More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights

This is an incredibly complex issue and I certainly don't have the answers, but here are few thoughts-


Because of the barriers that illegal immigrants have to overcome to get here, those that make it to the U.S., from any country, are among the most motivated, hardworking, and probably intelligent (but not educated) segments of their home country's population. The U.S. derives a huge benefit from this high quality work force.

People who demonize illegal immigrants are full of sh_t. The vast majority of these people are hard working and just trying to make a better life for their families. I wish there were more people in the U.S. like this. If you want to get mad at anyone, get mad at the employers who are hiring the illegals, so they don't have to pay citizens a higher wage.

I'm not in favor of a guest worker program, because it will promote the growth of a permanent underclass, without the full rights of citizenship. This is likely to lead to a resentful, non-assimilated population.

The best, most realistic, idea I've heard up to now is to greatly increase the number of immigrants who can legally become citizens and then put in place a system of strenuous benchmarks that have to be met to attain citizenship. In this way we could meet the demand in the U.S. for workers, encourage productive behavior, and prevent the growth of a permanent underclass.

 

Some of these points have been answered already but since this was directed at me here are my dos pesos.

Responding to both you and Maister Baiter:
Actually I am against minimum wage laws because they create an artificial floor in regard to labor. The problem with min. wage is that its there so that people have an income that allows them to maintain a base lifestyle. If an artificial floor is created though that causes prices to rise and make that previous figure irrelevent as inflation eats it up. Following a classical model then minimum wage becomes a vicious cylce because once its enacted inflation quickly renders the point of it moot. The problem that we see though with largely an open system is that it ingores that supply and demand will dictate prices and that demand will always seek out the lowest prices. By creating an artificial minimum wage just encourages outsourcing and illegal immigration because if there is a supply of people willing to work cheaper then the demand for lower costs goods will find them.

In regard to competitiveness its not just purely a matter of costs. If Americans can't compete purely on costs basis then they need to compete on quality and service. By placing artificial barriers to trade and labor it removes any incentive to compete and American labor and industry can just sit back and not worry about being competitive. What this leads to is inferior products and innefficient manufacturing which is why the US auto industry and other businesses got hammered in the 70's and 80's by the Japanese. It wasn't just cheap labor, which by then wasn't that much cheaper in Japan, it was that they made a better product.

Its a total fallacy to believe that if we stop outsourcing and keep out illegal immigrants working for cheap that we could maintain our economy at anything near what it is. You can't just say that salaries will be this figure and presume that the market will continue going along. The realities of supply and demand cannot be ignored.

Churches are pledged to aid all and doctors take an oath to heal. I know you're a Christian but what it sounds like to me you're saying is that we should criminalize churches from doing their Christian duty to help the poor and hungry just because they came to this country illegally. Yes they are criminals but there are cases where other factors intervene. A Catholic priests can hear a murderer's confession but is not legally subject to obstructing justice by not telling the police that confession. You often complain about the separation of church and state in terms of displays of Christian symbols on public ground but seem endorse a gross violation of that separation by criminalizing religious behavior.

The separation of church and state works both ways. Churches aren't entitled to proselytize on the government dime but the government shouldn't be allowed to dictate who churches minister too.

If you look at it in a limited short term yes I am but in the longterm I'm not. As I said above its a fallacy to believe that we can just erect barriers to trade and labor and expect the economy to hum along. Many countries have tried that and pretty much all have ended up in failure, like North Korea and the former Soviet Bloc. There's no doubt that the free market for trade and labor creates short term pain but in the long run it helps because it creates new markets and capital. At the sametime though even if the US doesn't overwhelmingly benefit the transfer of wealth and capital to other countries helps the world in general. So if Mexicans are taking American jobs in the short term if the capital they earn helps build up Mexico's economy then Mexicans won't have any need to come here and the illegal immigration problem solves itself.

I forgot to add one point. I know that almost no one in the construction industry is working for minimum wage, legal or illegal. Illegal aliens get more than minimum wage because the labor market has set that price. The problem with many Americans in the construction industry is that they want more pay than illegals even though both are above min. wage and also aren't as flexible time wise. Many American construction workers will only work a 4 day week even though there's nothing preventing them from working more.

 

I think that is the answer and as I said in my earlier posts the best solution would be a greatly expanded guest worker program to address labor needs along with tighter border security. Again though these are short term solutions that still don't address the overall supply demand and wealth disparity problems.

 

Do you produce enough to never have to go to the grocery store?

 

I think one of the missing arguments in this whole debat is WHY immigrants are coming here? It's not as simple as saying america is great and the other countries are poor, this is more an after-effect of our international economic policies.

In Mexico, we changed our policy so that Mexico benefitted by becoming an exporting country. The country worked better if it privatized the rural areas, which previously were communally owned lands with several families working together to harvest one plot of land. After privatization, many of these families were without work and headed to the larger cities, and were then also turned away. Their last resort to survival was to go to the US.

Now I am neither fully on either side of the debate, but I think measures brought on either side do nothing but put a band-aid on the problem.

Making it a federal crime will inflate our government and our judicial system, it will be very expensive to take care of someone who is earning $5 an hour. It also won't act as a proper deterrent, keep in mind these people are risking life and limb, asphyxiating in containers, to get here in the first place, do you think a change in our laws will really make them rethink their decision?

On the other hand, we can't simply allow people to come in and create this area in our economy allowing people to cheat on wages and taxes, while also making it more difficult for legal immigrants and unskilled american workers.

To stop the flow, we can't just add more sandbags, we need to go to the cause of the problem. We need to work with these countries and change our economic policies so that their rural folk don't resort to coming here as a last resort.

 

I see Master likes the XM!

 

Yes, we are on the new strawberry and basil diet (that we invented, buy the book on Amazon.com now!!!) so thats all we eat. As you can see from the pic, our cup runneth over so we have enough to feed not only ourselves but the rest of our complex. They call us the Strawberry People. When I ****, it smells like a berry patch.

I love XM and never listem to regular radio anymore. Our balcony is pretty pimp actually. When we moved in, we had no electric sockets out there so I drilled a hole through the wall for an extension cord. We have a fridge, the grill, our garden, and music via XM. We sit out there and have a beer or a bottle of wine several times a week if the weather allows.

 

Did one of y'all create this?

http://www.motivationalbuck.com/ViewMotivationalPoster.aspx?id=574

 

no Minimum wage law = Peopla making 100 a week. While corporation make billions
I'm not confident that lower wages will translate into lower prices.
a healthy Chuck on the saving is getting caught up in the corporate coffers

You beleive protecting the local product from outside competition = cheaper quality
I am not as big a proponent of the LAWS of S&D that you are
I beleive in human corruption . . .

I also do not beleive the church should circumbent all laws
I am pissed that the child molestors in the church are getting off
The church should not be a haven for criminality

how short of short term pain? a decade? 2 decade?
Also
The issue is also . . if we make others countries stronger
they may get strong enough to overtake us
and
we doubt they will be as generous

HOWEVER
with me it is simple. We should not be going out of our way to circumvent our own laws
Integration laws are their. . .

So
Are you a proponent of Open Borders?

Rocket River

 

I generally agreed with almost everything you posted except this paragraph. I had to study the effect of minimum wage laws on prices and employment and the impact is much much less than what you make it out to be. In terms of employment, the decline in employment created by an artifical floor was virtually nil. Our minimum wage laws have failed to keep up with inflation but even if we adjusted it just to keep up with that, one would find that employment losses would be non-existant. Economists Alan Kreuger and David Card did a huge study on this effect and concluded that the minimum wage did virtually nothing to employment. Naturally, there is a certain point where once the minimum wage got high enough to where it would have real, tangible impacts on employment but we're nowhere near that point as of now.

As for prices, once again the impact really isn't that severe. Now concepts like the "living wage" that call for excessively high floors will certainly do their part to create large rises in inflation but a minimum wage in and of itself does very little of that. Especially considering the lag in updating the minimum wage to adjust with natural rises in inflation. As long as it is adjusted based strictly on the rate of inflation rather than the randomly generated numbers produced by politicians every few years, then it really shouldnt have that much of an impact.

As for your outsourcing and illegal immigration impact, sure you're right but those are inevitable regardless of a minimum wage. Even if we didnt have a floor, illegal immigrants could still outbid locals for jobs. Also, many of the markets that illegal immigrants work in are niche markets that many people simply dont fight to work in too often. As for outsourcing, we generally aren't outsourcing minimum wage work because those jobs tend to require that the work be done here. (i.e. manual labor type jobs) Generally, higher paying jobs get shipped overseas where workers there still make more than the minimum wage.

 

Is there any accurate study, with factual data, on how much this is costing us (unpaid taxes, services provided, etc) vs how much it's helping us (cheap labor, ss taxes that they dont get, etc)? I'm assuming no but figured I would ask just in case.

I'm ASSUMING, but I figure the costs have to outweigh the benefit. When I think of every cost associated with my life if I had children (schools, roads, cops, etc), I know I don't provide enough to the government via taxes as they provide to me and my family via services. I am concluding this asusming I have a "good" job. I hear the benefits that folks are mentioning, but I just don't see how they outweigh the overall costs. Are supporters arguing that the benefits > current overall cost of services provided + increased costs due to loss of benefits?

I'm mixed as I have no clue what the costs vs benefits are. I do have a huge problem with processing a bunch of folks that snuck over, while giving the middle finger to those trying to do it the legal way.

 

You raise good points and as I mentioned in my posts the negative affects of the min. wage are if you look at it classically but even looking at it in the real world economy it doesn't do much. Either the minimum wage is so low that its not really a living wage as what it was intended or because its so low that many Americans won't take jobs paying that much leaving illegals as the only ones who will work at around min. wage. But also as I noted many illegals work for above min. wage but below what Americans would work at.

 

I don't know of any such study, although I'm sure several have been attempted. Keep in mind that the benefits side includes a lot more than taxes - all the cheaper goods & services Americans get as a result would have to be included.

For example, there was a study on Walmart's effect on the poor, because it's so controversial in terms of how they "invade" small towns and such. That study showed that the poor in America save $20 billion per year due to Walmart. That's not really money that shows up anywhere because its simply a result of lower prices so its hidden savings, rather than on the books somewhere as tax revenue or whatnot.

I have no idea how much lower prices save American consumers in regards to illegal immigration.

 

Corruption is always a factor but putting an artificial floor on wages doesn't adress that either.

The best way to deal with corruption is to increase competition. People will gravitate to the lower price and if one company is providing the same product at a higher price than another company because of corruption sooner or later people will put them out of business. The problem is though if you close off the movement of labor and trade you just give more incentive to corruption because there is less competition.

So churches shouldn't follow Jesus' example of ministering even to criminals ?

I agree churches shouldn't harbor criminals but if your advocating that the government should be able to interfere in how churches practice their faith then don't complain next time courts remove a Ten Commandments sculpture or for that matter under your argument government could ban the practice of faith altogether.

It could be that long. The US auto and steel industry never recovered but our economy figured out how to innovate and do better. Even though Chrysler, Ford and GM are hurting by all accounts they are producing a much better product now than they did before.

Its always the possibility that other countries will overtake us with open trade but its practically guarenteed that if we close our borders to labor and trade that we will be overtaken and even worse become an economic basketcase. No modern economy or country has become and maintained success without free trade.

I'll ask you the same questions I asked Halfbreed. Do you ever drive faster than the speed limit? Do you ever jaywalk? Have you ever made a turn over a double yellow line? If you answered yes to any of those questions you're a criminal too and strictly speaking anyone who you've made aware of including those of us on Clutchfans are potentially criminals if we don't report you to the authorities. Yes our laws shouldn't be circumvented but a draconian enforcement of them is ridiculous and would do more harm to society than good. Illegal immigration is exactly that case.

I've already stated my position a few times. I don't believe in completely open borders given there are security issues and in regards to sovereignity a country should be able to control who comes in and out. To me the answer is increased border enforcement and a vastly expanded guest worker program.

 

So you equate , , , illegaling entering this country . . to Jaywalking? Speeding?

I liken it more to THEFT, ROBBERY and BREAKING AND ENTERING

Rocket River

 

How are people coming to earn an honest living doing jobs that Americans don't want to do theft or robbery. If I hire an illegal roofer and he does as good of a job at 75% the costs of an American in a faster time who's being robbed? I'm certainly not and maybe the American roofer should consider lowering their costs or improving their quality and timeliness to compete.

Anyway speeding and jaywalking are dangerous too. In speeding there's more a risk to causing severe injury to others. The illegal alien's risk is primarily to themselves in a dangerous crossing.

But you still haven't answered the questions. Have you ever driven faster than the speed limit? Have you ever jay walked? Have you ever made a turn over a double yellow line? Since you're so concerned about draconian enforcment of laws to the extent that you would advocate punishing churches for doing their religious duty why don't you come clean about whether you're breaking the law too.

 

The laws you are stressing speed Limit Jaywalking. . imo are by far lesser offenses than entering the country illegally

If someone breaks into my house and fixes that sink I'm having a problem with
that does not mean that they did not BREAK IN!

Rocket River

 

a. you seem to have a very low opinion of Americans
b. you seem to have a religious like faith in the laws of supply and demand
that they can cure all ill

Rocket River

 

It's not a matter of whether the laws of supply and demand are good or helpful or whatnot. It's just that they will win out in the long-run. They always have and they always will. Companies will always work to find the cheapest labor, and people will always buy the cheapest products (in both cases, assuming equal quality). A country's economic policies can try to fight it and cause more problems in the long-run, or they can embrace it and try to manage it as best as they can. I think Sishir Chang is just supporting the latter.

 

Legality could be solved with amnesty...which was what Bush and Fox were close to agreeing before 9/11.

I'm not sure how American culture can be lost if it's just a bastardized collection of former immigrant class cultures living on the same soil.