The proposed "Immigration Cost Recovery Act" to control the border and to positively identify and derive taxes from immigration law violators sparked some good comments. Thank you all for your responses. Here’s mine to yours. It’s an essay but not too lengthy. Best regards, David.
What’s the human cost of our recent wave of economic migration? "Illegal immigrant deaths" has 534 results on Google. It’s unacceptable.
The recent growth rate of their increasing numbers is conceded to be unsustainable for several factors including supply, demand, enforcement, civil tolerance and global economic uncertainty. Do we steer the process or do we risk the unintended consequences of stalling? More...
While legislation is initially all about process, in the end it causes real life outcomes. (See the run up to the War in Iraq as an example.) I suggest the ICRA to lessen the ability of large employers to steal fair wages from undocumented or faux documented workers; to raise wage and benefit levels; and to fund essential border security, health and education services.
It is sad, but comes as no surprise to many, that a free and fair market may exist for capital, commodities and goods, but next to none for labor. Wage inequities exist because labor can’t move freely. In the case of the undocumented and the poor, they can’t organize to negotiate fairly against powerful employers.
Most of the laws governing non-tariff barriers (immigration laws) conspire to swap wealth from the labor that builds and harvests and manufactures everything to the accounts of those privileged directors of energy, weapons, food and cheap imports.
Prices are axiomatically determined to be the number at which supply and demand impulses and corrections provide terms of agreement between well informed negotiators. If markets were free and fair, the extremes would converge to the mean. Markets are neither free nor fair for many but are as crooked as a casino lavishly benefiting a privileged few. This is a topic for another essay and another time. Labor is the least free factor of production well behind capital, resources and goods.
How do you get from the hellish state of immigration affairs today to a reality where those in violation of immigration laws can be respected as contributors who are growing towards citizenship for their essential contribution with the wages, benefits, protections and dignity that they deserve as human beings? Perhaps though forming strong labor unions? These people will have to have legal standing to organize effectively.
The ICRA would remove the lethal epithet "illegal" without forgetting, without amnesia, without amnesty, which many legal idealists hold sacrosanct. The imprimatur of a new legislative and contribution status would encourage the peaceful assimilation of all concerned. I have witnessed deportation, the cause of irreparable family tragedy here in San Diego. It’s ending is urgently needed.
I don’t know where you live, but here in San Diego we’ve got Minutemen Vigilantes who have all but set fire to raze canyons where the poorest residents hide, and sleep and scrape by beneath scrap wood and cardboard as they struggle to stay alive and send money back to where they came from. It’s a bad situation and worsening. We must let these people live under the rule and protection of agreed upon law or we shall suffer the horrific descent that has accompanied all past exercises of not-so-well-intentioned experiments with mob-rule lawlessness.
I’m trying to turn the conversation away from a massive us vs. them rout-out-the-foreigners-hunt that devolves to detention camps and incarceration or deportation. We're smart enough not to compound the social and fiscal costs of our past bad decisions. But we have to deal with the reality as it is, not as we’d like it to be. Haven’t we had enough fantasy predictions and subsequent fantastic explanations attempting to change what is actually apparent into what the incompetents suggest it should be or what they want it to be? Thankfully many of these will be sharing the microphones with others with gavels come January.
I whole heartedly agree with enforcing current employer sanctions. It will raise wages, increase benefits and improve working conditions for all and reduce the numbers of immigration law violators, as many think would be wise.
Our largely uninforced immigration laws are simply another brick in the wall of the tragically incompetent but terribly costly misadministration of justice in our country. (Add up the cost of processing and holding non-violent drug offenders... we’re losing the war on drugs, too.) We’ve had a unified executive that has chosen to remove due process from the constitution. Why would they uphold immigration laws that would hinder the transfer of wealth from the poorest of the poor and the middle class to an ever smaller handful of well-acquainted, powerful privileged people?
While tangential to this discussion, I recommend more progressive tax rates to be in order for these beneficiaries of less than free or fair markets, as well as the dead. It also won’t dampen economic growth to eliminate the social security wage cap on the top five percent of income earners, or have unfettered capital taxed at the same rate as three-legged-sack-race labor. I’m also all for driving a stake through the heart of the next person who utters the words "death tax." Let the dead bury the dead. They feel no pain and tell no tales of woe concerning taxes levied on them after they’ve gone. It’s not surprising that those who successfully lobbied for this are their living heirs, a few thousand multi-millionaires and billionaires who’ve successful conned a tax free ride from congress and the rest of us with surprising skill and effect. Let’s hope this free pass reverts to priming the pump of solvency again. Snap back.
Immigration law violators currently contribute several taxes: To social security from which they will never get a dime (probably along with many of the rest of us, the way congress is indebting the trust fund). To schools, hospitals, counties and cities via property taxes paid to and remitted by landlords. To states and municipalities that levy sales taxes on most transactions.
Why tax them more? To fund enforcement of our current immigration laws and to reduce the number of violations. When we tax an activity we get less of it, subsidize it and we get more. Isn’t it wise to subsidize enforcement? Shouldn’t we hire some immigration payroll auditors to increase compliance from employers? It would be compassionate to hire more border guards to turn back and save the lives of the more foolhardy desert crossers.
In addition, we can be nervous as we witness the movement toward universal secure identification for every resident under the guise of national security, immigration status confirmation, and a laundry list of wants put forth by commercial interests. Where do you want the decisions made? In the black hole of executive secrecy or under the powerful disinfectant of bright sunshiny public debate?
Is it sick to suggest this tempering legislation will remove the illegal stigma that has so many legalists in a tea-kettle-whistling-Tancredo frenzy? Less so than the frenzy.
Is it naïve to suggest it will fund border security, assimilation, and adding to the assurance of public health and education? I keep forecasting with game theory the unintended consequences without any trip-wire dooms-day scenarios thus far. Time will tell... whether we act or continue to study it.
Is the ICRA like letting blood to cure disease? Draining the money from the thinnest wallets? This is the most difficult aspect that strikes the most vulnerable. Yes, many will give up and return to the lands from which they came. It wasn’t easy for any who came here from anywhere else at any time in the past. Beginning with those who crossed the land bridge from Siberia ten thousand years ago and continuing with the people who are crossing the border as you read this. It ain’t easy now. It won’t get any more so in the future, either. Reality.
Is the ICRA a hypocritical means to advance peaceful coexistence while we gather our composure, show tolerance, and patience with the poorest of the poor among us? It’s a gray area, open to debate, no doubt. In terms of effective border control it will be more effective and less expensive by far than building fences and detention centers. It's far less abhorent than mass deportation. I don't think doing nothing will remain an option much longer. Any other policy suggestions?
How best can we give these people with "guts and courage and spirit to leave their home and try their luck" here a legal status to come out of hiding, to obtain inoculations, to become educated and integrated into our communities thus strengthening our nation and the world? We must continue to draw the best, brightest and most determined people from around the world to our country.
The cross pollination of education, culture, wisdom and creative new amalgams of innovation and expansive ideas are the seeds of hope and civilization itself. These newcomers will spread the word of the benefits of social justice and the worth of a democratic representative republic among those they know in the lands from which they came. That’s how we might have a chance of spreading democracy, net-roots and ground up.
There is a stiff headwind. How can we improve the lives of everyone in the world when we’re witnessing the greatest transfer of wealth and power in the history of humans to fewer and fewer people, and at the cost of growing misery for billions? The trend is a known fact. Are you optimistic or pessimistic by nature? I’m not cynical, but highly skeptical of sunny sanguinity when I acknowledge herding behaviors in humans. It encompasses insight gained by observing long sweeps of the history of civilizations, and as we’ve seen both long ago and quite recently, it ain’t all candy n’ flowers.
Morals rest on determining that which is good and that which is evil and then actively resisting evil and then heart fully desiring good. Whither complexity? Add wisdom to guide action anchored in ethics, the discerning of right and wrong, and persisting in the self-mastery of acting appropriately. It’s a life’s work and it ain’t easy.
The truth is, its still about justice and goodness, with vigilance for liberty and freedom the only means worthy of the end.