patrick.net

Peter P,

The guest worker program is just corporate subsidy by another name. Society as a whole subsidizes the employers of minimum wage workers since the workers pay in less in taxes than they get in return in benefits. While this might be a reasonable solution to a low immigration society, this leads to workplace arbitrage and race to the bottom in a society like the US.

You can get someone to do almost any job, as long as the wage given is right. There's no reason to import workers, especially unskilled laborers. Just start cutting back welfare for the natives and give them jobs they can live on and be proud of.

I'm against market distortions in all its forms and I want people to pay the fair and total cost of any goods and services they receive. In my opinion, guest workers are a highly disruptive market distortion that subsidize the users of the cheap laborers while penalizing everybody else.

There are two ways to increase the expected cost of hiring illegal workers:

If anyone found knowingly hire illegal workers is sentenced to 10 year in prison, effects can be felt with just a few (high-profile) prosecutions. However, businesses need workers. The guest worker program must be implemented in parallel.

Wouldn't America have been better if this type of forward thinking policy had been adopted during times of much higher immigration, like the 1800s to 1950s.

My my, too bad computers didn't exist to make it all possible back then and the civil service wasn't big enough to handle such programs.

Just think about how much more homogenious and appreciative the american population would have been if the irish, ukranians, poles, germans, japs and chinese had been accepted on an enforceable temporary basis.

They're just like those darn Mexicans, bunch of foreign opportunists all of them!

However, businesses need workers. The guest worker program must be implemented in parallel.

I am wary of any sort of blanket amnesty for illegals already here, as all this will do is basically reward breaking the law and provide even more incentives for others to do so in the future. Basically like saying, "Get here any way you can. If you get caught, we'll 'punish' you by making you a legal guest worker."

Another problem is the type of workers such programs tend to attract: low-skilled, uneducated dirt-poor laborers (as in unlikely to join/expand the middle class). Why not try to attract the world's "best & brightest" by expanding existing H1-B programs in key sectors that are experiencing the supposed shortages of skilled labor (hard sciences, engineering, R&D, etc.)?

The guest worker program is just corporate subsidy by another name.

From another perspective, this is the only feasible way to obtain support for regulating illegal immigrants.

You can get someone to do almost any job, as long as the wage given is right.

But the right wage will lead to the wrong price. :)

You can get someone to do almost any job, as long as the wage given is right.

But the right wage will lead to the wrong price.

What, you mean urban professional couples won't be able to afford nannies and gardeners anymore?

Who will do the work if the mexicans and filipinos can't do it and slacker youth from the suburbs can't be bothered.

Migawd, a pending national crisis for the boomers and their best paid progeny - anything, I mean anything, must be done to avoid this disaster!

tsusiat,

Except that America didn't have high wages and a huge infrastructure that props up a high living standard. Would you advocate that the new arrivals receive the sort of living standard and wages and life expectations that awaited those 19th century immigrants? Furthermore, those 19th century immigrants treated immigration as a lifetime commitment for themselves and their children. A lot of immigrants today just treat America as a place to make money and get some benefits, without truly merging into the American society at large.

tsusiat Says:

Wouldn’t America have been better if this type of forward thinking policy had been adopted during times of much higher immigration, like the 1800s to 1950s.

Tusiat,

As a matter of fact, in the 1950s immigration laws were actually enforced with some degree of regularity and consistency. Not surprisingly, this was also a period when the middle and working classes made great strides in terms of real income and a higher standard of living.

As far comparing the U.S. of 2006 to the U.S. of the 1800s, there's really no comparison. In the 1800s, the U.S. was still a young, sparsely populated nation. Huge swaths of the West & Midwest were basically undeveloped & uninhabited wilderness. We're now a nation of 300 million people, rivalling Europe for population density --especially along the coasts. I believe we should still allow as much legal immigration as we can absorb. However, no nation can accept unlimited numbers of dirt-poor immigrants indefinitely without it negatively impacting its citizens' own standard of living.

Peter P,

What the hell is a "wrong price"? A cat sitter that costs you $30/hr rather than $5/hr? Lettuce at $3/lb rather than $0.75/lb? Have you seriously thought about the degradations that illegal immigrants have caused the ordinary Americans in the form of worse schools, greater wealth disparities, more crime (underemployed native born underclass), and overworked emergency rooms?

Or are you so sheltered from those problems all your life that you never had to think about them at all?

Didn't we all have this same illegal immigrant/guest worker program discussion a few threads back? And again several threads before that?

Have you seriously thought about the degradations that illegal immigrants have caused the ordinary Americans in the form of worse schools, greater wealth disparities, more crime (underemployed native born underclass), and overworked emergency rooms?

My point is that the guest worker program will allow tougher enforcement measures to be implemented. Also, once these "guest workers" are registered, they can be tracked easily. In the future, new taxes can be levied against them and they can no longer go underground anymore.

Manufacturing jobs will have to be done by cheaper labor, here or overseas. I wonder which is more preferable.

Didn’t we all have this same illegal immigrant/guest worker program discussion a few threads back? And again several threads before that?

Quick! Get rid of him! He's starting to... remember!

skibum,

Sorry, I missed those discussions. I guess I'm also a bit bored by repeating the same anti-bubble mantra everyday. It's like, "we're right" "have patience" "stay the course" "screw the flippers"... I like talking more in depth about the positives and negatives of the Bay Area and America at large. It's not entirely an issue of when to buy. There is still active disputes about whether to buy at all.

Also, I'm not happy with Peter P's rather woolly minded approach to these serious societal issues. I'm not convinced that my position is right, since the rights and wrongs of human society is hard to determine even in retrospect (Was the North American continent really so empty? Was the ecological ravages mankind have created on this continent the right thing?) But passing the buck of decision making onto the stars? Talking about the necessity of guest workers without talking about the whole cost of such a program? Sorry, I just can't let that pass.

Let's make sure we're all using the same terms:

"Americans" - People who arrived on US Soil at the same time or before I or my ancestors did.

"Immigrants" - People who arrived on US Soil after I or my ancestors did.

"Illegal Immigrants" - People I don't care a rats ass about.

"Legal Immigrants" - People competing for the jobs of other people

"Excessive Immigration" - When immigrants are competing for my job.

If you really hate immigration, why don't you start boycotting Taquerias, stop ordering take out food delivered, etc.

This type of comment:

A lot of immigrants today just treat America as a place to make money and get some benefits, without truly merging into the American society at large.

has been leveled at every immigrant group in our country's history.

PeterP: My point is that the guest worker program will allow tougher enforcement measures to be implemented.

Deportation isn't tough?

I get your meaning, of course. Going totally underground takes more effort and breeds its own set of 'regulatory authorities'. (Cue references to prohibition, war on drugs, etc.)

With the classic examples though, the choice is about criminalizing your own citizens. I think when immigration is involved, the desired affect may not happen, as each time someone becomes "legal", another "illegal" would take their place. It basically becomes a wide open immigration policy.

You guys should glimpse at this:

http://tinyurl.com/owagn

From the RE Complex mouthpiece, CNN, titled, "Higher prices, higher rates: The 1st-time homebuyer squeeze"

This joke of an article purports that rising interest rates and rising home prices are pricing out new homebuyers more than ever. Never once does it mention that prices are actually dropping now as we speak. This is really just outright lying. The RE Complex is getting desperate!

HARM,

you either missed my point or didn't note the sarcasm -

the point being that all the above mentioned groups were castigated, or locked up, or variously railed against by the bourgeouisie of the day as a drain and dangerous foreign element to admit into whichever status quo constituted the "society" of the day.

Do I need to provide a supporting quote? Just go google those ethnicities and US Immigration and do some reading.

Do you think the english welcomed the irish?

Do you think german - americans were welcome during WW1/WW2?

Remember incarceration of the Japs during WW2?

In Canada, the Chineses had to pay a "head tax" as a means of keeping them out, at the same time they were handing out homesteads to immigrants from the UK.

I wasn't comparing the situation economically, just noting that the "native born" constantly whine and complain about the underclass arriving from over there. It has been going on a lot longer then since your supposed current problems began - many of which could be more easily solved by a different type of social safety net.

I won't even begin to compare the immigration policies of Canada and the US, it might be rather depressing reading for anyone in California.

Also, I’m not happy with Peter P’s rather woolly minded approach to these serious societal issues.

Okay, if you are not happy we have to talk about it. I cannot have someone unhappy.

Peter P,

If the choice is between outsourcing and importing the workers, I'll go with the first every time. Immigrants and guest workers are like having children, once they're in this country, we have a moral responsibility to look after them. If they're abroad, they're like the neighbor's kids. We can try to help them if they're in trouble, but we are not compelled to act.

The other point you make, that guest workers can be taxed to pay their way here, is rather impossible. These guest workers are going to be paid minimum wage or less. In order to afford them a reasonable living standard, they will have to keep most of that wage. The taxes they pay are unlikely to cover their government provided social benefits, unless we want to be completely inhumane and not give them healthcare and education and proper policing of their neighborhoods.

Furthermore, these workers aren't doing that many manufacturing jobs. They're mostly agriculture workers and service workers, these jobs will not be outsourced, they will be taken by legal residents who will be paid better (due to decrease in supply of labor).

Finally, just check out the record of guest workers in countries that have them. They're treated horribly, subject to abuse and oppression by their employers. They're outright second class citizens, accorded even less respect than we currently give illegal immigrants. Is this really an acceptable solution?

Deportation isn’t tough?

You cannot get illegals to be deported in any significant numbers. Both greed (business) and compassion (pro-diversity) are working to prevent that.

But if you throw in the guest worker program, greed will be distracted and compassion will have to work alone. Greed always defeats compassion. Real enforcement can then be implemented.

tsusiat,

I'm not advocating a return to a race-based immigration policy or completely sealing the border. I just don't see how it's possible for the rest of the world to manage immigration so they don't have entire cities/states being overrun and transmogrified into third-world slums, while the U.S. --richest most powerful country-- cannot. Even Mexico enforces its own (far more restrictive) immigration policies, but somehow we "can't".

In any case, skibum has a point. We seem to be re-hashing old arguments here. Back on topic:

Check out this lovely 876sft 2Bd/1Ba gem in East L.A. At only $450K, it's a steal. Can't tell if the photo is the garage entrance or the front door, though.

http://tinyurl.com/nbh6g

tsusiat,

I wasn't born in this country and I've lived amongst upwardly mobile immigrants for all the years I've been here. These people still think of their country of origin as home. Though their kids do Americanize over time, that's with the benefit of a good American education. An underclass of unskilled laborers will not have that benefit and will not integrate into this country easily.

surfer x-

You are indeed a lucky man that a boomer let you come into his office and help him with remedial MS Office functions. Now you listen, and you listen good -- Instead of feeling cheated, you should feel honored. It's not everyday that you get to be a part, even a tiny part, of something special like a boomer's life. Getting to hang out with boomers is special, you know, sort of like being at Woodstock, or walking alongside MLK. Count your blessings. Simply standing next to a boomer at the urinal and hopefully catching a backsplash of their stream on the back of your hand is the closest most will ever come to tasting the nectar of the gods.

I have always beleived that the illegals would be sent home if a really bad depression were to occur.

Similarly, if there is another terrorist attack here, a bad one, and it involved Muslim terrorists who were residents of the US, pretty much everyone from the Middle East who wasn't a citizen would be sent home. This would be terribly ufair to the immigrants, but if people were scared enough, the Middle Eastern immigrants would be deported.

HARM,

Wow, if that's the best face the realtor can find on the place, maybe it's better not to have a picture at all.

Let's see. Dangerous neighbors, bad schools, only space for 2 migrant families, tiny lot, ugly. Well, it's a great starter home with investment potentials.

@PeterP

That works for me then; While I'd oppose amnesty on principle, I think the greater good calls for some sort of guest worker/amnesty program to lesson the economic shock.

(Strange... a friend just told me that two members of the Tonga royal family were killed in an accident on the 101 last night. SUV, tapped on the side by a mustang trying to change lanes, no points for guessing what happened next.)

All this nonsense about "rewarding lawbreakers" is silly. If we change the law, then we can redefine certain kinds of immigration as being "legal" instead of "illegal." Problem solved.

The real issue is to try to determine how many skilled and/or unskilled immigrant workers should be admitted to this country. Like it or not, we actually need quite a lot of immigrants, both skilled and unskilled, to keep our economy going The baby boomer demographic is getting older and someone will need to pay for their social security benefits. Legal immigration is a part of the answer, but we need to make legal immigration much more readily available.

The US currently allows only 25,000 Mexican nationals to immigrate legally to the US per year. This number is ridiculously small given our proximity to Mexico, our seemingly insatiable demand for unskilled labor and Mexico's surplus of unskilled labor. If the number were more realistic, then we might have some hope of actually processing people through the normal system, collecting taxes (and social security) from them, and assuring that they are not abused or mistreated by black market employers, instead of creating an entire class of people who are unable to work within the system.

We also need a lot more skilled immigrants. Why not let a computer programmer come to the US and pay taxes to the US government, rather than having a multinational hire them in India, so that they can pay taxes to India's government? We should be competing to make the US a hospitable place for educated, productive citizens.

On a related note, our government wastes a good chunk of your tax dollars to subsidize US agribusiness. This makes provides an incentive for US agribusiness to bring undocumented workers to US farms (so they can collect US subsides and take advantage of cheap foreign labor). Subsidies also makes farming much less financially viable in poor countries which can not afford to subsidize their farmers. Remove the subsidies and ADM would do business just as easily in Mexico or Brazil as they do in the US. And the workers will have the ability to stay home.

I have always beleived that the illegals would be sent home if a really bad depression were to occur.

Only if minimum wage is abolished or an underground below-minimum-wage economy develops.

That works for me then; While I’d oppose amnesty on principle, I think the greater good calls for some sort of guest worker/amnesty program to lesson the economic shock.

Yes, greater good sometimes means lesser evil.

Peter P,

Sorry. I think of this country taking on new immigrants as a parallel to me having kids. It's not something to be taken on at the spur of a moment or without serious thought. Once they arrive, it'll hard to get rid of them again.

Red Whine,
Funny as hell!

Astrid -

but you arrived, what if someone wants to get rid of you?

Its a bit patronizing to assume that your upwardly mobile subset of the immigrant experience is different and more beneficial than that of say, the boys in the barrio.

There are many reasons why a lot of the problems associated with particular immigrant groups would just move over to other groups if they weren't around, not the least of which is MONEY.

Glen,

I can see where you're coming from, but it's a slippery slope. By the same logic, if we grant amnesty for murderers and rapists in the future, does that make that sort of lawbreaking okay? I know illegal immigrants are alleged victimless criminals, but cumulatively, they have a big impact on society.

Let's just look at who is benefitting and who is hurting. It's overwhelmingly the rich and the businesses who benefit from undocumented workers and guest workers. It's the poor who are suffering the consequences by having to compete with those workers for jobs and social service funded by the middle class.

As for boomers. Wouldn't it be cheaper just to outsource them to cheaper countries rather than try to support them on American prices?

The bigger issue to this population growth stuff is to deal with the fact that we have to start practicing population control or the Malthusian nightmare, long deferred, will come.

(Strange… a friend just told me that two members of the Tonga royal family were killed in an accident on the 101 last night. SUV, tapped on the side by a mustang trying to change lanes, no points for guessing what happened next.)

The mustang was alledgedly racing. Young people are so troublesome. If they have so much energy they should serve the community. The driver should be extradicted and face whatever penalty.

Young people are so troublesome. If they have so much energy they should serve the community.

I get the feeling this one is going to end up "serving the community".

I think it is a mistake to assume all guest workers will be at McDs, as I have said before, some want Mr. Newsfreak’s skilled job as an electrician. Which is fine to want, but I truely believe Mexican immigrants do not want to assimilate into Amerikan culture that much, and it is horrendous to propose new laws, when the ones we have are not enforced.

What is your basis for assuming Mexican immigrants do not want to assimilate? Do you think they like being treated as second class citizens? People have made the same claims about every group of immigrants through history. Mexicans who come to the US want their children to learn english and get an education (even if they themselves are unable to do so) so that their kids' lives will be easier than their own.

tsusiat,

Believe it or not, I also do take some time to talk to poorer Latino immigrants (my mom worked in Chinese restaurants for years) and Chinese immigrants. I don't see the same rate of merging into American society.

You also seemed to missed my main point, which indeed is money! Or rather, resources in the form of jobs and social welfare. The native born poor are very much suffering from the influx of foreign competition, and consequently are worse off than they would otherwise be.

Maybe this sort of stuff is not so obvious for Canadians. You guys have a much more selective and intelligent immigration policy than Americans. For me to immigrate to Canada requires me to either make a large financial investment or find a job in place. But Americans have completely idiotic immigration policies based on family reunification, and pretty much gave up the initiative of policing immigrants.

Glen,

The solution to Mexicans unable to live comfortably in Mexico is not for them to break the law of the United States.

Glen,

I already said why, very clearly. That's how societies are organized. We care about those who are close to us more than those who are further away. This is altruistic as well as selfish. If the poor nearby are disgruntled, they're more likely to turn to crime and welfare, rather than try to be productive and climb the ladder up to middle class. We, as a society, do better when the disparity between the rich and the poor are not extreme.

All I can say is WAAAA, WAAAAAAA.

I agree that the Fed should stop, not pause, ...
... blowing bubbles!