Immigration reform

There is no line that's exactly what is and the immigration law is so draconian and its nothing but catch22. Though some people made the effort in trying do the right but instead it will be a 3-10 year bars. The US goevernment are becoming so mean that even the people that they are governed have no right to love and to whom they wish to marry. The government are separating USC families. Government has no business or no right to separate families.

The policy makers of the countries need to decide what the policy is to prevent "illegality." Unfortunately, the US "pardoned" previous illegal immigrants, when there are many waiting to come in legally. I've met eastern Europeans, who are getting their citizenship in England so they can immigrate to Canada, so they can immigrate to the US-a twenty year process. Let's not reward law-breaking. If we need people then they should be here legally.

My last comment, at least for the US, immigration is a federal policy and implemented partially by the Border Patrol, yet the states are responsible for paying for education and health benefits for illegal immigrants. The federal government should be responsible for reimbursing the states for illegal immigrants-maybe they would do a better job if they had to pay for its policy implementation, or lack thereof.

The policy makers of the countries need to decide what the policy is to prevent "illegality." Unfortunately, the US "pardoned" previous illegal immigrants, when there are many waiting to come in legally. I've met eastern Europeans, who are getting their citizenship in England so they can immigrate to Canada, so they can immigrate to the US-a twenty year process. Let's not reward law-breaking. If we need people then they should be here legally.

My last comment, at least for the US, immigration is a federal policy and implemented partially by the Border Patrol, yet the states are responsible for paying for education and health benefits for illegal immigrants. The federal government should be responsible for reimbursing the states for illegal immigrants-maybe they would do a better job if they had to pay for its policy implementation, or lack thereof.

Just read The Daily's article "Everyone Wins: New Immigrants don't take 'Natives' jobs", and I found the snippet at the bottom pretty interesting. The snippet reads: "Will Wilkinson blogs about American politics for The Economist."

A little shameless, circular self-promotion, eh?

We HAVE had (and still do) a guest worker program. The problem is it doesn't work. On paper, and thinking as an American or European, it makes perfect sense: give them visas to come for 6-8 months a year, where they do low-skilled jobs but STILL make far more than in their home countries, they get 4-6 months back home with their families, and then return to the U.S. the next year to do it again. Everyone wins, right? But things like long-term thinking and cost-benefit analysis do not come into play when you're the type of person who would qualify for this program.

Some years back I ran the H2B program in one of our U.S. Embassies in a Central American country. It was, essentially, a Congress-mandated illegal immigration program. When I would issue 100 visas to a company, LITERALLY all 100 workers would disappear the first night in the U.S. Over and over again. Literally thousands did this, but because Congress wanted the program for whatever reasons, we had to keep administering it, and no amount of tinkering, fraud prevention efforts, pre-departure briefings with the applicants -- NOTHING -- made any difference.

"The Post sensibly proposes a guest-worker programme". I don't try to tell the English or Canadians how to run their domestic policy, maybe those who can't spell "program" should consider returning the favor.

There's little or no line because Americans don't want to be flooded by low-skilled labor. That low-skilled labor has several costs that hacks like "WW" will never acknowledge much less arrange to have those he enables pay for.

Americans have, can, and will do those jobs if not for downward pressures caused by the ready supply of illegal labor. That would have huge benefits for the U.S., both in fiscal and in non-fiscal terms. For those jobs that go unfilled, we can invent machines* instead of relying on foreign serf labor.

* As the NYT pointed out several years ago, research into farm machinery was put on the backburner because of the availability of all that illegal labor. The Economist would have us return to the days of buggy whips and horse-drawn plows.

The idea that illegals are cheating those who would like to immigrate by jumping in front of the line is also a joke. WW makes a very good point here in that for many or most illegals there is no line. But there is also the fact that if you are legal, you can start to build a new life for yourself and any family you might have or acquire. If you aren't legal, you can still do that, but are building on sand, and a stray traffic stop or jaywalking incident can lead to you being deported. This happened to, of all things, a British neighbor of mine. She came legally with her parents when she was two, they went back to Britain when they retired, but had never jumped through the hoops to establish legal residency for their daughter, who had lost her parents and never seen England, when she was arrested at the age of 40, albeit this was for working in one of the largest marijuana farms in the history of Ohio. So she got to go to prison in Ohio, and was then deported to a country she had never known.

To me one thing all immigrants should be able to use to support their desire for the right to work is money. They often spend large sums paid to someone to get them into the country illegally, and more once they arrive in attempts to get citizenship e.g. a marriage of convenience might cost tens of thousands of dollars to arrange. It is rational for them to spend this money because of the improved earning and lifestyle they can obtain in the US.

If temporary visas were available to those willing to pay a cash sum upfront, and then to keep up further payments over a period of months or years once they arrive, in exchange for the right to legally work, and a clear path to permanent citizenship, then you would have a useful influx to government funds, a way of selecting those workers who truly plan to earn their keep, and a reduction in the problems of exploitation that illegal workers can face. If the worst happened and a worker went undercover to avoid making the payments once they'd arrived, you would only be back to where you'd been anyway if you hadn't charged them a fee to enter.

"There is simply no immigrant visa category for which most unskilled Mexicans qualify and no realistic prospect they could be legally admitted to the United States."

This statement is flatly false. There are several visa categories set up for temporary (non-immigrant) workers who are unskilled:

H-2A visas = Temporary or seasonal agricultural workers.
H-2B visas = Temporary non-agricultural workers.

People focus too much on H-1B visas, which are for workers in specialty occupations. The H-2 visa program already exists for temporary unskilled labor (for example, all the young foreign workers that show up every summer working at hotels and tourism businesses all use the H-2 visa program; all the migrant field workers that are legitimately recruited use the H-2 visa program; etc.).

You can argue whether more such visas should be issued, but it is false to claim that there is no visa categories for unskilled labor, or claim that the U.S. needs a "guest worker" program -- we already have one in place (and its been in place for ages).

Wow, something unrelated to the role of government that I agree with Gingrich about. A guest-worker program makes perfect sense to me.

Illegal or shall we say undocumented immigration is a very minor issue,of very little importance, but because of the straight jacket of political correctness, it is argued about in place of the real issue of real importance that nobody dares to publicly complain about.
There are about 11 million undocumented workers in America.Out of a population of 312 million, we are talking of 0.3% of the people living in the USA as of right now.
Please explain how come 0.3% of the population can generate any significant effect on the lives of the other 99.7%.Unless they were all Ebola virus carriers, the answer is:in no significant way.
But it is not undocumented workers that make many people feel uneasy.It is the fact that Hispanics, most of whom are legal residents, have jumped from being an invisible minority to representing 16% of the total US population just in our lifetime.By comparison,Blacks are 12% and Asians about 4%.And the US Census projections speak of an America were 30% of the people will be Hispanic by 2050, and non-Hispanic whites a minority.Even today, almost half of all children bellow the age of five are minorities.
We have to understand human nature.I believe Ah Beng was speaking of Pasadena.Most LA suburbs were mostly white even in the 1960s and 70s.Now even the Army Surplus store in Pomona is Spanish-speaking,although they will address you in English out of necessity.
Of course many people feel displaced or uneasy.One solution, if you are adventurous and gifted, is to learn Spanish real well and get a few Hispanic girlfriends, the Clint Eastwood way.But many people of average abilities will inevitably feel challenged by not recognizing their neighborhood as the place they grew up in.
This is the real issue that demagogues such as our friend Moon Base Gingrich want to use for political gain, by the subterfuge of attacking a more convenient though in reality almost irrelevant proxy enemy, such as undocumented immigrants, most of whom deserve more pity and less prosecution.

The US is planning to have 450M citizens by 2050. That's only 38 years for another 140M. It needs to do more to open its borders to hispanics and to expand teaching of Spanish amongst the population. But that won't be enough! To hit the target the US will also need a guest worker program for Chinese workers to come over and some Chinese language courses in schools and Chinese tv channels to help immigrants integrate.

Bring the four freedoms to the Americas or GTFO.

The experience of Germany tells us that a guest worker program would never work as advertised. Once the gastarbeiters come, they never leave. I'm much more amicable to a legal framework whereby companies can hire workers in foreign countries and bring them into the country to work, but are also responsible for their welfare here and eventual departure.

While it would be pleasant if WW and other liberal commentators were right about this, I think they are not acknowledging the entire scenario. We know America has 11 million illegal immigrants who collectively perform a great deal of labor in a few categories where English is not a critical skill. But we also have high and increasingly structural unemployment in the legal labor market, particularly for white and black males in separate but similarly low-skill categories. But by definition, low-skill jobs are precisely the sort which present the lowest technical barrier to substitution of labor. An unemployed forklift operator can learn to proficiently operate a leaf-blower in about half a day. So when I see WW write that illegals "act more as complements than substitutes for similar American workers" I hear what sounds like cognitive dissonance.

In fact, inelasticity between these labor markets has structural components like geography. The former forklift operator might live in Ohio, and the leafy suburb could be Pasadena. But I think we all understand that other barriers are at play here, and few barriers are as difficult for academics or economists to describe as cultural and racial ones. And indeed, the rest of the truth is on display in America every day.

Outside my office window at this very moment is a middle-aged white man with a job. He is waving a sign for a tax preparation service, which might pay him $10/hr for a couple months. The leaf blowers have already left. Their pay is probably about the same, and their race is as predictable as yesterday's weather. Everyone in America, including WW and his academic know that this white man is underemployed and likely to remain so for the rest of his career. They also know that he is physically capable of operating that leaf blower, getting a more dependable paycheck, and taking a more complete role in the community and nation. Some of the barriers to this "substitution" are cultural and psychological. Latinos have come to dominate certain specific jobs to such a degree that the lingua franca in commercial kitchens, vinyards, and gardening trucks is now Spanish. We know that only Latinos have done this hard work for generations, and white and black Americans have become historically, psychologically and linguistically excluded.

I think America benefits from cultural infusions and immigration at both ends of the labor force, and I would never call for deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. But lets be honest here. Labor segments are racially segregated, and trends in our nation's employment profile will put those divisions under scrutiny and pressure.

We can no longer accept the notion that "Americans don't want that kind of work". It insults everyone, white, black, and Latino. And optimal solutions will not be found if we don't acknowledge and deal with this. No artificial barriers should exist in labor markets, especially racial ones.

Perhaps Gingrich is the only one proposing it because he's the only one who can without raising an uproar over "amnesty"? Conservatives are already suspicious of Romney and they despise Obama, so the last thing either of them needs is a mass revolt over immigration.

Paradoxically, the quickest way to get changes made to our insane visa/immigration system may be to start ruthlessly enforcing it.

There are (anecdotal) reports of agricultural sector disasters in Alabama as a result of their recent legal efforts on illegal immirgation. Duplicate that across the country, and add in the impact on other economic sectors, and the demand for reform would become irresistable.

I think the most politically feasible approach would be to make it look like you're fixing an old broken visa system rather than creating a new path to citizenship. This gives even opponents of guest-worker programs plenty of wiggle room. Illegal immigrants can get on the back of the line with new looser eligibility requirements.

EU-style integration of labour markets is exactly what we should be pursuing, but naturally just about everyone would oppose that. Too bad.

Don't try to be reasonable. I had actual discussions about unemployment in which the main argument was those people take the place of migrant farm workers picking apples in Washington State. That argument has two main threads: a) you're on your own or should be and b) the best immigration policy is a wall guarded with live ammunition.