The Best Case Against Arizona's Immigration Law: The Experience of Greater Phoenix

how would you combat illegal immigration?

 

Make immigration legal?

 

The easiest way to deal with illegal immigration would be to heavily fine and use other punitive measures against the people who hire undocumented laborers.

But that won't happen.

 

sarah would be proud,

good article

 

Immigration is legal? Or are you implying we let every person in the world become a US citizen if they want to be one. Clueless.

 

Wow! If it were just that easy!!

Lets play this out....

"Mr Lopez" shows up with a SS card and a DL. Yeah, illegals get fraudulent documentation, surprising eh? Do you really think most of these businesses hire illegals blatantly?

Now what your suggesting is businesses should use racial profiling to determine if their potential employees are using fraudulent documentation. Do you not think the business would get sued for racial profiling? You're against the Arizona's immigration law, but you're perfectly fine with this?

 

Sweet. It'll take longer for cops to do worthwhile things because a bunch of people want them arresting folks that do jobs they don't want to do.

Something seems amiss. I like the approach of the article: less focus on morality, more focus on tangible reasons why it's a bad idea. I liked the original approach by this administration to illegal immigration -- hunt the ones that are breaking other laws and are committing crimes (yes, yes, I know, being in the country is essentially a crime for them, but I mean real crimes). Sure, number of deportations went down, but number of deportations of violent/drug-related immigrants went up.

 

This is silly. There are much simpler ways to do what he suggested. There are two types of hiring:

1. Pure illegal immigrants who don't have fake IDs. These businesses can easily be targetted with large fines if they are not properly documenting employment (regardless if the people are illegal or not).

2. For those businesses who hire people with fake IDs, the government will determine that at the end of each year. If SS #'s don't match up with the people's provided data, the IRS will send forms to businesses at the end of each year with that information to withhold wages, provide information, etc. However, in most cases, these employees are transient so it's not terribly useful. Instead, just take businesses that consistently run into this situation and put them in a probationary state - simply require them to pre-verify employee information with the federal government before hiring. If they continue to hire illegal immigrants, then fine them heavily because it is then willful behavior.

 

i have an idea: in order to to honor theLatino community and the diversity of the league, the state of Arizona, and our nation, at the next home game, Los Suns should just open the gates to any and all comers, no ticket required, open seating for all.

Viva la immigration legal!

 

Yes, I do. In fact, I know they do.

If we remove the incentive (employment and wages) for people to come to the United States, then they have no reason to come here - so instead of trying to deal with hundreds of thousands of mobile illegals who can hide or disappear over the border, why not deal with the tens of thousands of individuals and businesses who hire them, who can't run away, and who aren't hiding anywhere - seems like a far more practical solution to me.

But I guess practicality isn't what this is about.

 

How does letting you into a Suns game for free honor the minorities that you trash on a routine basis?

 

I'm not sure how fining businesses and making it harder for illegal immigrants to work is any better than this law. Either way, the end result is sending illegal immigrants back to Mexico because they can't work here.

 

Just because some guy runs a crew of illegals for his landscaping business does not mean it is cheap or that if paid a fair wage could not be done by legal residents.

We have pretty high unemployment now and plenty of people would love to be making 15 per hour doing some yard mowing or mulching flower beds.

 

did you ever think the reason legal residents are not willing to do these jobs is because the wages have been artificially deflated by illegal immigrants?

Americans are very willing to work hard.

 

I had this discussion with my stepfather the other day and I laid down what I would do, were I Emperor. These measures are based on one main premise, that every person in this country should be documented.

I would start with a true crackdown on businesses and individuals who hire illegal immigrants, those that cannot provide documentation. Major fines and jail time for CEOs and HR directors that do not do everything in their power to get accurate documentation. You could have an even bigger impact if you jail some individuals in cases where they hire illegal nannies, maids, and landscapers. In order to make that happen, you would need to modernize the ID system to include biometrics. Make it impossible for businesses to claim that they didn't know when the market for counterfeit documentation dries up.

To make the market for counterfeit documents dry up, you would have to implement a guest worker program. We would probably have to allow the people who are here and working to be in the program to start with, but I would require them to "touch base," by returning to Mexico for a short time. Personally, I would make this program the primary intake process for unskilled immigrants, that way they could prove that they can be productive, law abiding citizens as a part of their claim to the American Dream.

We need to shift the demand curve for unskilled labor if we want to stop people from working in our country illegally. This is only possible if the employers are an active part of the crackdown, which will not happen unless there are serious sanctions for hiring. The guest worker program will allow businesses and individuals to have access to a low cost labor market and most importantly, everyone in the country would be documented.

 

Maybe we should continue to increase our efforts at uplifting Mexico out of the third world and into at least the second world.

 

And would you be willing to pay higher prices for fruits and vegatables, home construction and a host of other things?

People act like that this is a problem of enforcement when this is an economic problem. Consider that I just flew through Phoenix the other day and I noticed that practically everyone working at the Phoenix airport, from the people restocking the plane to the people working the concessions, were speaking Spanish. I don't know how many of those people were illegal or not but even if 10% but I am guessing that there would be a huge shock to the local economy if we suddenly did get rid of all of the illegals.

At the moment we have high unemployment, which also affects the illegals too, but I am not aware of a huge move of US citizens moving to go and fill those jobs. Now what is to prevent an American citizen from picking strawberries or mowing lawns for even low wages, I mean that is better than nothing? It seems to me as though many US citizens aren't willing to do those type of jobs.

As long as we have the current economic imbalance between us and our SOuthern neighbors we will always have immigration illegal and otherwise. Artifcial attempts to regulate the labor market are going to be problematic and will also cause a host of other problems.