$50/hr over a 40-hour week is a six-figure annual salary. I'd seriously consider turning tricks outside the free health clinic for that. What an unbelievably stupid thing to say.
Yeah. It just reeks of being unable to even conceptualize the existence of someone who makes less than $100K.
For one terrible term, Chapel Hill and Durham were represented in Congress by a Republican, Fred Heineman. The guy he beat, David Price, won the seat back in the next election and has held it ever since. More than anything else (aside from representing one of the bluest districts in the South), what sunk Heineman's re-election chances was the following nugget of wisdom:
[Heineman said] his combined congressional salary and police pension (as an officer in New York City and the chief in Raleigh) of $183,500 made him lower middle class. "When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000," Heineman was quoted as saying, "that's middle class."
The median income for a family of four in NC at the time was below $50K.
I wouldn't vote for McCain in a thousand years, because he is indeed wrong on nearly every issue. But at least he is relatively honest and worthy of admiration. In terms of political style, the contrast between McCain and the current admin could not be more stark.
I think this is how a lot of people left of center feel about McCain: we wouldn't vote for him, but don't loathe him the way we loathe Bush. And this is a problem for the Dems if McCain gets nominated: loathing gets out the vote better than mere disagreement.
loathing gets out the vote better than mere disagreement.
I can't make a case for this but my gut impulse is to disagree: I think loathing fosters fatalistic complacency.
he is relatively honest
I dispute this assertion, unless you mean "relatively" as relative to a diagnosed pathological liar.
It seemed to me kth's comparison was implicitly "relative to Bush", so yeah.
It just reeks of being unable to even conceptualize the existence of someone who makes less than $100K.
I agree with the proposition that it is McCain's style rather than his substantive positions that appeal to Democrats. And I agree that the things he was reported to have said were not well thought out--it generally is not prudent to joke about serious things, because someone will try to take your words seriously.
But come on, do you honestly think Senator McCain meant what he said literally? As to your claim that he cannot conceive making less than $100 thousand a year, as you know, he was a Naval officer for over 20 years, and at his highest paid, never made $100 thousand a year. Indeed, I suspect that for much of the time he was an officer your mother, as a flight attendant, and he probably made about the same (not to mention the six year stretch where his hosts in Hanoi interfered with his ability to collect his pay). He has been in government much of the time since then. While he is no doubt well paid, but you likely make more than he does.
it is McCain's style rather than his substantive positions that appeal to Democrats
Totally. His substantive positions are barely distinguishable from Jesse Helms.
I tend to agree with 5 -- the fact that Bush is even a candidate leaves me with a sort of sick despair that creates apathy. Voting against McCain would at least feel more normal, and might be easier to get active about.
I tend to agree with 5
Hey, thanks LB! I like to get agreed with. Now I'm suddenly interested in word choice -- is "apathy" precisely the same as "fatalistic complacency"? I probably would have used your word if I had thought of it but now I'm thinking the phrase I chose describes a little better the miasma of funk that has settled 'round my shoulders during the Bush years.
To 8: Well, if it was a joke, he stuck with it after being challenged. And the point he was making, that Americans wouldn't so some jobs even for decent wages, is subject to the same criticism even if you don't take $50/hr literally.
But yes, certainly, he's made less than six figures in the past, and isn't insanely high-income now. "Unable to even conceptualize the existence of" was unjustifiable hyperbole -- "doesn't seem all that bothered about" might have been better.
I actually just got off the phone with my mother, and fact-checked the post with her. I can confirm that yes, she would pick lettuce for those wages.
she would pick lettuce for those wages
Wouldn't we all.
While farm labor (usually harvesting tomatos) was a pretty normal summer job where I was raised, my only foray into farm labor was helping harvest apricots. Specifically, we were slicing and pitting them by hand, piece-work. It sucked, and I only made about $.25 an hour. I did not last long.
Man. Did they even have a minimum wage when you were a kid? Or was the wooly mammoth lobby still blocking it?
On The Daily Show last night, Stewart pressed McCain on whether he wasn't going into "crazy base world", as I recall it. McCain finally answers, "Yes, I'm afraid I am." That does sound relatively honest, i.e., yes, I'm going to toady people I despise so I can get votes and implement policies you'll hate. But it doesn't change the fact that no, he's not on our side.
I would go for an argument, though, that the world would be a better place had he won the nomination in 2000.
I'm pretty sure the least I've ever made was $3.50/hr. I think the minimum was $3.35, and we were a hair over it. I didn't even get a paycheck on that job (kitchen help, bussing tables in a fish store/seafood shack. I still don't like lobster much), just a brown-paper envelope full of bills and change out of the register.
I wonder whether, had he been nominated in 2000, his positions would be more moderate than they are now.
I've made $2.01 / hr., which was under the then-minimum of $3.35, but justified and I think legal on the assumption that staff busing tables were tippable and therefore could be paid less than the minimum. Needless to add, but: when did you last tip the person who bused your table?
I still don't like lobster much
That's just crazy talk.
Did they even have a minimum wage when you were a kid?
They did. I think it was around $1.60 an hour (but there might have been a slightly lower minimum wage for farm work, and of course farms got around the minimum wage by making the work piece-work). Actually, adjusted for inflation, $1.60 is likely a lot more than the minimum wage now. I remember buying gas for under $.30 a gallon and candy bars for a nickle (and mammoth steak, that was the best!)
I wonder whether, had he been nominated in 2000, his positions would be more moderate than they are now.
One of my assumptions in the aforementioned argument would have to be "yes"; that his campaign was clearly aimed at capturing middle-class Clinton voters for a competent and less-socially-right-wing Republican Party.
So if McCain wins the election in 2000, the assumption going forward is that this is a workable strategy, moderate Republicanism. He doesn't e.g. put John Ashcroft in his cabinet.
If McCain loses the election in 2000, it's possible that the assumption going forward is that Clintonism, now Goreism, is still the posture to emulate. But that's harder to tell.
19: I'll eat lobster salad, but the smell of boiling lobster does not make me happy. I spent hours that summer cracking lobsters and picking the meat out, and the smell got revolting.
That was back in the period of my adolescence during which I was growing so fast that I'd faint if I went more than about three hours without food, and I passed out and did a nosedive into a pile of lobster shells one day. Not a happy experience.
To me, McCain's popularity shows that simple language can be really seductive. Especially when it plays into the audience's pre-existing beliefs ("Immigrants take dirty jobs that Americans never would").
Two ways to address this are to get simple back, or explain why it isn't simple. Lefties seem to have a hard time doing the former at all, and the latter often comes off as a lecture.
One exception: the Taco Bell campaign, in which farmworker advocates successfully got wages raised by arguing that it would cost consumers only a penny per pound of tomatoes.
And on the annual-salary question: The Walk-a-Mile project invites legislators to try living on a welfare-level income for month, to see what it's like to be a recipient. Most of the lawmakers who participate seem to be left-leaning, FWIW.
On preview: I understand that busboys* usually get a cut of the server's tip (so when you tip the server, remember that you're also tipping the busboy, the expeditor, and maybe the seating hostess).
*Is there a better term?
of course farms got around the minimum wage by making the work piece-work
I should know this -- how does the minimum wage apply to piece-work? I mean, if it doesn't at all, anything could be piece-work.
busboys* usually get a cut of the server's tip (so when you tip the server, remember that you're also tipping the busboy, the expeditor, and maybe the seating hostess).
Sure. It's up to the waitress to make an honest statement and the kitchen manager—to make an honest division. So: how much do you trust your fellow under-paid workers?
*Is there a better term?
Not a gender-neutral one, that I know.
I made $1.45/hr parking cars in 1972. After the summer was over, I held on to that job through the fall and winter, essentially being paid to study in a shack on weekends.
And money went a lot farther: a quarter's tuition and fees were $270.
I should know this -- how does the minimum wage apply to piece-work? I mean, if it doesn't at all, anything could be piece-work.
Don't know. I assume that there are laws preventing employers from getting around minimum wage laws in this way, but since most of the workers were high school kids who wanted, but did not desperately need, the money and (mostly Mexican) migrant workers, I do not think the farmers worried too much about the fine points of the law back then (or even now, for all I know).
And money went a lot farther
Totally true. On the other hand, my base pay as a newly-enlisted Private in 1974 was $326.10 a month, so it was not all living in the land of milk and honey.
Two ways to address this are to get simple back, or explain why it isn't simple. Lefties seem to have a hard time doing the former at all, and the latter often comes off as a lecture.
I think the audience here did a pretty good job of getting simple in return. The simple answer to "Americans won't do those jobs even for decent wages" is "Damn straight we would, sign me up!"
28: Subject to ambiguity, if you're working with amorous medievalists.
amorous medievalists
The restaurants are full of them, you know.
The restaurants are sufficiently full of amorous patrons that you'd prefer to avoid that kind of ambiguity.
amorous medievalists
The restaurants are full of them, you know.
Eating your forebears is a harsh method of social progress, but if that's how it's going to go, I'll have the Enlightenment au poivre.
Or maybe the Industrial Revolution, charcoal grilled, with gin.
They serve the new panta gruel in gargantuan proportions, often with a light rabelaise sauce.
Always with the cannibalism
She's a man-eater.
Dumb Question for Idealist: how did they calculate the piece-work (a term with which I'mnot familiar)? Was it bushels of peaches sliced?
The least I ever made was $3.85/hr, when I was fourteen.
It's hard to answer McCain's statement, since what resonates isn't $50/hr (damn straight! and it doesn't require metaphysics!) but the idea that 'Americans don't want to do farmwork because it's a shit job that doesn't pay well, and Americans definitely don't want to pay $10 for a head of lettuce.'
The simple answer to $10/head lettuce is to call bullshit. Labor costs are a small enough part of produce costs that there's room for a lot of motion in wages for not all that much motion in prices.
I don't have an opinion about McCain, but I do believe there are some jobs that you can't pay enough for Americans to take. $50/hour is high, but I bet most Americans wouldn't pick lettuce for $25/hr. When unemployment in Fresno County was as high as 19%, growers still couldn't get enough workers to pick during the summer. They were lobbying Congress for guest-workers.
Your mom couldn't get a job as a picker. I've done farm labor, training vines on a berry farm. I'm active and strong, and I worked hard enough in an eight hour day to make me sore for days. I worked steadily and didn't take breaks. The grower told me at the end of the day that I would have to be four times faster to be economically worth it to him to pay me minimum wage. I didn't go back.
Lettuce is also a short-term career. It is stoop-labor; you can only pick for about four seasons before you are permanently disabled. You can't work twelve months a year, but during the season you work about twelve hours a day.
Even if you could get $50/hour, I honestly don't believe that you would sell your ability to walk in four years for $400,000, much less work 80-90 hours a week in the 108 degree sun, in pesticides that make you choke, sustaining a pace that I couldn't match for a day. I don't think anyone with any alternatives would do that. Most Americans have alternatives and that's why you can't pay them enough to pick.
In 1980/1981 I made 1GBP an hour cleaning in a butchers shop. During my years at college, I spent my vacations digging roads/stacking shelves/cycle couriering/office cleaning/bar tending and so on.
Some of those jobs were really well paid and kept me in marmalade and teddy bears at Cambridge during the trimesters.
FWIW we have professional staff who dont make $50 an hour (groß), and I would say we have a very good standard of living.
I am watching the immigration debate with fascination. Seems to me that the administration is making the same mistakes now that the europeans made way back: Guest workers don't go home and why should they? Continue in the fiction that they will and you end up with second generation guests who are disenfrachised and pissedangry.
Oh and I have just remembered: Strawberry picking on farms in East Anglia at age 13. Casual day work. 10 pence a pound. I'd go over on a Saturday and by Tuesday I could stand straigt again.
Seems to me that the administration is making the same mistakes now that the europeans made way back: Guest workers don't go home and why should they? Continue in the fiction that they will and you end up with second generation guests who are disenfrachised and angry.
My understanding is that historically they don't get angry -- because the second generation assimilates to a very high degree. It's a well-established pattern in U.S. history. Irish/Germans/Russians in 1900; Vietnamese in 1980; Kenyans in 2000; all pretty much the same story.
The parents may or may not comfortably acclimate to the U.S., but they generally stay here regardless, and the kids are native English speakers, natural-born citizens, and reasonably well integrated into their communities.
There are challenges in American immigrant communities, but they don't seem to be the same as those we saw on display in France last year.
That was Austro's point, I think. It's really the combination of guest workers + a lack of birthright citizenship (for the second generation) that would be a problem.
Is the consensus then that our food doesn't cost enough?
I was not talking about immigrant labour. I think i need to make that very clear: I am pro immigration.
What I was aiming at was the mistake the French and the Germans made back in the day: The Fiction of the "Guest" worker. Some of those "guests" are now in the third generation and are still viewed by the society in which they live as "guests". This causes a certain dislocation.
Yes eb, 47 posted before seeing your 45. Thanks.
That was Austro's point, I think. It's really the combination of guest workers + a lack of birthright citizenship (for the second generation) that would be a problem.
Sorry, my mistake. From what I've seen of the Senate's recent discussions, nobody is seriously suggesting we eliminate birthright citizenship.
So whatever half-fix they come up with for adult workers (amnesty, guest worker status, LB's turn-your-employer-in-for-a-green-card proposal, etc.), the problem of the 2nd generation will not be a problem.
On preview, to Austro's 47: Right. The U.S. isn't defining "guest" as France and Germany did, so whatever problems we create, at least they'll be different problems.
Is the consensus then that our food doesn't cost enough?
I think the consensus is that low skilled labor doesn't cost enough.
What is the strength of the anti-birthright citizenship movement, anyway? I've seen claims (somewhere online) that Wong Kim Ark was wrongly decided, but it seems extremely unlikely that anything but a constitutional amendment would take away that right.
#1 is why I love all of you so much.
Re. farm work: I've done it, as a middle-class college kid, for minimum wage. I really expect that if farm work paid $25/hour, given that most cities and towns in agricultural communities tend to have a fair bit of unemployment and minimum-wage employment, that people would take those jobs.
8: Sure, but I bet he darn well does make more than most of us. Quite a bit more, probably. And whatever his income past or present might have been, it's still a remarkably clueless thing to say, especially coming from someone who is in charge of national legislation and public policy.
in re 49.
Then I stand corrected. I was reading an article today in an Austrian newspaper in which it was claimed that the administration was preparing legislation to create "guest" worker status. If that is not true, then the above is redundant and I need LB to help me sue some asses...
McCain's rich as hell - his wife is an heiress, I believe. And I think McCain's point was closer to #41.
41:
(First, entertaining blog you have there -- a friend just emailed me the link to the post of yours that got picked up by Marginal Revolution.)
Second, I'm not certain that what you're saying stands up (although admittedly, my first-hand knowledge of farm work is absolutely nil). You weren't a worthwhile berry-picker because it was your first day, and you don't have skills, not because the job requires uncanny abilities.
Undocumented immigrants aren't superhuman, they're just from another country. (Although you're right that, tough as Mom is, she's probably too old to learn.)
And 'permanently disabling' and 80-90 hours a week both strike me as a feature of labor costs -- if you're willing to pay enough, you're willing to put on, say, two shifts working 40 hours a week, and provide for time for rest breaks. As it's organized now, lettuce picking may be a crippling job, but I doubt that it has to be -- it's just a matter of what it costs.
54: I think they want to have legalized immigration that doesn't lead to citizenship for the immigrants (but, as w/d points out in 52, it would for their kids).
First, entertaining blog you have there
Seconded. You should totally keep commenting; I think you'll fit in great here.
(The subject of that post having been the subject of this blog for a couple years, if you haven't been lurking.)
54: Hmm.. well Dateline Berlin, and a school in which the teachers have recommended the authorities to close the school. Probably not as bad as that which takes place daily in London and NYC but for Germany, the violence issue there is out of hand. The point is that the kids are probably German. The parents perhaps not. Now, with whom might the kids identify (It would probably kill 'em to say so, but my guess is that they are formed by their parent's culture and stressed by the issues the family might face)
When I reflect that America has a penchant for creating social divides on a scale that west europeans cannot imagine (even in France), I just begin to wonder if ac's mom's skills will be needed to train teachers for the front line.
Thanks!
I should say that I am all about paying enough for food that farmworkers and the environment don't have to absorb the externalities. I've spent my money that way for years. We likely agree on that.
But, I also agree with the comment that you thought was contemptuous of John McCain. I really do think that picking lettuce is such a horrifically awful job that you Americans wouldn't do it at much higher wages than you might expect. My subjective guess is that you would have to pay Americans about $35 - $40/hr for them to choose picking lettuce over working for minimum wage at a WalMart.
This letter http://www.fwjustice.org/images/CRLAF%20letter%207%202000.pdf [Link edited to make it work. LB] is from a farmworker assistance organization lobbying against a guest worker bill. The argument is that unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is already high, and growers only want to import guest workers to keep labor costs down. That may be partially true, but I think it also speaks to the point that even when unemployment is high, Americans will not take jobs picking.
I guess one more thing. I wasn't a crappy vine trainer because I was new at it. I was an unacceptable laborer because it was hard and I couldn't work fast enough. After the first half hour, there were no more skills to learn. I probably would have gotten faster as my body adjusted to doing labor, but I don't think I would have gotten four times faster. And I do kindof think that undocumented immigrants do superhuman work. They work at a pace that breaks their body after a few years (longer for non-stoop labor), which means to me that they are working outside of sustainable human tolerances.
Anyway, McCain's comment was strong, but I don't think it is extremely off the mark. (And I really don't have an opinion about McCain.)
57, 58: Credit for things I never said is my favorite kind.
Now it should.
And I do, certainly, buy that farm work is very, very hard work, and that most Americans with other choices wouldn't choose it. I just don't buy that if the supply of desperate undocumented immigrants were cut off, that produce growers wouldn't be able to change the working conditions and wages so that some Americans would take the jobs. Needing you to work four times faster wasn't inherent in the nature of vine-training; it was competition with people desperate enough to work that hard that set the pace.
This whole thing seems kind of weird to me. I've been saying for years that McCain really is very conservative, which a lot of liberals seemed not to realize back in 2000, so it's nice to see everyone hop on the bandwagon. But this seems like a pretty poor choice of example for why we shouldn't support him. Do you really think a mainstream Republican would say something like this in a speech? Of course they agree, but this is not the kind of statement that helps them with their base (illegal immigration is very Not Popular). I also find the tone in which people are discussing the statement to be odd; yeah, it's probably not true that there's no wage level at which native-born Americans will pick lettuce, but they certainly aren't going to do it for the wages migrant workers get (because they have other options). So I basically agree with Megan. Also, I think we're all generally in favor of immigration here, so why all the weird hostility? McCain's bill isn't great, but neither is the status quo.
(That Daily Show thing was great, though.)
I also find the tone in which people are discussing the statement to be odd; yeah, it's probably not true that there's no wage level at which native-born Americans will pick lettuce, but they certainly aren't going to do it for the wages migrant workers get (because they have other options).
Part of what I'm hostile about is that he's identifying a class of jobs too nightmarish for Americans to take (as Megan describes in 41) and says that the solution is to make sure we have a steady supply of people beaten down and desperate enough to take the jobs, rather than to let the natural functioning of the labor market (under circumstances where we're not allowing the importation of deportable serfs) make the jobs change.
If lettuce picking is too awful for an American to do at any price, than the nature of lettuce picking (not immutable) needs to change. Making sure we have enough people willing to cripple themselves is not a solution.
What would you characterize as "the natural functioning of the labor market," though? That is, what alternative are you proposing?
Did anyone see Krugman's editorial about McCain yesterday, btw?
And if the 'guest worker' program has the effect of keeping a steady supply of people willing to pick lettuce under the current circumstances, it can only do it by making sure that they're desperate and optionless. Handing out green cards, for example, wouldn't work; they'd just go get better jobs, like all the Californian citizens who won't pick lettuce under the current conditions for the current wages.
I don't believe that the only practical way to supply lettuce to America at a cost that isn't prohibitively high is by crippling the pickers. If it is, the cost of lettuce should be prohibitively high.
Okay, so how do you think we should fix the immigration system?
To 69: Draconian sanctions on employers that hire undocumented immigrants, combined with a loosening in the laws allowing legal immigration -- no 'guest worker' nonsense, immigration that places you on a track for citizenship without the effective control of your employer. I don't want anyone working in the US who can be threatened with deportation by their employer -- if you're necessary enough to the economy to work here, you're good enough to be protected by the labor laws.
Under those circumstances (and I realize that the political will to get there from here is absolutely lacking), the only people who will be available to fill farm positions will be Americans. Possibly recent immigrants, but Americans, with the legal freedoms and capacities to work wherever the hell the best job they can get is.
At that point, I expect produce growers would manage to figure out a way to restructure the jobs so that the pay and the working conditions came together to be something reasonable, that an American would take. Produce prices would probably go up, but not insanely, and we'd all be better off.
Fair enough, and I'd support a proposal like that, but why the anti-McCain vehemence on this issue particularly? He came up with a pro-business immigration bill; no surprise there, he's a Republican and that's what they do. But the alternative is the racist crackpots proposing things like eliminating birthright citizenship and building walls. The parenthetical in the first paragraph of the post seems like a better place to start the McCain-hating.
Hey, in comment 62 I wrote "you Americans" by accident. I surely meant just Americans, and I put myself entirely in the category of people unwilling to do farm labor. (And I even have little fantasies about living an agrarian life.)
I imagine that a lot of the wage paid to laborers is set by competition, but at some point there must be a cap set by the price growers can get for their produce. My preference is for people to pay more for food so that growers and workers can live decently, but I don't think that is a popular view.
Thanks for the kind welcome, everyone.
Because the attitude is disgusting. If the job isn't entirely inhumane, then of course Americans will do it at a wage set by the market (if the labor market is too tight, allow more legal immigration). If the job is completely inhumane, it shouldn't be done on those terms. That he's willing to stand up and say that we need to bring people into the country deliberately under circumstances crafted so that they can't turn down work that they wouldn't do if they were citizens is disgusting.
I'm not saying it's uncommon -- lots of people feel the same way. But anyone who feels that way isn't on my side. (And all the stuff in the parethetical sucks too.)
77 to 74, and a strong endorsement to this:
My preference is for people to pay more for food so that growers and workers can live decently, but I don't think that is a popular view.
from 75.
I guess I just don't have the same visceral reaction, even though I basically agree with you. Things like the Minutemen piss me off a lot more than this.
I was raised union. Issues of race and gender are important, and I take them seriously, but labor issues are what I have the strongest emotional reaction to.
Man, the comments move so fast!
I don't know how this guest worker program is structured, but there is a specific demand that a non-citizenship-track guest worker program can meet.
Some portion of Mexican farm laborers (in California at least) work here seasonally to get enough money to buy farms in Mexico. Some laborers don't intend to ever nationalize here, and stop making the annual trip once their farm in Mexico is self-supporting. I have no objection to offering intentional immigrants a chance to become American citizens, but I also think that there is demand (from growers and workers) for guest-worker program that lets people work here (under reasonable conditions for a reasonable wage) without American citizenship as a goal.
I was raised union.
That explains a lot. I was raised (sort of) capital, so I don't feel the same emotional pull about labor issues and often have to work to overcome my inherent biases on some subjects. Race is where I really react emotionally.
Man, the comments move so fast!
You should try hanging out late at night, when it's just me and the spambot.
Interesting. I react emotionally on race and on issues of economic and personal independence (like abortion). I'm definitely pro-union, but I don't know that it's an emotional issue for me, now that the question's come up.
I also think that there is demand (from growers and workers) for guest-worker program that lets people work here (under reasonable conditions for a reasonable wage) without American citizenship as a goal.
I don't get this from the workers' side. If they want to go back to Mexico eventually, why won't normal legal immigration work? They don't have to get citizenship.
That is to say, I think from the workers' perspective increasing ordinary legal immigration by X will be just as good as an X-person guest-worker program. From the growers' perspective, maybe not, but only because they'd have more leverage over guest workers than over people with green cards, or citizens, which I think is bad for the reasons LB says in 77 etc. Which means I'm probably fundamentally in agreement with what you said just before the bit I quoted, I have no objection to offering intentional immigrants a chance to become American citizens.
I basically agree with 85; sure, there's demand for a program whereby immigrants can leave without getting citizenship, but the normal immigration process allows this anyway so a guest-worker program wouldn't be an improvement for the workers over just allowing more legal immigration (which is my preferred solution). I don't actually know what McCain's bill entails, but I doubt it's going to pass so I don't know if it matters. The only problem is that anything that can pass in this political environment is likely to be much worse.
Is there a meaningful distinction between an expansion of the work visa quota and a guest worker program?
Some portion of Mexican farm laborers (in California at least) work here seasonally to get enough money to buy farms in Mexico. Some laborers don't intend to ever nationalize here, and stop making the annual trip once their farm in Mexico is self-supporting.
And this is different from older immigrant - or migrant, as the case may be - streams in what way, exactly? (The comments to this post are relevant, too.)
Is there a meaningful distinction between an expansion of the work visa quota and a guest worker program?
That's what I'm wondering. In general, guest worker programs don't provide for citizenship and the workers are expected to return to their home countries, but there's been all this talk about including "a path to citizenship" which makes me wonder if some of these "guest-worker" proposals are just covers to make it politically possible to expand the quota.
The "path to citizenship" talk seems designed to convince people who are already here illegally to sign up for the program. If you're already here and working, why on earth would you register to be deported a couple of years down the road unless the incentives were overwhelming? (I'm not convinced that the "path to citizenship" talk is going to be enough.)
I haven't been following it very closely, but I suspect this is all election-year bluster and nothing is going to come of it. If a guest worker program does contain a path to citizenship, though, that wouldn't be too different from a higher quota in practice (although the devil is, as always, in the details and I hardly trust this administration to get it right).
I'm really uncomfortable with any category of immigration by which the immigrant's right to remain in the country is contingent on their relationship with a particular employer (such as HB1 visas, for example) -- it's a recipe for exploitation.
I don't get this from the workers' side. If they want to go back to Mexico eventually, why won't normal legal immigration work? They don't have to get citizenship.
Paperwork and quotas. Suppose we allow 150,000 visas from Mexico annually. 100,000 of the visa recipients hope to live here (separate from getting a work permit, even more paperwork). 50,000 just want to work a bit and stay at home. Assuming there's more people who want to come here who would be denied visas in favor of guest-workers-on-immigration-visas, that's a reason to have a separate, easy, 'here's a social security number. next!' system in place.
That said, it wouldn't solve the birthright issue, would it? (Which is normally a concern for welfare. Mom can't get welfare but her American baby can, etc. Child can go to high school, etc. I wish people would just admit they were scared of Hispanics already.) So the perception of the tax burden would be the same. So on balance, I think allowing more legal immigration is better.
Actually, check that agreement with 92. We already have at least two visa classes that confer guest status on a foreigner that's tied to a job or schooling situation.
So it's not that the visa could end at anytime - Chinese graduate students deal with this all the time - but it's more that I don't see how this could be designed easily for seasonal labor that didn't abuse someone. We don't want someone dependent on an abusive employer in the farm/housekeeping industries, and we want the worker to be able to switch jobs seasonally without having to re-enter each time from Mexico.
Education I don't mind so much -- universities don't so far as I'm aware, have an economic incentive to abuse foreign grad students more than they abuse the local grad students -- but HB1 visas bother me. Those aren't jobs that are unfillable with an American citizen, they're jobs that are cheaper to fill with an HB1 visa holder, and the reason that they're cheaper is that the HB1 visa holder has no bargaining power if they want to stay in the country. I don't see why we are allowing employers to use the right to stay in the US as a subsidy to drive cash wages down.
I'm split on HB1s; they are ripe for abuse, but they also the pathway to a much better future for a lot of people. They make far higher wages than they would otherwise, are able send cash home, and get training on equipment that they wouldn't get for a decade if they hadn't come.
Is it inappropriate for me to make a "me no write English good" joke on an immigration thread?
"Fuck to oboe" is suitable for any occasion.
universities don't so far as I'm aware, have an economic incentive to abuse foreign grad students more than they abuse the local grad students
In one of the grad student strikes, I forget which one, the university made sure to target some foreign students first because they could really be fucked over. So student visas are not completely unproblematic from this point of view.
And student visas can be a massive pain in other respects; I had a friend in grad school who had come to the U.S. from England with her parents at about age 14, wound up on a student visa, and at age 26 or so found herself unable to leave the country because she wouldn't be able to come back. But that's another debate, probably.
I wish people would just admit they were scared of Hispanics already.
This gets it exactly right.
I'm scared of teofilo--his name sounds so mysteri-oso.
Tan mysterioso, even. Also, something about the "why" in the title of this post bothers me.
Some data from the NY Times, Sunday, 4/2, Week in Review section, page 3
Average US household spending for fresh fruit and vegetables, 2004: $370
Share of that $370 received by farm workers: $22
Average wage of farm workers: $8.83
So if we quadruple the pay for farm workers, to about $35 an hour (or improve working conditions so productivity drops by 75%) it'll cost the average family an extra $66 a year to buy their fresh fruits and vegetables.
$433 rather than $370. That's a long way from unaffordable.
I think that was NYU, though if I'm wrong, someone will probably mock me.
More abuse of foreign grad students' position: extra teaching loads and respondant duties carry crap wages because someone whose visa prevents them from working off-campus will always take the gigs.
I am, technically.
Re. H1B, I think the answer is simple: issue them, but remove the restriction that prevents workers on H1Bs from looking for/taking other jobs once they get here.
107: Wouldn't that just be a different sort of visa? I am not an immigration expert, but I thought that the essence of an H1B visa was that it restricted you to the employer who hired you.
I am, technically.
I wasn't aware there was a technical sense; it's a rather fuzzy category. By any definition, though, I'm not it.
By any definition, though, I'm not it.
Not quite. I was thinking more of the genetics v. culture argument.
Further to 11: maybe "fatalistic complacency" is a species of "apathy".
A-and, speaking of one drop, I just found out I have one. My mother's family emigrated from Spain by way of Jamaica; my dad was doing genealogical research and found that one of her great-great-etc. grandmothers in Jamaica (in the late 1700's) is described as a "free mustee" (meaning 1/8 African); that woman's mother is described as a "free quadroon". I'm thinking I should grow dreads and get in touch with my heritage. 'Postro Phari, man.
15: I think it may have been worse in some ways. He wouldn't had cut taxes as much, but he would have tried social security reform and hsa:s and may well have gotten them. Iraq would still have been invaded. The undermining of the rule of law wouldn't have been as bad, though still worse than than Bush I. Are my guesses.
113 -- Ack! "'Postro Phari" s/b "'Pos Trophari" of course.
Iraq would still have been invaded.
See, I don't know if I believe this, for two reasons.
i) I think it's at least minimally plausible that any other president of either party would have been more attentive to and impressed by the Clinton anti-terrrorism concerns, and might even thereby have averted 9/11, though that's not what I would on first look call probable;
ii) But much more likely, another administration, less staffed by Ford-era hawks still chafing at the Church investigations and Watergate, less obsessed with overcoming the Bush I wimp factor, less pathologically out of tune with the reality-based community, would not have invaded Iraq.
I can just about imagine that a McCain 2001 administration would qualify on both counts. Certainly I think a Gore 2001 administration would qualify. I think the Iraq adventure results from a constellation of bad judgments and fixations peculiar to this bunch of people.
Just to be clear, this constitutes no endorsement of McCain, except inasmuch as "would have been less wildly incompetent than this bunch if elected in 2000" counts as an endorsement; but that applies to nearly everybody even nearly in the running.