To listen to Chuck Schumer tell it, “unscrupulous employers” — not border jumpers — are to blame for the illegal immigration problem. Which, Schumer suggests, wouldn’t be a problem were we to simply make the illegals legal!
This is what passes for wise problem-solving in Democrat land: have a crime problem? Easy enough to fix: simply recontextualize the crime such that it is no longer criminal. Similarly, having a problem meeting educational standards you yourselves laid out? Simply agree to lower the standards!
Voila! Unscrupulous laws and unscrupulous math homework are suitably rebuked, and criminals and students burdened by the unfairness of competition receive the social justice that they so richly deserve.
Transformative!
Does New York know their senator is drinking in the office?
Reminds me a lot of how the stats are adjusted in real life police departments and on The Wire. Felonies become misdemeanors, misdemeanors become warnings, sort of the invers of the broken windows theory of crime control.
I actually agree with Senator Schumer on this one. If there was no job market, there would be no border-jumpers. I could be wrong, though; it could be that the border-jumpers are manufacturing decent identification at an astonishing rate, and are just fooling hapless employers. But it’s a fact that there are people who knowingly employ the undocumented/illegal aliens. To what degree employers of the illegal are knowing or even uncaring is a matter of debate.
I completely disagree that the solution is to make the undocumenteds legal. But if we’re going to refuse to enforce the law, that’s the logical alternative. Having laws on the books that you’re not going to enforce is stupid.
But making them legal isn’t the point, is it? I mean, I’d thought that the primary advantage to hiring illegals was so you could pay them less than minimum wage. If that’s not it, what is the attraction (as far as the employers are concerned, I mean)?
The main attraction I see is that they show up on time and willing to actually work without complaint.
Well, they should definitely be marginalized for such behavior. They need to go on strike, or something disruptive.
I’m going to go out on limb here and agree with Schumer’s idea (if not his demonization of employers) . The MOST effective way to fix the illegal immigration problem is to enforce the law on employers of illegal immigrates.
As a thought experiment, imagine that you grew up in some third world hell-hole. You know from your friends and family that a better life is in America. All you have to do is break American laws to get it. How unpleasant would the enforcement of American law have to be to keep you from going? How unpleasant is current law enforcement compared to the hell-holes they came from? I summit to you that unless you are willing to shoot illegals in the head or torture them to death, and line their bodies on the borders, you will never end illegal immigration by enforcement on the illegals alone.
Please don’t get me wrong, I believe we should enforce our laws. But, I don’t think we can be cruel enough to stop it by enforcement on illegals alone.
So we are left with a dilemma, how do we create policy that will keep immigration above board. I suggest that we attack the better life for illegals in America. How do illegals have a better life in America? Well, they get jobs that allow them to purchase stuff (and send money to their home countries).
Now enforcement on an employer is FAR easier than on an illegal. First of all there are less of them. Secondly they have something to loose.
Employers of illegal immigrates are JUST as guilty of crimes as illegals themselves. And currently the only penalty for employment of illegal immigrate seems to be ‘Don’t run for elected office’. I would suggest that we need to make it more expensive to employ an illegal. There are several way that employer are advantaged by employing illegals. First they do not have to follow labor laws(min wage, safety ect), because the who is the illegal going to report it to? Secondly, let be blunt, illegal tend to be desperate and willing to do anything to keep their jobs.
I would suggest that we fine employers an exponentially growing fine for each case of employing an illegal. ( I.E. get caught employing one, the fine is $100. get caught employing two $1000. get caught employing three $10,000 ect) This way, one screw up and we slap you hand, but if you have lOTS of screw ups, we will penalize you gravely. WITH PROPER ENFORCEMENT, no business could survive a policy of hiring illegals with this type of fine. Therefore the business community would forced to ensure that their employees were legal.
I’m all for going after employers — I’ve said that before — but that’s really a secondary issue. And let’s not be blind. Illegals aren’t coming here simply because we have lettuce to pick. I suspect the handouts, healthcare, free education, anchor-baby citizenship, etc., have something to do with it, as well.
And I don’t think turning illegals into legals is the answer, rewarding lawmakers and adding millions of new “official” applicants to an already dire employment situation.
There are no simple solutions. The fact that excessive regulations, mandates and safety nets have driven the cost of labor in this country artificially high and created this black market for labor must be addressed as part of any solution I think.
Exactly, B Moe. Or risk businesses moving out of the country. That’ll solve the problem!
Oh, sure. The state & local governments should be attacked just as hard as the employers.
If it’s illegal to cross the border other than at an official checkpoint, or without legal documentation, why isn’t it illegal to knowingly aid and abet people who do that? If the state & local governments are doing that, logically Schumer should be excoriating them as well.
But that would probably be racist.
One thing you can be sure of; if Schumer’s lips are moving there are lies being told…
Seriously though, the solution can’t be just to penalize the employers without doing the same to the border jumpers.
There has to be a multi-pronged approach that has to include vigorous enforcement, but also limitations on monetary benefits that can be recieved while here awaiting naturalization or illegally; to folks from third-world nations, life on the US dole can seem like the lap of luxury comparatively.
Also there has to be some provision where their children don’t automatically become US citizens, but do so retroactively after they have successfully been naturalized. The same is true for people here illegally. The law need to be changed so that if your parents are here visiting on a vacation visa, or illegally, then you are not automatically a citizen by virtue of birth inside the US. Reserve that for people that really want to be part of America and plan to make their life here, as well as provide for their progeny to do so, and aren’t just here for their personal economic benefit.
It’s a tough knot to untie, to be sure, but all Schumer is doing is engaging in demagoguery 101…
Our last governor, Don Carcieri, signed an executive order requiring all companies working on state contracts to use E-verify.
Our new governor, Linc Chaffee(for whom Obama refused to endorse the Democrat in the race), immediately rescinded that order.
Employers who hire illegals are evil, but verifying the legality of an employee isn’t very nice, you see.
No? Me neither.
Well, duh. Progs are both lazy and stupid, so your second paragraph is kind of a no brainer.
How high is Schumer? I mean right now?
Because nothing makes wages go up like an increase in the labor pool.
And on a serious note, though I’m not really looking to be serious today, being Friday and all, I agree completely with the others who had qualified agreements with schumer. Of course, actually enforcing the damn law on both employees and illegals is paramount. But, to the governing class it may be too icky to actually try to accomplish.
Kinda sounds like those wanting to legalize drugs. Or prostitution. The users aren’t the problem, it’s the dealers and pimps. De-criminalize the use, and all the problems go away!
The only way we’ll get a grip on the problem is to stop the abuse of the 14th amendment with anchor babies, and the bullshit lament that we can’t mass deport 20 million illegals.
We can sure as hell slow the flood at the border to a trickle, and deport every one of those illegals, as they come to the authorities attention.
I’m pro-immigrant, but we need to be following a system of equal access, not having an out of control invasion of poor illegal Central Americans flooding in.
There is no sense in turning a blind eye to illegals “doing the work Americans won’t”, when we have huge rolls of welfare recipients and extensions on unemployment insurance.
Schumer is an extra large piece of monkey shit, foisted on America by New Yawk liberals.
He makes my skin crawl.
I will try to be brief. There is a reason they come from third world hell-holes. Cluebat it ain’t just the the drug gangs and corrupt police and politicians that make them hell-holes. There is also a cultural chasm that will take generations to bridge,(if ever). Simply put, they hate your gringo guts. You can marry them, have children be good to them and they will still hate your guts. The neighbor that you have never spoken to, hates your guts. The priest at church, hates your guts. The 80 year old man on the bus that shouts “Callate!”when he hears someone speaking english, hates your guts. To many everything you have you stole from some one else, most especially from latin Mexicans. I have a good friend Juan, a colombiano, who entered the U.S. legally through Tijuana, Mexico. It took him eight years and $15,000. He made the observation that the contrast of cultures was most evident there because on one side of the wall were million dollar homes, paved streets, street lights, sewers, clean DRINKABLE WATER and on the other cardboard shacks with feces flowing down the center of the “street”.
We haven’t started to disuss the 60 plus percent that refuse to que up. If they won’t wait in line to make a left hand turn, what makes you think they would recognise U.S. federal law or obey it? As a group of people they are the most arrogant people I have ever known with nothing to support their ideas of grandiosity.
“Employers of illegal immigrates are JUST as guilty of crimes as illegals themselves.” You can’t hire what isn’t there. They don’t want some of what you have, they want what you have and believe that they deserve what you have.
“I actually agree with Senator Schumer on this one. If there was no job market, there would be no border-jumpers.” Remind me again of the current un-employment rate in the U.S.
With no exceptions, every country I have been in in Central and South America practice active response to the violations of their borders. Deportations are a DAILY occurrance.
Bruce Lee was an anchor baby, wasn’t he?
“Bruce Lee was an anchor baby, wasn’t he?”
Don’t know.
Were Lees parents in the country legally?
I have always said you can resolve 90% of illegal immigration by actively fining employers who hire illegals. Illegals are mostly here to work (the 10% are those in that underground economy that does not care about any stinking fines).
But that does not change the fact that Schumer is a schmuck.
Bruce Lee married an American woman, I believe. He also brought the kind of special skill set that we should be looking for when we invite people into the country.
All I can say about Rockefeller is from my experience he is not a dishonest or evil man- he just really is that fucking stupid.
Schumer, on the other hand, IS a truly dishonest and evil snake.
“Anchor baby” is probably not the right term for Bruce Lee, who was born here of parents that were legally visiting. And whose parents didn’t use his citizenship as a lever for theirs.
So: retracted.
With no exceptions, every country I have been in in Central and South America practice active response to the violations of their borders. Deportations are a DAILY occurrance.
When I honeymooned in Cozumel and the adjacent Yucatan area, I was amused at how militarized the border and adjacent sea truly were. Their patrol boats would reguarly give our dive boats the quick binocular scan.
Mexico itself has an illegal alien problem, from Guatemala and other Central American countries. These people have the same culturem ore or less, speak the same language, Indian dialects notwithstanding, and both look quite “Indio” brown. (We think Mexicans are browner than most of them are because the darker ones migrate northward, but down in Quintana Roo province they really *are* very dark.)
Do the Mexicans care? Nope. The Guatemalans and others are ruthlessly hunted down and shipped back.
Slart…you are clueless. I can get an ID AND a gun here for 400 dollars….The point being that the US is SO not paying attebtion to the borders nor the illegal situation.
I live in a town that is inundated by illegals…One of my first comments here was about Cinco de Mayo, and how I’d be on the roof with a bar AND a BAR….
I can’t really fault the humans who live in third-world gawd-awful conditions just wanting to improve their lives by slipping over the border; hell, if I’d been born anywhere else, dirt-poor and miserable, I’d do whatever it takes to improve my and my family’s lot. I reserve much disgust for Democrats who seek to use these people to ensure their own political successes, at the expense of the very culture that makes this nation attractive in the first place. And more disgust for Democrats for allowing an anti-America culture to thrive, using the very Constitution these illegals are actively undermining. And for giving away unearned benefits, stretching the ‘safety net’ to failure.
We should require that immigrants, legal or no, leave their failed cultures at the border, including their language. This nation isn’t another Canada, split in two by language differences. We should ban the display of any national flag but our own. Instill in those who are here, that ‘here’ is different and better (or they wouldn’t have come in the first place); if that’s not acceptable, then deport the hell out of them.
You say that like it’s not a lot of money.