Per Request, the Immigration Catch-All

Couple threads going, let's move discussions here. Let's try to avoid claiming that the main driver of wanting citizenship to be documented properly is rooted xenophobia or racism since that's not a constructive line of conversation.

I'm going to repost my plan for immigration reform as well, since I welcome comments on it.

1. The only reason there are jobs that "americans won't do" is because they pay too little. Thus, increasing the supply of labor through illegals serves to keep wages depressed, in essence creating a continuous underclass of non citizen which I personally view as immoral, since it is a small step above slave labor.

2. If you work in America, in a just system, every worker should be entitled to the same protections that other workers get. A level playing field for employment is essential in a (somewhat) free market.

That all being said, here is the plan:

1. Set up a working employee identification system, perhaps run by the social security administration. Require all employers to check work eligibility status. If employers are found who are not doing this, fine the employer heavily. Multiple occurrences should include jail time for the management responsible.

2. Set up an efficient guest worker program with Latin America and Canada. Potential workers should show up, apply for work eligibility, and after a background/education check should be put into the eligible labor pool. The application process should be designed to take no more than a few weeks.

3. The department of labor should provide statistics by geographic area on wages for unskilled labor. Any business seeking to hire these potential workers should have to pay a rate of 25% higher than the average unskilled labor wage. All businesses are required to provide high deductible health insurance and injury/disability insurance for the temporary workers they hire. (This is intended to encourage wages to move up to a level where citizens will actually consider them).

4. Employers will specify the time frame for the temporary worker, the temporary work visa will be good for the worker and their family for that time period. If they are terminated, they may remain in the country for a period of 6 months, if they don't find work in that time, they have to go home. If a temporary worker has gainful employment for more than a 3 year period, they may apply for fast-tracked citizenship for their immediate family. Out of work but present temporary workers go to the front of the hiring queue to prevent unnecessary shuffle.

5. If at any time a temporary worker commits a crime that is more than a misdemeanor, their status is to be immediately terminated and they must leave the country.

Additionally, while there is some debate about how many, we have documented evidence that non-citizens are voting in elections, though since we don't have proper controls it's hard to determine how much so that may bring up the voter id and national id discussions that are often linked to this topic.

Malor wrote:

So, they passed some extremely strict laws in Georgia cracking down hard on immigrants, forcing even legal immigrants to carry papers at all times and forcing police to check citizenship status of pretty much anyone they stopped. Net (desired) result: lots of immigrants left the state, both legal and illegal. Net (undesired) result: hundreds of millions of dollars of produce rotting in the fields, unpicked.

Lots more info and links in this excellent Metafilter post.

Took the liberty of moving this here and I'll respond.

The "show us your papers citizen" is very unfortunate and I'm against it. I think that illegal labor keeps market wages depressed which attributes to not enough workers. I think the "show us your papers" citizen reaction is due to the fact that illegal immigrants are able to work, live, vote, etc. My plan above would create severe disincentives on the employer side for not verifying legal work status which you would think would push most of the existing illegals into the temporary worker program, increase their wages and benefits, and without the ability to just sneak in and go to work would prevent most of them from trying to be here illegally, and the ones that actually get here would be unable to receive benefits.

One of the problems with your plan, bandit, is that it's not practical. As a set of policy goal for the far future, it's laudable given a few modifications, but as a solution to the current problem, it kind of sucks.

Deporting every illegal in the US would affect the labor market about the same as what happened in Georgia, and setting up a worker registration program to keep track of every worker replacing every illegal one to one would require a massive bureaucracy - and even then it would work with a backlog millions-strong in the first few years.

Apart from that, such a program would face the exact same hostility illegals already face now, only it would have to also wither the storm of Congress and popular opinion. You may not be a racist, but there are many in the US who are, and they'll move hell and high water to make sure that your worker program is just as f*cked up as the current immigration procedures already are.

On the "jobs Americans won't do" topic, I recalled a study by a California professor about the cost of labor vs the cost of a Tomato. Thing is, labor costs account for a very small percentage of the actual cost of food. I found the study here which claims the cost of labor is only 6% of the cost of product in the store, so a 40% increase in farm labor wages ($9.06 /hr in 2007 vs $16.75/hr for non farm workers) would result in your average family spending an extra $8 a year for produce.

Americans spend an average 13 percent of their disposable incomes on food, one of the lowest ratios in the world. If farm worker earnings rose, would fresh fruits and vegetables become luxuries, as predicted as the Bracero program was ending in the 1960s? The answer is no, and for three major reasons. First, most Americans do not spend much on fresh fruits and vegetables – the average household spends more on alcoholic beverages each year than on fresh produce. Second, farmers get a relatively small share of retail spending on fresh produce
– less than 20 cents of each retail dollar spent on apples or lettuce. Third, farm workers receive only a fraction of what the farmers get, since labor costs are typically less than a third of farm production costs. As a result, farm worker wages are about six cents for a $1 head of lettuce or pound of apples.

This is why in my plan above I'm asking for a surcharge on imported labor. It seems to me with figures like this that we could set a labor floor of $20/hr and potentially have Americans begging for these jobs, and only cost the average family an extra $25/yr in produce costs.

My plan doesn't call for the deportation of every illegal, only the ones who haven't worked in years and criminals. The others can go into the guest worker program, though I think as punishment they shouldn't be eligible for citizenship like those who start the program the right way.

bandit0013 wrote:

My plan doesn't call for the deportation of every illegal, only the ones who haven't worked in years and criminals. The others can go into the guest worker program, though I think as punishment they shouldn't be eligible for citizenship like those who start the program the right way.

If they're not documented, how can you tell whether they've worked or not?

Well, honestly, I think that you should 'show papers' in any area of life where you need to be legitimized - be it employment, drivers license, voting, social security, government services, etc. I'm pretty sure that if those areas are policed correctly than the whole issue of being stopped somewhere and picked up for being in the country illegally would be unnecessary. So I would definitely agree with stiff fines for people who do not do due diligence in their employment. This would definitely have the flip side effect of making businesses more accountable for their employees, and employees would have a lot more options if they weren't afraid of actually going to the authorities about issues.

It's like a catch 22 - you're illegal so you can't complain, so you agree to whatever your boss wants, which in turn allows him to pay you less simply for the 'benefit' of being employed illegally. No matter what, if you don't address the people who allow illegals to exist and work, nothing else will work.

However, I can't say I agree with your 'solution' to the minimal wage. Decreeing by government mandate what wages need to be paid undermines the whole point of making people work legitamately. Why should an American worker get paid 25% less just because he's an American citizen?? Part of the reason why these people come across the border to work is so they can send the valuable american dollar back over the border back to their families, where it's worth much more and the cost of living is much less. Illegals don't do these jobs because they're crap and under paid, they do them because they're better than any other option they have in their home country.

Lastly, it's important not to forget that there is already a working immigration policy in place that allows temporary workers entry to the country, with the proper checks etc etc. Just because some people ignore the legal route, doesn't mean that there aren't tens of thousands of people immigrating legally already.

Personally, speaking from an Australian perspective here, where people get shipped ('boat people') from 3rd world countries to here, I figure that if you get caught living in the country illegally you should just be enlisted in a civilian engineer corps for 3 years. Your labour builds infrastructure, you get taken care of for 3 years (food & lodging) and after that you have the option of becoming a landed immigrant and find your own way.

so a 40% increase in farm labor wages ($9.06 /hr in 2007 vs $16.75/hr for non farm workers) would result in your average family spending an extra $8 a year for produce.

Sure, but actually at the farm, the labor is a huge percentage of the cost of food production. So farms that pay high wages will not be able to sell their food as cheaply as those that pay low wages, assuming production is otherwise comparable. So the middlemen who actually buy the food from the farms will buy it from the cheapest sources, which will include overseas labor.

Ultimately, this means food production will move to states that don't enforce immigration laws as strictly, and eventually out of the country completely, if necessary.

Or, U.S. farms will roboticize, completely removing all need for manual picking.

Either way, it ultimately comes down to the fact that we can't both have relatively open trade and force low-skill jobs to be highly paid. We can't have both. Strict immigration laws won't drive up wages, they'll just destroy farming.

The world is full of people who will pick food for very low wages. If we don't hire them, someone else will. We can only ultimately drive up wages for food-pickers if we drive up labor prices worldwide.

Malor wrote:
so a 40% increase in farm labor wages ($9.06 /hr in 2007 vs $16.75/hr for non farm workers) would result in your average family spending an extra $8 a year for produce.

Sure, but actually at the farm, the labor is a huge percentage of the cost of food production. So farms that pay high wages will not be able to sell their food as cheaply as those that pay low wages, assuming production is otherwise comparable. So the middlemen who actually buy the food from the farms will buy it from the cheapest sources, which will include overseas labor.

Except that our lovely AG lobby has stifled imports of many foods, including cane sugar in favor of their own crops. Reap what you sow.

Malor wrote:

Ultimately, this means food production will move to states that don't enforce immigration laws as strictly, and eventually out of the country completely, if necessary.

The federal government is responsible for setting and enforcing (even if by executive order to the states) immigration policy. This shouldn't be an issue if they actually do their job.

Malor wrote:

Or, U.S. farms will roboticize, completely removing all need for manual picking.

Good, increases in productivity and lower costs that robots bring should have a net decrease on the price of food.

Malor wrote:

Either way, it ultimately comes down to the fact that we can't both have relatively open trade and force low-skill jobs to be highly paid. We can't have both. Strict immigration laws won't drive up wages, they'll just destroy farming.

Similar arguments were made in the 1960s, didn't happen then, I have no evidence to believe that it would happen now. What is key for it working is to make it an across the board change so that the farmers in all states have to play on a level field. This is a primary goal of capitalism in my mind, the level playing field as far as regulation is concerned.

Malor wrote:

The world is full of people who will pick food for very low wages. If we don't hire them, someone else will. We can only ultimately drive up wages for food-pickers if we drive up labor prices worldwide.

Good. As we have seen with offshoring to India, Korea, China, Vietnam, etc that a growing middle class in those countries sparks demand for luxury goods and knowledge services that the Western world is well equipped to provide.

Tanglebones wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

My plan doesn't call for the deportation of every illegal, only the ones who haven't worked in years and criminals. The others can go into the guest worker program, though I think as punishment they shouldn't be eligible for citizenship like those who start the program the right way.

If they're not documented, how can you tell whether they've worked or not?

You ask them. You check their credit. The fact that they're alive and have shelter assumes some source of income.

Pawz wrote:

Well, honestly, I think that you should 'show papers' in any area of life where you need to be legitimized - be it employment, drivers license, voting, social security, government services, etc. I'm pretty sure that if those areas are policed correctly than the whole issue of being stopped somewhere and picked up for being in the country illegally would be unnecessary. So I would definitely agree with stiff fines for people who do not do due diligence in their employment. This would definitely have the flip side effect of making businesses more accountable for their employees, and employees would have a lot more options if they weren't afraid of actually going to the authorities about issues.

Agreed, I'm not saying you shouldn't show ID at time of employment, voting, etc. I'm just saying that pulling someone aside for driving while brown and checking their papers is bad, most likely a violation of the 4th amendment.

Pawz wrote:

It's like a catch 22 - you're illegal so you can't complain, so you agree to whatever your boss wants, which in turn allows him to pay you less simply for the 'benefit' of being employed illegally. No matter what, if you don't address the people who allow illegals to exist and work, nothing else will work.

Overall this is the biggest problem I have with the status quo. These people are being exploited. People try to hide behind the "oh, well they're seeking a better life", but it is not ok to take advantage of someone by paying low wages, low benefits, and not following labor/safety regulations just because they'd be worse off in Mexico. I find it detestable. Seems like any time someone trots out cancelling the federal minimum wage people scream about how workers will be exploited, but no one seems to care if it's a brown person picking tomatoes.

Pawz wrote:

However, I can't say I agree with your 'solution' to the minimal wage. Decreeing by government mandate what wages need to be paid undermines the whole point of making people work legitamately. Why should an American worker get paid 25% less just because he's an American citizen??

It's more just a general belief that we should have incentives for hiring Americans before we import labor. Most Americans aren't going to work in a field for $9.06/hr. I bet a good chunk would do it for $15 or $20 though. If as the source I cited is correct that the average unskilled labor rate (non-farm) is $16.75/hr, then it should cost you at least $16.75/hr to import Mexican labor, I think a small surcharge to make it worthwhile recruiting Americans makes sense.

Pawz wrote:

Lastly, it's important not to forget that there is already a working immigration policy in place that allows temporary workers entry to the country, with the proper checks etc etc. Just because some people ignore the legal route, doesn't mean that there aren't tens of thousands of people immigrating legally already.

The legal route in this country is terribad. It's expensive and incredibly slow.

Good, increases in productivity and lower costs that robots bring should have a net decrease on the price of food.

Sure, but you're not getting high-paid, low-skill agricultural jobs. I believe you've made the argument that stopping illegal immigration will raise wages, but what it will actually do is move the low-skill jobs away. You can't make jobs be paid more than they're actually worth for very long until the invisible hand corrects you.... try to do things that are too stupid/draconian, and it will turn into the invisible pimp hand, slapping you around until you stop.

Similar arguments were made in the 1960s, didn't happen then, I have no evidence to believe that it would happen now

What, the $220 billion trade deficit isn't enough for you? We were running a surplus in the 1960s, a very large one. Now we're net consumers of the world's goods, to an extraordinary degree, and the trade deficit is probably the easiest way to see just how large a problem it's become. The jobs moved overseas because they were priced too high for the skill levels on offer in the U.S.

The world is a very, very different place than it was fifty years ago.

Good. As we have seen with offshoring to India, Korea, China, Vietnam, etc that a growing middle class in those countries sparks demand for luxury goods and knowledge services that the Western world is well equipped to provide.

Sure, but part of globalization is the equalization of living standards. Little bandaid fixes like making it hard to import cheap labor isn't going to do jack sh*t to address that fundamental issue.

but it is not ok to take advantage of someone by paying low wages, low benefits, and not following labor/safety regulations just because they'd be worse off in Mexico.

Then how about we just make it legal to immigrate freely? Then it would be very easy to regulate the resulting jobs.

Most Americans aren't going to work in a field for $9.06/hr. I bet a good chunk would do it for $15 or $20 though. If as the source I cited is correct that the average unskilled labor rate (non-farm) is $16.75/hr, then it should cost you at least $16.75/hr to import Mexican labor, I think a small surcharge to make it worthwhile recruiting Americans makes sense.

You can't make jobs pay more than they actually generate in value. If you try, the jobs will just disappear. That's what they've been doing for the last twenty years or so, and your prescription will make that problem worse, not better.

Malor wrote:

Sure, but you're not getting high-paid, low-skill agricultural jobs. I believe you've made the argument that stopping illegal immigration will raise wages, but what it will actually do is move the low-skill jobs away. You can't make jobs be paid more than they're actually worth for very long until the invisible hand corrects you.... try to do things that are too stupid/draconian, and it will turn into the invisible pimp hand, slapping you around until you stop.

Per the link I sourced above, the market rate for unskilled labor is $16.75/hr. The rate for agricultural labor is a mere $9.06/hr. What do you suppose is the contributing factor in that gap? You can't argue that all the jobs would be lost due to automation, because if $16.75/hr was the magic number for automation we'd have robot maids, wait staff, etc. In the case of things like electronic goods and automobiles, the impact of wages is a significant amount on the cost of the product (which is why my non-union Hyundai costs thousands less than your equivalent GM), this makes consumers vote with their wallets. This is not equivalent to the cited 6% of product cost that farm labor is, plus food is a necessity. Very few people will stop buying produce because their bill goes up $8 a year. Significantly more people will choose to save 15-20% on their automobile purchase though.

Malor wrote:

Sure, but part of globalization is the equalization of living standards. Little bandaid fixes like making it hard to import cheap labor isn't going to do jack sh*t to address that fundamental issue.

Not related to this topic, but I think it's insane that our government doesn't set up tariff structures that are directly related to the total amount of goods being imported vs the level of economic freedom, environmental, and living standards of the exporting country. I'm all for giving our poor Latin American neighbors cheap access to our markets to get started, but at some point they need to be incentivized to improve living conditions etc or start losing that cheap access. Trade is one of the most effective weapons we can wield these days.

Malor wrote:

Then how about we just make it legal to immigrate freely? Then it would be very easy to regulate the resulting jobs.

Because a modern economy doesn't have unlimited capacity for unskilled labor.

Malor wrote:
Good, increases in productivity and lower costs that robots bring should have a net decrease on the price of food.

Sure, but you're not getting high-paid, low-skill agricultural jobs. I believe you've made the argument that stopping illegal immigration will raise wages, but what it will actually do is move the low-skill jobs away. You can't make jobs be paid more than they're actually worth for very long until the invisible hand corrects you.... try to do things that are too stupid/draconian, and it will turn into the invisible pimp hand, slapping you around until you stop.

...

You can't make jobs pay more than they actually generate in value. If you try, the jobs will just disappear. That's what they've been doing for the last twenty years or so, and your prescription will make that problem worse, not better.

That assumes that illegal immigrants are currently being paid the full value of their work already. No employee (or at least, the employees taken as a whole) is paid their full value: the business owner would then be running a charity.

Workers are paid whatever percentage of the profits (and of course, that means an owner's projected profits) they can negotiate out of the owner. Just because you make an owner raise wages doesn't mean those jobs will necessarily move. They'll only move if it makes economic sense to move. It only makes economic sense to move if some other place offers bigger profits, not just because their existing profits have been reduced.

bandit0013 wrote:

My plan doesn't call for the deportation of every illegal, only the ones who haven't worked in years and criminals. The others can go into the guest worker program, though I think as punishment they shouldn't be eligible for citizenship like those who start the program the right way.

That just argues impossibly ideal settings and eye-for-an-eye policy, or misplaced "punishment-as-deterrent" policy.

What purpose does it serve to punish people for not taking options they didn't have before? It won't deter future illegals - once you institute the guest worker program, the situation becomes completely different. In fact, punishing those who came before just because they came before any options were on the table sends the message that you want to arbitrarily persecute people, just because you've justified it to yourself. That's a bad message to send, if you want to win hearts and minds, and it undermines the legitimacy of your guest worker policy. If you get punished arbitrarily anyway, what's the point of following the rules?

Also, it's impractical to determine who's worked and who's a criminal, outside of normal measures. In fact, "criminals" probably shouldn't even be on the table, because the government supposedly already hunts those guys down. Any person at all who's a criminal (apart from violating immigration laws) is already on the "wanted" list, and when they're caught and processed, they get already get deported. There's no need to beef up that part of the system, except as a general beefing up of law and order efforts.

It goes without saying that if your primary purpose is to assassinate the President, you don't hold up a convenience store for a gum en route to your goal. That's just stupid. Likewise, illegals who cross the border for work generally would be more law-abiding than normal since any infraction, no matter how small, could end with their deportation. They probably go considerably out of their way just to avoid things like speeding tickets and jaywalking offenses.

This doesn't address the difficulty of setting up a guest worker program documenting and tracking the millions of illegals already in the country. Making them face punishment to go legal just puts more barriers to documentation and processing, for the sake of a punishment policy that undermines your overall goal. The entire point of this punishment seems to be to "get even," even at the cost of the stated goal.

From a management standpoint, it seems to be best to offer incentives for illegals to go legal. This would not encourage people to go in illegally, so long as there's still more benefits to starting up legally in the first place. Ideally, you want the worst state to be illegal, overall, the second best to go legal, and the best to start off legal. Punishing people for going legal undermines the relationship between the state of having gone legal, and staying illegal.

Finally, you haven't addressed the difficulty of getting your guest worker plan to work better than how the current immigration stuff already does. Those laws are like that for many reasons, and some of those reasons is because many Americans simply don't like foreigners, and particularly foreigners who aren't white. How are you going to sidestep racist interest groups who want to make life hard for people with the wrong color skin?

bandit0013 wrote:

Most Americans aren't going to work in a field for $9.06/hr.

I think you might be surprised at the number of unemployed Americans that would disagree. However, you're now bumping up against the whole concept of unemployment benefits, the social security net that locks people out of those low paying jobs. If you can get money from the government that A) pays you more for not working and B) disappears if you actually get employed, even if you make less than before, then what's the point of working at $9/h? Illegal immigrants don't have a safety net, so their minimum acceptable wage is a lot less.

Secondly, farm wages are probably a terrible dollar rate to use, considering how closely monitored food supplies are. I'm fairly sure that there's a lengthy chain between you the consumer and the farmer who grows the stuff, and there are a TON of regulations inbetween. Of the few farmers I know (mostly small, family size farms) work crazy hours and dance on the edge of going out of business every year, weather and crop permitting. I'm quite sure that mandating some sort of minimum farm wage would put them out of business entirely.

LarryC raises a good point though - no matter what you want to do policy-wise.. what do you do with all the people currently illegal & in the country? Force them out? Round them up & put them to work? Blanket amnesty?

Per the link I sourced above, the market rate for unskilled labor is $16.75/hr. The rate for agricultural labor is a mere $9.06/hr. What do you suppose is the contributing factor in that gap?

Probably, that's about what agricultural jobs are worth. You can get berry pickers for a few dollars a DAY in China. Nine dollars an hour in the US is really pretty good, considering that it takes only some practice, and no other training whatsoever.

This year, you see produce rotting in the field. Next year, if things don't change, some or all of those farms simply won't plant.

Very few people will stop buying produce because their bill goes up $8 a year.

You're right, they wouldn't. But the people who buy food from farms will stop buying the expensive produce. They'll buy the cheap stuff first from other states, and then from Mexico and China and Brazil instead. So US farms will stop planting, and probably turn into subdivisions instead.

By stopping illegal immigration, and forcing farmers to pay higher wages, all you're doing is destroying jobs.

Make immigration easy and legal, and then you'd see the rate for farms end up at the right level, whatever the right level is, because the immigrants will be able to complain about poor conditions and more easily job-shop. If the workers can't be abused the way they can be now, that should bring wages right up to whatever level is actually possible for farmers to pay and still make a reasonable profit.

If you completely remove immigrant labor, farms will not be able to get the bodies at all at a price they can actually afford, and anywhere from some to most of the farming in this country will go away. Americans DO NOT WANT these jobs. Read the links in the post I linked earlier -- the Georgia farmers keep very few American workers beyond a half-day or so.

Malor wrote:

You're right, they wouldn't. But the people who buy food from farms will stop buying the expensive produce. They'll buy the cheap stuff first from other states, and then from Mexico and China and Brazil instead. So US farms will stop planting, and probably turn into subdivisions instead.

Probably, that's about what agricultural jobs are worth. You can get berry pickers for a few dollars a DAY in China. Nine dollars an hour in the US is really pretty good, considering that it takes only some practice, and no other training whatsoever.

This year, you see produce rotting in the field. Next year, if things don't change, some or all of those farms simply won't plant

See, the whole import food from China argument falls flat on its face when you take quality and freshness into account. Not to mention that you ignored my statement that the agricultural lobby already puts a lot of tariffs and other restrictions on imported food which I don't advocate changing since the ability to produce your own food domestically is vital to national security. But that's a moot point since it is simply unfeasible to move the bulk of food production out of the country. Sure we import some food, but grains, meat, and perishable produce are not something you can just ship from China cheaply.

Malor wrote:

By stopping illegal immigration, and forcing farmers to pay higher wages, all you're doing is destroying jobs.

This statement is an attitude I find astounding among otherwise educated people. We can't expect farmers to pay market wages for unskilled labor like everyone else? What other industries do will absolutely destroy farmers? They'll all just en masse throw their hands up and not plant anymore? Poppycock. This is just an excuse to keep exploiting cheap labor from Latin America. If this argument was valid the south would still have slaves, because it's eerily similar to their argument that without slave labor farming would just be impossible.

Malor wrote:

Make immigration easy and legal, and then you'd see the rate for farms end up at the right level, whatever the right level is, because the immigrants will be able to complain about poor conditions and more easily job-shop. If the workers can't be abused the way they can be now, that should bring wages right up to whatever level is actually possible for farmers to pay and still make a reasonable profit.

If you completely remove immigrant labor, farms will not be able to get the bodies at all at a price they can actually afford, and anywhere from some to most of the farming in this country will go away. Americans DO NOT WANT these jobs. Read the links in the post I linked earlier -- the Georgia farmers keep very few American workers beyond a half-day or so.

First, no one is suggesting removing any immigrant labor. What is being suggested is setting up a quick and efficient guest worker program which can be regulated and controlled to provide incentives to American workers. The data that increasing the unskilled labor pool through illegals is depressing wages is indisputable. $9.06/hr vs $16.75/hr is a huge difference in labor rate. I want everyone who works in America to follow the rules and regulations including being entitled to the same safety, unemployment, etc benefits. Here's an excerpt about how these illegals are being treated, and you rarely hear a peep about it.

Agricultural work is among the most dangerous occupations, with injuries and illness disabling farmworkers at a rate three times that of the general population. (7) In California, the average death rate for farmworkers is five times that of workers in other industries. Approximately 300,000 farmworkers in the U.S. are poisoned by pesticides annually. (8)

Farmworkers are paid poverty wages in spite of these risks. Three out of four U.S. farmworkers earn less than $10,000 annually, and three out of five families live below the federal poverty line. (9) Living conditions are equally harsh as migrant housing commonly lacks plumbing and working appliances, and is often next to pesticide-treated fields. Farmworkers spend more than 30 percent of their income on this sub-standard housing. (10)

Farmworkers seldom have health care, disability insurance, vacation, or a pension, and rarely apply for welfare. In a 1997-98 study, only five percent of farmworkers reported having health insurance covered by their employers for non-work related injuries, 28 percent reported compensation for work-related illnesses, and only one percent of workers used Social Security or disability ins urance. Just 13 percent of farmworker families receive Medicaid, 10 percent get Food Stamps, and 10 percent participate in the Woman, Infants, and Children program.

The bolded part is what happens when you have a pool of workers who because of legal status are unable to organize, complain to regulators, etc. Given the risks and rates of disability, I would argue that if the average unskilled labor is $16.75/hr, that these farm workers should be paid a premium on top of that in a truly fair market. By supporting the status quo or just crying out for "open borders" and flooding the market with unskilled workers, you are allowing this system to continue, and it's disgusting.

People have made quips in another thread that as a Midwesterner I'm just not qualified to talk about California politics, but you can't tell me the Midwest doesn't know agriculture. The living conditions of these people is sick.

Pawz wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

Most Americans aren't going to work in a field for $9.06/hr.

I think you might be surprised at the number of unemployed Americans that would disagree. However, you're now bumping up against the whole concept of unemployment benefits, the social security net that locks people out of those low paying jobs. If you can get money from the government that A) pays you more for not working and B) disappears if you actually get employed, even if you make less than before, then what's the point of working at $9/h? Illegal immigrants don't have a safety net, so their minimum acceptable wage is a lot less.

I think you would be surprised. It's backbreaking labor and as I referenced above it's more dangerous than other unskilled labor jobs that pay on average 80% more. There is no incentive for the unemployed American to take this job. The labor pool needs to be regulated, controls and expectations for safety etc need to be put in, and the market wage needs to rise to an acceptable level. Illegals prevent this from happening.

Pawz wrote:

Secondly, farm wages are probably a terrible dollar rate to use, considering how closely monitored food supplies are. I'm fairly sure that there's a lengthy chain between you the consumer and the farmer who grows the stuff, and there are a TON of regulations inbetween. Of the few farmers I know (mostly small, family size farms) work crazy hours and dance on the edge of going out of business every year, weather and crop permitting. I'm quite sure that mandating some sort of minimum farm wage would put them out of business entirely.

Small family farms don't benefit from economies of scale, so yes, it is difficult for them. Considering that we turn corn into fuel though, we are no where near a food crisis. So I am about as concerned about the small family farmer as I am about buggy whip makers. Farmer's markets seem to do very well in my area though. I think most people would be shocked at the markup percentage on food from the middle men.

Pawz wrote:

LarryC raises a good point though - no matter what you want to do policy-wise.. what do you do with all the people currently illegal & in the country? Force them out? Round them up & put them to work? Blanket amnesty?

Set that up above. First you have to get them to come forward for registration and background checking. After the grace period anyone found undocumented is immediately put into deportation process. Anyone who is working and otherwise clean background can stay, granted a temporary visa, but as punishment they can NEVER apply for full citizenship. If they want citizenship they need to leave, go to the back of the line, and apply like everyone else. If they are found to owe taxes then they will be put on a payment plan until they are square (I would support going after their employer for taxes as well).

That's about it. Again if you actually enforce employers using a good verification system for employment and punish the crap out of ones who don't do due diligence there will be so few jobs for illegals that the problem will solve itself. In most of your more left leaning countries in Europe that we like to hold up as paragons of human treatment there is NO WAY you could just slip over the border and actually get a job.

bandit0013:

This is what you're trying to do:

"Hey illegals! Why don't you all come forward so we can levy punishments on you?"

Yeah, that's probably not going to be heeded by pretty much anyone. You'd have to institute pretty substantial rewards to get anyone to submit to a system where the first thing you do is tell them they're unwanted and are going to be targets for punitive measures. The chance for this working on a voluntary basis, as-is is probably going to be very, very low, but I'm open to discussing any rewards you might be thinking of countering the severely bad message you're sending - enough to get people to sign up for this.

"Alright, we gave you a chance. Now we're going to round you all up and deport you en masse."

See: Georgia. This stance is incompatible with saying that you're not going to deport people en masse. If you institute a registration system that's pretty much all negative, and then deport anyone who doesn't comply, then what you're doing is essentially mass deportation.

Putting massive pressure on employers not to employ illegals just works along the same lines, only on the employer side.

Your future vision is laudable, as I said, but the way you're proposing to get there isn't tenable in a number of very obvious ways. I'm commenting on your input here from a realpolitik perspective - trying to find something that works. Punishing current illegals may be morally satisfying to people who've migrated to the US legally, but I'm highly skeptical about its real-world efficacy. Coming as it is from a perspective hostile to illegals, it's probably likely to be as effective as the Georgian measures - highly effective one way, but probably devastatingly catastrophic in other ways.

@LarryC

No, the message is "come forward and register, if you're one of those hard working employed types your reward is you get to stay, otherwise you're going to lose your job when your employer has to verify your eligibility and then you're going to be deported"

This is not like what Georgia did. The grace period is a form of amnesty for illegals and employers. As soon as the new rules go in though, the party is over and people will be held accountable. I see pro-illegal arguments all the time that say these people aren't criminals, they pay taxes and work hard. If that is the case than the vast majority of them should jump at the chance to go legal, even if there is no path to citizenship from there.

bandit0013:

"Should?" Why should they? Look at the situation impassively. Every decision a human makes is an economic one, and this is particularly an effective way to predict how people will react to policy issues where religion and ideology does not play a major role. Why would an illegal jump at the chance to go legal, when you're not offering any sort of benefit? "You get to stay" is not a benefit. They're already in, and provided that they stay incognito, they're likely to remain. You're not offering a reward. You're threatening a punishment. Those are different things.

What I see is that you're thinking "Hey, if YOU guys are really honest, you'd sign up!" That's a morality position from a POV hostile to illegals. It's not something that I think will likely appeal to them whatsoever. They don't care what you think. They just want to work. Threatening mass deportation is, well, pretty much exactly what Georgia did. Why register for immediate punishment, and various unknown further punishments once registered, when you can just move to another state to keep working? Status quo, while dangerous, is more attractive than being under the control of a power group that you think hates your guts.

You have to see things from their point of view in order to institute measures that they will find attractive - that's the carrot. Likewise, you have to see things from their point of view to really hit them where they hurt - that's the stick. Empathy and feedback is key to developing policies that will work for your stakeholders.

LarryC:

So getting their base wage raised from $9.06/hr to $16.75/hr, becoming eligible for unemployment, medicare, social security, etc aren't economic incentives enough for the hard working honest types to come forward?

It sounds like you're saying "No Bandit, you just don't get it, they WANT to be exploited"

bandit0013 wrote:

LarryC:

So getting their base wage raised from $9.06/hr to $16.75/hr, becoming eligible for unemployment, medicare, social security, etc aren't economic incentives enough for the hard working honest types to come forward?

It sounds like you're saying "No Bandit, you just don't get it, they WANT to be exploited"

I was actually about to pretty much post this.

The upshot to Bandit's plan is that it benefits illegals by improving their work compensation, and it benefits citizens by building up wages on "undesireable" jobs. There are some good criticisms of the plan brought up in this thread so far, but "all you want to do is punish illegal immigrants" is definitely not one of them.

Farscry:

I specifically pointed out that the punishment levied on illegals (not being able to be citizens) was the only part of that plan that seemed unnecessarily punitive. It's not like they have had such a choice before. Even today, the only recourse most people have to work in the US is to enter illegally.

bandit0013:

There's no guarantee that they would be hired under a wage of $16.75/hr, or if that floor wage is workable for the agriculture industry. If there were a reasonable certainty of that, then sure. You also didn't stipulate that your guest worker program would include unemployment, medicare, SS and other benefits. Typically, someone under H1B visa who couldn't find work is forced to exit the country. Having that over the head of a father while his children were US citizens would be a significant enough downside, I think, for him not to consider it, even if the wage increase were tenable.

As I said, you have to put yourself in the position of illegals honestly if you're to formulate plans that will work for them. It would probably be best if any lawmaker interested in tackling this problem undertake living the entirety of the life of an illegal and going underground with them, to get a real view of the ins and outs from an insider perspective.

Bandit is right that we could significantly raise farming wages with little effect on consumer pricing of food. (There are other sources for similar conclusions - this seems to be a little contested conclusion of economists.) My question is this - what's stopping this from happening in the market today? If we have to do this with regulation or government intervention, doesn't that mess with the level playing field for all workers?

Robear wrote:

Bandit is right that we could significantly raise farming wages with little effect on consumer pricing of food. (There are other sources for similar conclusions - this seems to be a little contested conclusion of economists.) My question is this - what's stopping this from happening in the market today? If we have to do this with regulation or government intervention, doesn't that mess with the level playing field for all workers?

My position is that the thing stopping it is the ready availability of cheap illegal labor. Regulation and intervention in this particular case doesn't mess with the level playing field because the field is already not level by the presence of workers who are willing to work for far less benefits and wages than a citizen worker is entitled to. Regulation as to the minimum level of benefits, etc that workers are entitled to is sensible and reasonable.

I agree with critics that if you just "pull the plug" on the illegal labor that very bad things would happen in the short-term (like crops rotting in the field). It would also be bad to implement this piecemeal giving some states advantages over others. Maintaining the labor pool that is unwilling or unable to press for market wages (given unskilled labor costs elsewhere) wouldn't stimulate wages enough in the short term to make the jobs attractive to out-of-work Americans, especially given the working conditions and risks cited above. Thus I believe the price floor based on Department of Labor statistics is a reasonable short term solution. Once the system goes into effect and things settle in, you could look at removing the floor. Another thought may be to peg the 25% penalty I thought of to the regional unemployment rate. So if unemployment was very low, the penalty for bringing in foreign temporary workers would also be very low, but if unemployment was high like today we should put in disincentives for hiring foreign unskilled labor.

@LarryC

Fair enough, I wasn't specific about benefits. I would expect it to be similar to the H1-B program where they would pay into unemployment, medicare, etc and be able to file for the return of their social security money if they leave the country permanently. Also, I specified a 6 month period for being out of work and being allowed to stay. 6 months was out of my bum, more reasonably it should be tied to the amount of time you've been here and employed, because if you've paid into unemployment insurance you shouldn't be asked as a temporary worker to leave until what you've put in has been exhausted.

As part of the temporary worker program though you'd have to also legislate to fix the anchor baby issue though.

bandit0013:

Under the H1B program, you do not have unemployment benefits, even though you pay for those things while employed. I'm not aware if you have full medicare benefits, though you pay for those, too. Not only are you ineligible for unemployment benefits under H1B, you are also bound to your employer. If your employer is no longer sponsoring you, you're deported post haste. The common solution is to go illegal while you look for another employer who will sponsor you.

Employers also have significant disincentive for hiring foreign workers under the H1B program. It is illegal to do so, but they typically load those additional costs onto the employees. Too, the dependency of employees on the employer for their US presence means that they are in a greatly reduced bargaining position. H1Bs are typically underpaid compared to similar US workers, in addition to often having to pay off employer disincentives. It is not without reason that it was often viewed as an indentured servant program prior to the year 2000 changes, and it's not that much better off since.

And the program has quotas, too, generally so far below demand and supply that there's a years-long backlog and limited market correction in the local demand.

The only reason H1B "works" is because most people who go into it are highly skilled, highly industrious, and highly motivated workers who don't have a lot of luxury expectations, so they're willing to take pay cuts against colleagues as long as it doesn't eat into basic human needs.

Unskilled workers would not have this leeway. They're already kind of at the limit of human cost of living in the US. The threat of deporting the entire family to a country they haven't lived in for 20 years (and have no resources to survive in) is so harsh that it would render any kind of bargaining position moot.

@LarryC

While I won't quibble that some larger employers may take advantage of the H1-B program, as a hiring manager I have had H1-Bs on my staff.

1. You are legally required to pay a H1-B a market rate. This is set by the department of labor for the position title, experience, and job description that you provide to the issuing authority. I'm not really certain how a company would game this except by falsely claiming duties and experience levels.

2. It takes a lawyer to properly file and respond to H1-B issues. It's not cheap. It adds thousands to the cost of not hiring an American.

3. The quota issue is a subject for a different thread. I think it's not all that well implemented.

You can get unemployment as an H1-B if you have a temporary lay-off and will return to work for your employer. The reason they are ineligible for UI in other cases is that to be eligible you must be able to work for any employer. Since H1-B are specifically sponsored to a single employer this isn't the case for them. The program I've outlined makes exceptions since they are intended to be supplemental, temporary labor so I would expect them to have a job offer coming in but wouldn't expect continuous employment (especially in agriculture where there are gaps in harvest season to be accounted for).

H1-Bs still pay into unemployment, but they aren't eligible to receive it in case of termination due to the restrictions on their status. Sorry if I was unclear, but that's why I said 'similar' and not 'exactly the same'.