unelectable plank, though. Easier to blame it on dark poor people speaking a different language. (Arguments I've heard: Hey, if Mexico had a good economy, no one would come over! It's THEIR FAULT. Why should we pay for their (citizen) kids to go to school?)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:19 AM
[i haven't read any of the comments, and am in rush, but...]
how is the solution not a form of "amnesty"? as the Prez has discovered with his (not entirely bad) immigration proposal, anything that has the slightest whiff of the a-word is a political non-starter.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:21 AM
Andrew, isn't 5 a bit of a red herring? If it's sanctioned, then the argument 'we shouldn't encourage illegal behavior.'
4., also. There may not be an educated skill set, but it does seem to be a skill set that is needed but that no employer wants to pay minimum/living wages for. I think the right reaction would be to go after the employer, or the minimum wage (depending on your bent), but denying that the skill set is needed doesn't seem to be the right approach.
I agree that 1) presents a large problem.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:25 AM
there should be an ending along the lines of 'doesn't hold water.' to the first sentence.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:26 AM
"to a degree these are goals. Both restaurants and agriculture depend on cheap illegal labor, and prices will go up without it. There'd be a creative-destruction event, and the companies who could function in the new environment would stay in business. "
I'm not sure we're discussing the same thing.
If LB's proposal was implemented as written, I figure there would be a substantial labor shortage - there are more jobs currently filled by illegal aliens than there are unemployed people willing to take them. That would be huge, and would have really big effects. That would be a bad thing, and is what I was addressing.
If LB's proposal was implemented with properly increased legal immigration, then wages would increase to the minimum wage (potentially more, that's not obvious to me) as the current illegal-employer alliance is broken. As you note, some businesses that depend on sub-minimum-wage labor would go belly up.
Posted by ptm | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:30 AM
PTM: "Wage-price inflationary pressures" means that the price of food would increase. Anything that forces agriculture to pay a living wage will do that. I say it would be a good thing.
Same for restaurants.
If you were just talking about the shock of the immediate impact, there are various ways to minimaze that. But what you said applied to the long-term impact too.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:36 AM
I agree w/ #45 - with all this talk of restaurants and agriculture, I don't think anyone is really grasping the extent to which our entire economy depends on cheap, illegal labor.
Whenever someone starts up with the anti-immigrant rhetoric (usually using the very loaded word 'swarming'), I always ask two things -
1. Do you really think white Americans would take these jobs?
2. And then: do you really want to pay seven bucks a head for lettuce? The price of everything's going up but a thirty dollar salad seems to be the only analogy that resonates for some reason.
It would ruin various industries - which is why, I think, no one has every seriously tried to do anything other than build fences. It satisfies the Minutemen types while ensuring that Big Business remains robust.
Posted by Moira | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:42 AM
Naive questions (I'm frightened of poliblogging because I don't really know anything): isn't at least one of the industries we're talking about (agriculture; I understand that restaurants are genuinely low-margin) both heavily subsidized and overproducing? Doesn't that imply that in fact they could absorb a somewhat higher labor cost without increasing the cost on the consumer end, if subsidies remained in place?
I wonder if there would be some kind of way to implement something like the graduated international minimum wage in a guest worker program, that would guarantee some American labor protections for guest workers, but not all? It might help restaurants, etc. keep operating but put an end to the most egregious exploitation of illegals.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:55 AM
Yes, but which restaurants?
This would probably put every family-owned Chinese restaurant in Southern California out of business. TGI Fridays? Not so much.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 10:58 AM
(Hyperbole, of course.)
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:00 AM
To me, the idea of more expensive lettuce and more expensive restaurants is not merely thinkable, but a good idea, for the reasons I've stated.
And Americans already do work in restaurants, and sometimes in agriculture too. A lot of the Americans who do agricultural work are underpaid Mexican-Americans, but I'm not Mexican-American, and spent close to a year altogether doing farm work in my early days.
From time to time I was broke, that's why.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:01 AM
Whichever restaurants are most dependent on cheap labor. The "Chinese family-owned" question is a red herring.
Ultimately, if there's a real labor shortage, more immigrants will be invited in to become citizens and work as Americans under the rules other Americans work under -- just like 1900.
What's happening now is all about cheap labor and a two-tier labor force.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:05 AM
Doesn't that imply that in fact they could absorb a somewhat higher labor cost without increasing the cost on the consumer end, if subsidies remained in place?
While I'm probably equally ignorant, I am less frightened of pontificating despite that -- I think you're right about agriculture, or at least that labor inputs are a small enough portion of costs that substituting with documented workers shouldn't make for a crippling rise in food prices. Restaurants, on the other hand -- why shouldn't prices go up to the point where the workers can be paid legally?
If LB's proposal was implemented as written, I figure there would be a substantial labor shortage - there are more jobs currently filled by illegal aliens than there are unemployed people willing to take them. That would be huge, and would have really big effects. That would be a bad thing, and is what I was addressing.
This is a serious question: what's so bad about a labor shortage? The tight labor market in the 90s was rather pleasant, as I remember it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:10 AM
No, it isn't. The restaurants most dependent on cheap labor are the smallest ones, often owned by immigrants themselves.
I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I'm just pointing out that going after "employers" doesn't mean going after wealthy boardroom executives, and that's worth considering.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:16 AM
This is a serious question: what's so bad about a labor shortage? The tight labor market in the 90s was rather pleasant, as I remember it.
A good question, and of course you're quite right that the late-90's tight labor market worked out rather well. My somewhat baseless intuition is that (short-term, John Emerson is right with his implicit point about long-term balancing) this would be much more extreme.
Posted by ptm | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:16 AM
If one group of immigrants is exploiting a different group, we shouldn't support that. If they can't run their business while paying decent wages, they should get jobs and work for wages themselves.
A lot of the abuse of illegal labor comes from big companies. I don't say it's all of it.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:25 AM
The big companies will survive. The small ones won't. I suspect this would end up making class stratification and mobility worse, not better.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:41 AM
It will make startups harder. I basically deny your premise, that illegals are mostly hired by struggling startup companies. I don't deny that some of those will be hurt, and the low-wage propagandists will make them the poster children for the cause, but I don't think that we should take that stuff seriously.
To put it differently, immigrants can use as much of their own sweat equity to get started as they want, but they should be able to squeeze people who aren't in on the game.
The true family operations will do fine, since they do all the work themselves, but when they try to expand they won't have the advantage of low wages. But they'll be competing with companies paying the same wage they do.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:47 AM
."...they shouldn't be able to squeeze people who aren't in on the game."
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:48 AM
One thing to note is that objections along the lines of the $30-salad apply to any attempt to minimize illegal employment, whether it's done by shipping immigrants back over the border or by penalizing employers. The resulting effect on produce prices is a problem any solution is going to have to face.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:50 AM
Someone, somewhere (Drum?) pointed out that farm labor is a really, really, really small part of the cost of a head of lettuce. The $30 salad is made with red herring.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:52 AM
If our immigration policy is effective at driving wages up, won't that mean that people in immigrant communities will have more money to spend as well? Perhaps that would cushion some of the impact on small businesses that are forced to raise prices.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:53 AM
The $30 salad is made with red herring
Very nice.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:55 AM
I think a real problem with this proposal, or with employer sanctions, is that it gives employers a real incentive to basically enslave workers (as happens in, say, Southern Florida). If this system is in place, and I'm an employer who hires illegals, then I'm gonna do two of three things: outsource my labor to someone who's willing to take the risk in exchange for high profits; lie to my employees about their rights, and in order to keep them ignorant, isolate them in employer-provided housing; categorize them as "independent contractors" or some bullshit like that, maybe institutiong a sharecropper-type system.
I don't really know what the answer is. I kind of suspect, though it galls the human rights advocate in me, that the probable solution is something like giving illegals green cards after X amount of time, as long as they haven't committed a felony or anything, and just accepting that employers are going to pay them shit for, say, the first six months they're in the country, and that employees will accept that as the cost of getting into the U.S.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 11:59 AM
I suspect, though IANAE, that in the possible world where we solve the problem of illegal immigration, that while the immediate sticker shock would be surprising, after time the market would adjust.
And as SCMT said, $30 a salad is probably on the outer rim of possibilities. Lettuce would have to go up more than 300 times in price to get that sort of effect. (counting a tenth of a head of lettuce per salad, current price about $1.50 ;- ) ) My only point was that people were advancing these arguments seemingly against LB's solution, where it really applies to all.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:00 PM
Don't we have laws against Pullman towns already?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:03 PM
I basically deny your premise, that illegals are mostly hired by struggling startup companies.
This misses the point. The majority of illegals may or may not be hired by larger companies. The majority of companies that would be hurt by this proposal would be the "startups."
As for whether or not a family business needs to hire employees, it depends on what kind of business you're running and how big your family is. If you own a dry cleaners, then maybe you don't. If you own a restaurant or a grocery store, then you probably do.
Again, I'm not necessarily trying to shoot this idea down. But there are real costs, and the more immigrants you actually know the more noticeable those costs are going to be. If right-wingers try to use them as poster children or whatever in order to avoid any reform at all, then by all means deny it in the political arena. But this here is a policy debate.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:14 PM
I guess my position here is that even if the exploitation of undocumented immigrants is necessary to support small immigrant-owned businesses, I don't care -- it's still wrong. Wrong because of the exploitation, and wrong because a system where violations of law are customary and winked at is wrong.
If the success of the small businesses that will be injured as a result of ending the availability of undocumented workers is important, then pass subsidies and help them directly. Helping them by allowing them to exploit workers who have been deprived of the protection of law is unacceptable.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:20 PM
The effects of illegal immigration generally are positive for the upper middle class and bad for the lower middle class and the poor. Cheap restaraunt meals, cheap nannys, cheap yardwork are benefits that accrue to the upper middle class almost exclusively. Poor people don't have nannys.
Since 1970, the real wages of people without college degrees has declined. To a large degree, this is due to illegal immigration. Illegal immigration doesn't really effect the jobs of the upper middle class. Illegal immigrants aren't taking lawyer's jobs.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:27 PM
66: I heard of a California case where immigrant advocates wanted to go to barracks to explain to the immigrant workers what their rights were. These workers didn't have a proper lease, so the owner of the land argued that he had the right to exclude the advocates, because their coming on his property was an interference with his rights--especially since they were informing his workers of their rights in a way that could injure his financial interests. I think that this was a while ago, befor ethe Pacific Legal Foundation got going strong with their absolute property rights stuff. (They were, BTW, pretty pissed about Roberts, because he argued on behalf of teh Tahoe authority (or whatever the combined California/Nevada agency is called) that the regulations restricting development around Lake Tahoe were not a permanent taking.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:28 PM
re: 67
Certainly there will be costs. Indeed, those who will pay the heaviest costs will be the illegal immigrants themselves. However, as was pointed out (albeit in different words) upthread, if you end up paying a dollar more for your take-out Chinese food, the additional cost you pay is not a cost you should be allowed to avoid. Rather, it is eliminating from the prior price the subsidy you received because the employer and the illegal employee were breaking the law. You were not entitled to that subsidy in the first place.
The practical shortcoming to LB's suggestion is that there likely would be many unintended consequences--reluctance to hire the foreign-born, even more use of independent contractors to shield the larger employer from liability, more use of day laborers etc.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:31 PM
Another point is that exploitation runs along a continuum. Not every employer of illegals is a greedy villain rubbing his hands and cackling like that guy from Dirty Pretty Things. Some of them are struggling to get by themselves. Some even end up paying wages that resemble minimum wage + FICA, and hire illegals not so much for the economic benefits as to hire people from within their communities.
I'm all for employer-based solutions, but I just think the punishment ought to be less harsh for employers who are operating under a certain amount of economic duress - and these employers do exist. But as stated, the punishment is effectively more harsh for them, and that isn't right.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:33 PM
re: 68 and 69--what they said
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:35 PM
JP, I don't deny that some startups and small businesses will be hurt, and that some of them will be immigrant-run. But I think that you're misrepresenting the scope of it.
In general, well-capitalized businesses are obviously better equipped to handle any event whatsoever. Shoestring operations have problems of many different kinds deriving from that. Life is tough. They should still have to abey labor laws. (I imagine that the abolition of slavery hurt some marginal folk too.)
A lot of the startups are competing against each other already, so to a degree it will even out. They'll still all be trying to get in on the bottom rung of the ladder. Prices will have to be higher for all of them, but everyone above them will have raised prices too, so their relative position will be about the same. I guess that the startup capital needed to pay the higher wage will be a bit higher.
However, this kind of thing is true of everything. Forcing restaurants to handle food in a sanitary way increases the startup cost, and fire safety regulation increases the startup cost, and so on.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:41 PM
You were not entitled to that subsidy in the first place.
Listen, I shop at Target and Trader Joe's just like you, so this really isn't about me. But when I raise these concerns about people who might suffer, I actually have in mind specific people whom I've met. I don't approve of their actions, but it bothers me that comfortable white-collar professionals (no offense) can so casually point the finger at them and advocate policies that will drive some of them out of business. It's easy for you to say.
John, I am aware that these policies have a trickle-up effect. But at least some actual human beings are going to be hurt here, as you yourself acknowledge. I'm not saying that we should excuse them completely, just that some of them should be given some accommodation. If I thought they were the face of evil, I wouldn't care, but it really isn't that simple.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:54 PM
I'm not saying that we should excuse them completely, just that some of them should be given some accommodation.
In my 68, I suggested that to the extent that this is a problem, it's one best solved by subsidy. Regardless of how much small employers deserve help, we are not morally entitled to help them by allowing them to exploit undocumented workers. If we want to help them, give them money, give them credit, assist them however you like. Just don't give them an outlaw workforce they can pay and treat as they wish without restraint of law.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 12:58 PM
I have no objection to that per se, but I have my doubts as to how effective subsidies are. Too many people are unaware of how to take advantage of them (and this is especially true of immigrants and other "unsophisticated" people).
In any case, if John is right and the majority of illegals are employed by large companies, then giving small businesses a break on how harshly they're punished shouldn't affect the results of the overall policy too much.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 1:03 PM
re: 76-77
JP--how do you deal with LB's point in 76: if we accept the current state of affairs we are (1) turning a blind eye to lawbreaking by workers and employers and (2) allowing a situtation to continue that often results in workers being exploited. The only way legally to address the problem I see you raising is to lower the minimum wage and give out more green cards. I would not have too much problem with that, but I suspect that I am the only commenter here who holds that view. Otherwise, people who are employing illegal workers are going to have to take an economic hit.
We should not lose sight of the fact that in most cases, these employers employ illegal workers not out of love for immigrants, but because it lowers their costs below what they would be if they employed legal workers, contributed to social security, etc. It may be hard for these small employers to make a go of it, and it may--as you say--be easy for me to say, but I do not see why we have to be so concerned about people who are breaking the law by underpaying their workers.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 1:20 PM
Yes, if we enact any policy that succeeds in lowering the number of illegal immigrants who are around, then it's going to result in all of these employers taking some kind of economic hit. That doesn't necessarily mean that that policy has to hit all of the employers with the same "hefty fine." I think I've made it pretty clear on numerous occasions that I'm not advocating that we "accept the current state of affairs."
I'm all for giving out more green cards.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 1:29 PM
JP: I'm not really middle class except in education, and I have known as many illegals and migrants as I have startup businessmen. Their bosses treat them pretty badly. You are really skewing your concern toward the employers rather than the people working for them.
DeLong and libertarians make a different argument: the one who will be really hurt is the guy stuck in Mexico. This applies to any attempt whatever to restrict immigration or trade, by any means. It amounts to protecting American labor against cheaper labor on the other side of the border.
So my argument is somewhat nationalist: treat Americans in America right, and if there aren't enough people to do the work, bring new people in, make them Americans, and treat them right too.
Otherwise we end up with a two-tier labor market, with the illegal tier dragging the other tier down, and we have a big population of helots with no legal rights. Or at worst, a global race to the bottom for wages, which won't end until everyone in the world is employed and there's nowhere else to export jobs to.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 1:30 PM
I really don't think it's a small business issue. If small businesses hire illegals b/c they are cheaper, it's because they are competing against larger businesses that have the advantage of economies of scale--and because our decision to put the burden of a lot of public interest issues (healthcare, OSHA, etc) on employer-based payroll taxes gives both employers and employees a major incentive to have some folks work under the table, if only in terms of saving on paperwork.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 6-06 1:32 PM