Alabama's anti-immigrant law, HB 56, was recently upheld by a federal judge, giving hope to immigration restrictionists in other states. Indeed, Alabama is not alone in passing draconian state-level immigration laws. Other states, including Arizona, Georgia, and South Carolina, are adding more regulations to our already convoluted immigration system. Unfortunately, states can only make the immigration laws worse, not better. While Utah is attempting to issue state level work visas for Mexican workers, that effort will almost certainly be stopped by the courts. But focusing on state policy ignores the federal source of our problems.
Unauthorized immigration occurs because it is so difficult to immigrate legally. Every year, the U.S. government issues 480,000 green cards for family members, with more immediate family members exempted from the numerical cap. There are an additional 140,000 employment-based green cards available yearly (almost all for relatively higher skilled workers) as well as 50,000 so-called diversity visas allocated via lottery. Work visas are too few and expensive to make up for the paucity of green cards.
Many want to legally immigrate to the U.S., but few are legally able to. A recent Gallup poll indicated that 165 million people around the world said they would like to move to the U.S. Since 14.8 million qualified applicants entered this year's diversity visa lottery for 50,000 green cards, many millions more were dissuaded by their low chance of winning a highly coveted green card, many millions would move to the U.S. to work if they legally could.
The roughly 14,750,000 losers of the small green card lottery program are evidence of how restrictive our laws are; the inflexible nature of our system is the reason why so many break our immigration laws.
According to the Congressional Research Service, there are approximately 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. America is substantially harmed by these restrictive barriers that create black markets domestically, punish American producers, and keep millions of productive people locked in countries lacking the opportunities for upward social mobility that market institutions make possible.
From its inception, America had open immigration along with the rest of the world. Indeed, one of the many complaints against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he "endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither." In other words, King George III wasn't pro-immigration enough for the Founding Fathers.
From then until 1882, with very few exceptions, anyone could come to the U.S. who was healthy or not obviously a criminal. That year, Chinese immigration was shamefully banned. Throughout the Progressive Era, progressives, labor unionists, and protectionists combined forces to slowly erode America's traditional free immigration policy. Congress closed the door in 1921, locked it in 1924, and threw away the key in 1931 through increasingly restrictive laws. Since then, unauthorized immigration has been a problem in America.
The Bracero Program allowed Mexican workers temporary employment during World War II. After the war, the program continued for agricultural workers. But the number of work permits was initially insufficient. In the early 1950s the U.S. was facing large numbers of undocumented immigrants. Instead of just deporting workers and trying to shirk the laws of economics, Congress massively increased the number of work permits available. According to research done by the CATO Institute, the Bracero Program's expansion decreased illegal border entry by more than 90%. Work visas destroyed much, but not all, of the black market.
In the early 1960s, the National Agricultural Workers Union and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee pressured Congress to kill the Bracero Program which they achieved by 1964. The Immigration Act of 1965 then increased the amount of annual immigration and removed the country of origin quotas that dominated the previous system. But temporary work visas virtually disappeared until they were revived by the Immigration Act of 1990. During the same time undocumented immigration increased but there were never enough legal avenues, green cards, or work visas issued to satisfy demand.
Today, unauthorized immigrants come largely from Mexico and Central America. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service issued in September 2011, of the roughly 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., 80% or about 9 million are from Mexico and Latin America. But as the Mexican and Central American economies are developing quickly, with some pointing to Mexico's per capita GDP growth of 45% from 2000 to 2009 as proof, potential migrants will see fewer reasons to emigrate. Mexicans and Central Americans will also have fewer reasons to emigrate if American growth remains anemic in the future compared to their home countries. As their incomes rise, fewer will come over the border.
But other people around the world will begin immigrating in large numbers as soon as American economic growth revives. Our immigration system was overtaken by events long ago. It need not happen again.
To prepare for the next round of newcomers, Americans can look back to our Founding Fathers' legacy of free immigration for peaceful and healthy people. While free immigration is a political pipe dream, there are some reforms that increase the number of visas and green cards and bring us a step closer to America's traditional immigration policy.
The Red Card (identity card given to temporary workers) solution would increase the number of temporary work visas dramatically, shifting unauthorized immigrants into the legal system. Issuing more green cards to qualified applicants is another way to channel unauthorized immigration into legality. An immigration tariff is another way to do it. Regardless of the type of reform, repairing the federal immigration system, not increasing state level regulation, is the solution for our broken immigration laws.
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80% if illegals are Hispanic and the vast majority of those are from Mexico. What has got Mexico worried is that the $7Bn loss in wages earned by illegals in AZ alone (mainly in the now defunct construction industry) is equivalent to one third of the 2009 remittances to Mexico.
Now you see why Mexico is going ape trying to block anti-illegal immigration laws!
When our workforce is fully employed creating jobs in Mexico or Central America helps elevate those countries to our level of economic development. The need for millions of people to relocate to find work becomes unnecessary. Our modern communication and digital systems makes Tegucigalpa as close as Tennessee.
So why do we not relegate the migration model of economic development to the history books? Because a small group of individuals stand to lose power if economic development becomes too widespread. While keeping countries south of our border poor means they can be exploited forever for cheap labor immigration.
Economies cooperate. It is Businesses that compete. Take Honda and Chevrolet as an example. Which car do you buy? Some Honda vehicles have the highest US made content of any vehicle on the market. But because Chevrolet is a US Company some people say do not buy a Honda because it is Japanese. Does this make the US Worker better off? Or just the owners of the business?
While I really do not agree with their ideology or methodology China has got a couple of things right. Foreign companies there could only establish a local operation if the state had a 50% share in the business. That effectively put the state in control of every business in the country which is a massive turn off but at least that way whatever happened, the state could make sure that the benefits accrued to the people.
Where our government continues to fail is by not running the country to the greater good of the country. We have become so caught up on PC nonsense that we have lost site of what is important. Companies are citizens like the rest of us and should be held to high account in their efforts to stabilize and provide a better overall environment for our citizens. If we need jobs then the government should be looking to local business to provide them. Otherwise the GM's and GE's may as well be headquartered in Switzerland for all the good they are doing us.
For many industries the specter of outsourcing is a tempest in a teapot and the reason Illegal Immigration is so damaging. According to the Pew Center the jobs where Illegal Immigrant Workers are most prevalent are Farming, Construction, Transportation and Material Moving, Food Service, and Cleaning. By the nature of this work NONE of these occupations can be outsourced. Try outsourcing the construction of buildings to China. Try harvesting American crops, mining American ore, preparing American food, cleaning American buildings, or moving goods in America with workers living in China or India or even Mexico. It cannot be done. Illegal Immigration deprives American Workers access to American Jobs in America.
Three key factors prevent outsourcing. Where is the raw material from, how much native technology is in the finished product, and the cost of freight to move the product to the consumer. These three factors override the opportunity of cheap labor more often than not and make Illegal Immigration profitable.
But that is not all. This Author assumes that a bigger economy is always better. Bigger is better may be true when it comes to male enhancement, but when it comes to economies, it is the quality of the economy that counts, not the size. Canada has a smaller economy than Mexico but who is better off? Economies such as ours are powered by disposable income. That is income beyond that needed for food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. Anything that causes this income to shrink shrinks average GDP. Even if the overall economy grows; if such growth causes average GDP to shrink then bigger is universally poorer.
We have to understand what we are good at and build our economy on that. It used to be manufacturing but that has all gone away. However the one thing they can control is how our currency stacks up against our trading partners. Effectively devaluing our currency would make us poorer in global terms, it would make us more competitive and bring jobs back on shore. The only ones doing well so far in the new America are people whop were already doing well and had money - big companies and investors. The rest of us are slowly being squeezed to death by having to effectively compete within our own borders for slave wage jobs against with illegal immigrants and in the global pool with wages in India and China that are way closer to being livable by third world living standards than doing the same thing here.
The whole thing is out of whack and parity should be leveling the playing field but the economy is being systematically engineered to prevent this by pandering to investors.
The more things change - the more they stay the same! I think the 99 percenter's are just modern day hippies and Occupy Wall Street is their Woodstock. But there are some interesting perspective amongst what is being thrown out there.
When people see a large collection of products in stores that come from places like China they fail to realize that the products are simply low end and labor intensive. The USA is a high end manufacturing powerhouse. Our problem is Free Marketers insist on believing that a chronic trade deficit is not a problem.
As long as we have an unbalanced trade policy wealth is sucked out of the USA causing everyone to become poorer. But even so, if you look at wealth of our poor, and even though we are in the midst of a recession now, our poor today have a higher measure of wealth than they did back in the 1070's and before. They showed that chart on one of the Sunday talk Shows (I do not remember which one).
It’s the Free Marketers and their insistence that with huge wage differences worldwide, somehow international trade is a free market. This causes the bottom to drop out of the US wage structure.
But 1.1 million seem to make it legally every year. How is that? If we weren't so overrun with the illegal immigrants, just think how many more might be authorized.
Their laws are much harsher than any in the United States.
Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by two years in prison. Immigrants deported and attempting to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-years. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
Mexico can also deport foreigners who are detrimental to “economic or national interests,” violate Mexican law, are not “physically or mentally healthy” or lack the “necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents.
And their people complain that our laws are evil? Compared to theirs, our laws are amnesty.
A nation that does not protect their borders will not remain a sovereign nation for very long.
Illegal immigration exists almost everywhere in the world (even India ) and as yet, none have decided that opening their border to all comers is a solution.
Softening our laws because foreigners here already violating them say they are "draconian" is giving in to being conned by those same foreigners. Opening our borders would be tantamount to surrendering our national sovereignty.
Unauthorized immigration occurs because many of these illegals would not meet the requirements for entry unless we lowered our standards. It's difficult to enter because we don't want the world's bums to come here.
"The poll proves that our collective gut is indeed in line with reality: 80% of world citizens, from Russia and Brazil to America and India, feel that immigration has increased over the past five years, with 52% feeling it’s too much. Of respondents, 45% believe this immigration has a negative impact. This is legal, above-board immigration with which people are taking issue.
While politicians in America typically focus on the 12 million or so illegal immigrants, they often ignore that the country is taking in new legal immigrants at a rate of over a million every year."
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45352
http://watchingamerica.com/News/125794/zero-migration/
IN terms of the wage differential between Mexico and the USA, if it is narrowing, it is because of wage suppression and wage reduction in the USA thanks to an oversupply of both ILLEGAL and legal foreign nationals from Mexico into the USA. Mexico has been in 1st place every year for the last 30+ years receiving USA green cards, and number one as illegal aliens for the last 30+ years as well. If you need links from DHS on that, just let me know.
The unemployment rate for the foreign born was 9.8 percent in 2010, little changed from
a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The jobless rate of
the native born was 9.6 percent in 2010, up from 9.2 percent in 2009. The foreign born
made up 15.8 percent of the labor force in 2010.
--Over the year, the number of foreign-born labor force participants rose, while
the number of native born in the labor force declined. (See table 1.)
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.nr0.htm
DOJ estimates that 3 out of every 4 illegals attempting to enter the country succeeds. Based on 2010 apprehension rates then we can believe that almost 2 million illegals tried to enter the US last year. Net of deportation and apprehensions we had a net gain of around 1 million.
Obama's answer to the problem then is to stop apprehending illegals and say that because we are no longer catching anyone trying to enter - people have simply stopped trying to come here. In fact all that has happened is the success rate just went to 100% because the odds were heavily in their favor to start with but now they get to keep trying till they get it right.
BBVA Bancomer put out a report saying that the demand for low wage workers in the US was the principle driver in illegal immigration. Migrants returning now face significantly worse economic prospects than when they left.
In fact BBVA showed that the lost wages to Mexican illegals from the Arizona construction downturn equated to $7Bn - one third of the total remittances form the US to Mexico in 2009.
Overlay this on the steadily worsening employment rate in Mexico and you will understand why they are batting so manically against immigration enforcement in the US.
The real question is - why are Obama and Hillary their biggest allies in this?.
What is the deal with this guy Alex?
Year 2009
747,413 Family sponsored immigrants
144,034 Employment based immigrants
47,879 Diversity based immigrants
177,368 Refugees and asylees
11,739 Other
(PDF pg 3)
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/lpr_fr_2009.pdf
The above actuals for 2009 are close to the average for 1999 through 2010. What Alex wrote is 480,000, 140,000 and 50,000. Alex's numbers are 650,000 for the year and Nowhere near the average of 1.1 million over the last decade.
Unbelievable, it is the say anything Alex that wants open borders.